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Technology Stocks : THQ,Inc. (THQI) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Dave Hanson who wrote (13537)	2/24/2000 2:12:00 AM
From: Emmo	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 14266

Can't help on why no FF or REW on Yahoo CC. But the items I thought interesting were expectations for PS2, Smackdown for PS and PS2 and Evil Dead. Farrell was excited about Evil Dead, expects it to carry the PC game side in a year of not much growth for PC games. Internally developed so margins will be good. Evil Dead was mentioned several times. Smackdown, based on orders, may be the biggest game ever for THQ on Playstation, maybe biggest selling game title ever for Playstation. They expect to ship 3/4 million at launch, can reload the channel quickly and currently their sell through has never been better. They do not expect the "A" titles to take a hit from pricing pressures but expect "B" titles to take a hit as market waits for PS2. THQ in 2000 has NO PS2 wrestling in the forecasts. They are being cautious as Sony has not announced a availability date for the US yet. They hope to have WWF available near launch or within 2 months but Sony is the X factor when is comes to dates. They want WWF to be very high quality and will not rush game to market. They expect N64 business to decline but they still consider N64 a wildcard. Publishers are pressuring Nintendo to cut costs to compete with Sony. Seems likely if Nintendo wants to keep pace with Sony and the PS2 "Title" Wave. So THQ could still pull good numbers from N64 in Y2K with help from Nintendo. They see opportunities for mass market games for N64 in 2000. THQ is the #2 GB publisher behind Nintendo. Europe sales were up 2 1/2 fold in 99, sees more growth. For 2001 everyone is waiting to see if public demand for PS2 will support the 100 million unit numbers Sony is throwing around. If that happens then the industry will be on a major roll. THQI gave themselves a strong "A" grade when it came to the transition to the new platforms. Good CC, response from callers was positive and I sensed they were trying to get a handle on how conservative Farrell was being with 2000 forecasts. Lots of questions on JAKKS deal, not 50/50, THQ took more risk and based on sales of WWF they are doing very well on the deal. Farrell says they are happy with deal, JAKKS handles relationship with WWF and THQ makes games. One of callers (Capital Group??) tried to sell a stock buy back, felt stock can't go any lower. Farrell wants to use cash to make more games and GROW.