At cheapest wow gold this time, for opening remarks and introductions, I would like to turn today's call over to Kristin Southey. Please go ahead, Kristin.
Good afternoon, and thank you for joining us today for Activision Blizzard's fourth quarter 2013 conference call. With me today are Bobby Kotick, CEO of Activision Blizzard; Thomas Tippl, COO of Activision Blizzard; Dennis Durkin, CFO of Activision Blizzard; Eric Hirshberg, CEO of Activision Publishing; and Mike Morhaime, CEO of Blizzard Entertainment.
And I would like to remind everyone that during this call, we will be making statements that are not historical facts. These are forward looking statements that are based on current expectations and assumptions that are subject to risks and uncertainties.
A number of important factors could cause the company's actual future results and other future circumstances to differ materially from those expressed in any forward looking statements, including the factors discussed in the Risk Factors section of our SEC filings, including our most recent quarterly report on Form 10 Q will define filing with the SEC and those indicated on the slide that is showing.
The forward looking statements in this presentation are based on information available to the company as of the date of this presentation, and while we believe them to be true, they ultimately may prove to be incorrect. The company undertakes no obligation to release publicly any revision to any forward looking statements to reflect events or circumstances as of today, February 6, 2014 or to reflect the occurrence of unanticipated events.
I'd like to note that certain numbers we'll be presenting today will be made on the non GAAP basis, excluding the impact of the change in deferred net revenues and related cost of sales with respect to certain of our online enabled games; expenses related to stock based compensation; the amortization of intangible assets; expenses relating to the purchase transaction and related debt financing; and the associated tax benefit.
There is also a PowerPoint overview, which you can access with the webcast and which will be posted to the website following the call. In addition, we will also be posting a 12 quarter financial overview, highlighting both GAAP and non GAAP results and a one page summary sheet. This quarter, we have also added a number of EBITDA metrics to our earnings release and slides for our new debt investors and analysts.
And now I'd like to introduce our CEO, Bobby Kotick.
Thank you, Kristin, and thank you for joining us today. 2013 was a transformational year for Activision Blizzard, and for our industry. On October 11, Activision Blizzard became an independent company once again. The majority of our shares are in the hands of public shareholders, many of whom are long term committed investors, including our Chairman, Brian Kelly and me.
Our transaction with Vivendi delivered immediate benefits to our public shareholders in the form of significant earnings per share accretion. Even more importantly, this transaction gives the company new focus and flexibility.
Our combination with Blizzard five years ago brought together in one company the two most creative talented groups of employees in our industry and a collection of some of the most valuable intellectual property in all of entertainment. The merger also came with the majority shareholders, whose interests understandably were not always aligned with the interest of Activision Blizzard. The challenges and constraints that came from being a controlled company have all been eliminated, and we believe as an independent company we can generate strong returns for all of our stakeholders as we have for over 20 years.
For the full fiscal 2013, Activision Blizzard delivered better than expected financial results, based on the continued success of our games. On a non GAAP basis, we generated over $4.3 billion in revenues, 31% operating margin, earnings per share of $0.94 and operating cash flow of over $1.26 billion.
Over the past five years alone, we have returned almost $10 billion to our shareholders in the form of dividends and share repurchases. This maybe more valued in the enterprise value of most of our major competitors combined.
Our great result this year and every year are due to the remarkable talent and relentless commitment to excellence of our employees around the world. Their efforts aligned with our long term strategy and operating discipline continue to produce industry leading creative and commercial results.
We're once again the number one independent console and handheld publisher in Northern America and Europe combined, including toys and accessories. We have the most (successful base) MMORPG of all time, and we continue to lead our industry in our ability to generate free cash flow from operations.
Here are some of the highlights from 2013, which we'll be hearing more about later in the call. Activision Publishing's Call of Duty: Ghosts was the number one game across all platforms and the number one next generation game on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One in both North America and Europe in the fourth quarter, establishing Ghosts as the third sub brand for the Call of Duty franchise, in addition to Modern Warfare and Black Ops.
For 2013, including toys and accessories in North America and Europe combined, Skylanders was the number three overall videogame franchise or retail across all platforms. And in the fourth quarter, Skylanders was the number one children's franchise again.
In 2013, Blizzard Entertainment's StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm was the number one PC title in North America. Diablo III, following its record breaking success on the PC was the first Blizzard game to come to console in more than a decade, launching on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 in 2013. And Diablo III ended the year with over 15 million units sold through cumulatively across all platforms, which (bodes) well for the upcoming launch of the Diablo III PC expansion pack in March. And World of Warcraft will remain the number one subscription based MMORPG, ending the year with approximately 7.8 million subscribers.
Much to our positive surprise, the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 sold over 7 million units combined in 2013, faster than their predecessors did at their launch.
Not only these devices deliver faster processing and better graphics, but these new consoles and continuing improvements to broadband infrastructure world wide provide new and improved capabilities for online gaming, including same day downloads, improved social features and new opportunities for emerging potentially higher margin business models like the sale of virtual items, downloadable content and other value added online services that will provide a greater flexibility for our audience to access, consume and pay for content.
The new console should be catalyst for growth and margin expansion. And over the next two to three years as their install base grows, we expect to have greater opportunity to capitalize on a rapidly expanding audience, broader international penetration and more profitable business models.
In 2013, we also saw for the first time large creative opportunities coupled with sizeable financial returns on mobile devices and tablets. These categories had much more limited potential in the past. But we believe our capital investments over the last few years will likely result in great new types of games, as well as strong financial returns beginning this year, and growth and international expansion in the future particularly in geographies like China.
In particular, free to play games have achieved scale that should now allow us to realize great returns from the investments that we've been making in this area. Over the next few years, we plan to introduce at least three potential groundbreaking franchises operating on our free to play transaction systems designed to appeal to players across numerous platforms and in numerous geographies. These games including Hearthstone, Heroes of Warcraft, Blizzard's Heroes of the Storm and Call of Duty online, all have enormous potential.
We released Hearthstone and closed beta in 2013, and then opened beta earlier this year on PC only. It is off to an incredible start attracting millions of players in both the West and in China with strong engagement and monetization. Hearthstone is on track to join the World of Warcraft, Diablo and StarCraft as Blizzard Entertainment's fourth mega franchise.
In 2014, we planned to launch Hearthstone on tablets and smartphones. This is the first for Blizzard, and it will enable fans around the world to play Hearthstone on hundreds of millions of additional devices. In many countries, the mobile Internet is the fastest growing interactive entertainment platform and Hearthstone is well positioned for great success.
Heroes of the Storm, which we showed at BlizzCon and are continuing to develop, will bring together for the first time iconic Blizzard characters from across all franchises and an accessible free to play online universe. And Call of Duty online, which will be launched first in China with our partner Tencent will bring the leading video game franchise to Chinese audiences in a free to play game and in a genre that is now a leading game category in China.
Over the next few years, we expect to realize the broad potential and increased opportunities for monetization from these games, and we will be bringing our focus expertise as developing and investing against these franchise for the long term to excite audiences for many years to come.
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