Q4 2024 and 2024 Full Year Revenue For The EVE And Black Desert IP

In a surprising move Pearl Abyss changed the way revenue was reported in the earnings call covering the fourth quarter of 2024. Instead of reporting the revenue for the Black Desert and EVE intellectual properties, the breakout instead was by game revenue and other revenue like from Black Desert's investment company. But with the release of Pearl Abyss Iceland's 2024 annual accounts on the Icelandic taxing authority's website yesterday we can now piece together the information traditionally covered by the last Pearl Abyss earnings call of the year.

Before continuing I should add that Croda has already published his analysis of PAI's 2024 financial information. If you would like his take on how PAI managed to lose $19.4 million I urge you to go over and read his post.

First, let's look at the revenue for the EVE IP. The EVE IP is made up of EVE Online, EVE Echoes, and EVE Galaxy Conquest amongst live games. For the year 2024 Pearl Abyss Iceland reported revenue of $60.2 million. Since we have revenue information for the first nine months of the year, that means revenue for Q4 2024 was ₩22.1 billion ($15.8 million), a 11.1% increase from the fourth quarter of 2023. For the entire year, the EVE IP recorded ₩82.1 billion ($60.2 million) for an increase of 12.6%.

Now comes the fun part. How much did Black Desert bring in for Pearl Abyss? Since we know the South Korean video game maker brought in ₩91.1 billion ($65.2 million), then the Black Desert portion of the revenue comes out to ₩69 billion ($49.4 million), a year-over-year increase of 14.8% compared to the third quarter of 2023. The extremely strong quarter meant revenue for the year was only down 1.1% to ₩2.7 billion for the year.

I remember at the time some EVE financial talking heads estimating that based on the Revenant expansion that the EVE IP brought in $18 million for the year. Instead, revenue fell in line with the second quarter of 2024 ($15.7 million) which saw the launch of the Equinox expansion. Given the launch of Galaxy Conquest at the end of October I believe I can speculate that revenue from EVE Online in Q4 was lower than that in Q2.

I will examine the latest financial accounts from Pearl Abyss Iceland in future posts but I believed in taking the opportunity in finishing up old business before moving onto the juicy new news.