Pearl Abyss Q2 2025 Earnings Call

On Tuesday in South Korea, Pearl Abyss held its earnings call for the second quarter of 2025. The company experienced a quarter-over-quarter decrease in revenue of 4.9%, from ₩83.7 billion ($57.7 million) in Q1 2025 to ₩79.6 billion ($56.8 million) in the second quarter. Year-over-year the company's first quarter revenue decreased by 2.7%. 

From the Q2 2025 earnings call

For the fourth time out of the last five fiscal quarters Pearl Abyss ran at an operating loss. The ₩11.8 billion ($8.4 million) loss in the first quarter of the year puts the operating losses at ₩24 billion ($17.1 million) over the last 12 months. Pearl Abyss also recorded a net loss of ₩22.7 billion ($16.7 million) in the second quarter of 2025. For the first half of 2025 the company recorded a net loss of  ₩22.2 billion ($15.9 million) and operating loss of ₩17.0 billion ($12.0 million). 

The losses in the last quarter were attributed to foreign exchange effects as the South Korean won strengthened 2.9% against the U.S. dollar in Q2 2025 according to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. Perhaps the won strengthened a lot more against the euro and east Asian currencies.

IP and platform breakdowns are back

In a somewhat surprising development revenue breakdowns by game IP (Black Desert vs EVE) and platform returned on yesterday's call. For Black Desert the news was probably disappointing. Year-over-year Black Desert income fell by 8.5% down to last quarter's ₩54.9 billion ($39.2 million). Much of the decline can be attributed to the ending of the Black Desert Mobile service in China. The contract with TenCent to operate Black Desert Mobile in China was supposed to run until 26 April but due to poor performance TenCent and Pearl Abyss ended service for the game on 27 January. Mobile game revenue declined ₩6.2 billion ($8.2 million), or 36.3%, from Q2 2024 to Q2 2025.

Over the first half of 2025 Black Desert game revenue was ₩117.9 billion ($82.6 million), a decline of 7.0% in South Korean won. Since the Pearl Abyss representatives on the call said foreign exchange affects affected profitability, I also calculated the decline in terms of the U.S. dollar came out as a decline of 12.0%.

The bright spot on the call was the news about the EVE IP. In Korean won the EVE IP had its highest revenue total of ₩24.2 billion ($17.3 million), a year-over-year increase of 12.0%. In terms of won the EVE IP recorded the highest quarterly revenue total since Pearl Abyss acquired CCP Games in October 2018. The U.S. dollar figure is the highest since the EVE IP brought in $17.9 million in the third quarter of 2020. 

On the call, Pearl Abyss indicated last quarter was EVE Online's most successful quarter in terms of revenue since 2016. In that year CCP Games introduced the free-to-play Alpha clone option in EVE in the final quarter of 2016.

Finally no earnings call is complete without news of the development of Crimson Desert. The CEO of Pearl Abyss Heo Jin-young gave an update on the development and marketing of the long-delayed game. Currently Crimson Desert is undergoing voiceover work and console certification. Pearl Abyss intends to attend Gamescon and PAX East in August and the Tokyo Game Show at the end of September. However, the game will not launch in the final three months of 2025 as originally stated but sometime in the first quarter of 2026.  While the company has an internal date in mind the date will not be revealed at Gamescom.

The update led to only a single question asked by the investment analysts on the call. Heo Jin-young was asked about the possibility of Crimson Desert's release being delayed past the first quarter of 2026. The Pearl Abyss CEO was directly asked "how can we trust you and your company" about any release date after all of the delays over the past several years.

According to the Korean business site Chosun Biz the markets did not respond well to the earnings call.

The market reacted coldly to this announcement. As of 9:46 a.m., Pearl Abyss's stock price plummeted by 9,050 won (-23.15%) to 30,050 won, dropping more than 20% in early trading.

Pearl Abyss has seen multiple delays in its release since its first announcement in 2019. The industry assesses that this schedule change has diminished the likelihood of a performance rebound by the end of the year, and there are concerns that further delays could make it even harder to recover investor sentiment. According to the financial information firm FnGuide, Pearl Abyss was expected to achieve a revenue of 540 billion won and an operating profit of 114.8 billion won this year, but this delay makes it difficult to meet those projections.

As seen during the call, through the first half of 2025 Pearl Abyss has achieved revenue of 163.3 billion won and an operating loss of 17 billion won. And with the delay of Crimson Desert's release into 2026 I don't see a way how the South Korean game maker can come close to meeting market expectations.

Update: 13 Aug 2025: 1300 GMT - At the end of the trading day, Pearl Abyss stock fell 24% since the previous day's close. That represents a loss of ₩581.1 billion ($421.2 million) in the value of Pearl Abyss' market cap.

Pearl Abyss stock price - 13 August 2025