Home-Grown Gaming Giant Razer Reports ‘Record-High’ Revenue, Mostly Due To Computer Hardware

2020-08-28 , 1:00 pm

Picture this: It’s the Circuit Breaker period and you’ve just ended your eighth Zoom meeting of the day.

You want to go somewhere to de-stress but you can’t because Gahmen say cannot go and hang out with your friends.

You receive a text from a friend asking if you want to play some PUBG, MapleStory or LOL.

You quickly text back the ‘ok’ emoji and fire up your newly bought Razer laptop, a Razer mouse that perfectly fits your hand and to top it off, a Razer headset that allows you to perfectly hear your friends’ rants about work.

Or at least, this is how I imagine how people working from home spend their evenings unwinding.

Now, if you think that I’m pulling things out of nowhere, it seems like this could be truer than we expect.

Because local gaming hardware company Razer has had a good first half of 2020 with a revenue of US$447.5 million (S$610 million) despite the COVID-19 pandemic.

This is a 25.3 per cent growth compared to the US$357.2 million made in revenue for the first half of 2019.

Sales Driven Up By Pandemic

It was reported that 85.5 per cent of its revenue came from Razer’s peripherals business – a fancy term for its hardware products ie, gaming mice, keyboards, headsets and audio devices and mats – and its system business which come from laptop sales.

According to Vulcan Post, the pandemic that forced everyone to stay at home also boosted sales for live-streaming devices such as the Kiyo camera and Seiren streaming microphone.

I guess that’s how gyms and fitness studios were able to host classes online, huh? Good for the fitness junkies out there.

Apart from the revenue contributed by the peripherals, softwares Razer Gold (virtual credit services) and Razer Fintech (digital payment) earned US$64 million (S$87 million) which contributed to 14.3 per cent of its total revenue, reports Tech In Asia.

Positive Outlook For Razer

Business Wire reports that by having over US$500 million (S$683 million) in cash and no debt, Razer will continue with R&D investments in new hardware categories and development of new services, continued share buybacks and M&A activities.

“2020 has been a year like no other for all of us around the world. Despite the global market uncertainty caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, Razer has had a spectacular start to the year, driven by dominant brand position, user base expansion and stay-at-home trends,” said Min-Liang Tan, co-founder and CEO of Razer.

In a Facebook post by Tan, he shared more about his company’s earnings and what the future holds for Razer.

Many people in the comments have congratulated him for such strong and positive results. Because hey, getting revenue and NO debt during a pandemic is difficult.

“The fundamentals of our business remain as solid as ever, thanks to our entrenched brand leadership, compelling offerings across hardware, software and services and strong execution. We are confident that these factors, coupled with our strong operating cost discipline and our strong cash position of over US$500 million, put us in good stead, even during times of challenging global economic conditions,” added Tan.

We’ve had quite a bit of questions during our 1H Earnings webcast and I hope we managed to address all of them! Despite…

Posted by Min-Liang Tan on Wednesday, 26 August 2020

Tan writes in a separate Facebook post that there will be more “awesome new products lined up” for the next half of 2020.

And we all know what that means don’t we?

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So much that some companies cannot take it.

Sales Driven Up By Pandemic

Positive Outlook For Razer

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