Take-Two reports its last earnings before GTA 6 on Monday, and here's what to watch

Take-Two, Rockstar's parent company, reports its quarterly results on Monday, November 9 after the Wall Street close, with the analyst call starting at 4:30 pm ET (1:30 pm PT, 9:30 pm in the UK). It's the company's last official update before November 19, and while the numbers won't include a single GTA 6 sale, they'll say a lot about what Take-Two expects from the game. Here's what to watch, what to ignore and how much Rockstar has to sell for the maths to work.

When does Take-Two report earnings, and what time is the call?

On Monday, November 9, after the New York Stock Exchange closes. Take-Two announced it on October 13: it will release its fiscal second-quarter results and, at 4:30 pm Eastern, Strauss Zelnick and his team will take analysts' questions on a call you can listen to live on the investor relations site.

Mind the clocks: the US turned them back on November 1, a week after the UK and Europe, so the gap between New York and London is back to five hours. August's call was in the morning in New York; this one lands in the evening for anyone in Europe. If you follow the stock, the market's verdict will come that same night, in after-hours trading.

Will GTA 6 sales be in these numbers?

No, and it's worth being clear about that before the headlines hit. The quarter closed on September 30, seven weeks before launch, so what Take-Two reports on Monday is what it brought in from July to September with NBA 2K27, its mobile games and the copies GTA V and Red Dead Redemption 2 keep selling.

In fact, the headline number will be lower than a year ago, and that's by design. In its first-quarter results, Take-Two guided for net bookings (its main sales measure: digital sales plus physical copies shipped to retailers) of $1.62 billion to $1.67 billion this quarter. In the same quarter last year, with Borderlands 4 just out, it posted $1.96 billion. That's a drop of 15% to 17% by our maths, and the company has already baked it in.

Don't expect a profit either. Guidance points to a quarterly net loss of $140 million to $157 million, with operating expenses above $1 billion, nearly $100 million more than the previous quarter. Take-Two doesn't break out how much of that is the GTA 6 campaign, but the marketing push, from Miami to Paris, doesn't come cheap.

Which numbers actually matter?

Four things. In this order.

1. The date. Every Take-Two earnings release includes a table of upcoming launches. In August's, Grand Theft Auto VI was listed for PS5 and Xbox Series X|S on November 19, 2026. Ten days out, with pre-load set for November 10, anything else would be an earthquake, but it's the closest official confirmation to launch we're going to get.
2. The full-year outlook. Take-Two expects net bookings of $8.0 billion to $8.2 billion for the fiscal year ending March 31, 2027. Zelnick has repeated that range on every call since GTA 6 got its date, and it's the clearest measure of how far the company thinks the game will go in its first four and a half months.
3. What Zelnick says about pre-orders. In August he called the start of pre-orders "exceptional", as Push Square reported, without giving a number. Take-Two has never published a pre-order count; the only named estimate is Sensor Tower's, which put digital pre-orders above 6 million. If Monday brings a figure, that's the story.
4. What he won't answer. Analysts usually ask about a PC version, the future of GTA Online or pricing. Rockstar hasn't announced anything for PC and Zelnick tends to defer to the studio. Dodging a question isn't confirmation of anything.

How much does GTA 6 need to sell for the numbers to add up?

We ran the numbers using what Take-Two has published. If the year has to land between $8.0 billion and $8.2 billion, the first quarter brought in $1.39 billion and the second closes where the company said it would ($1.62 billion to $1.67 billion), that leaves $4.94 billion to $5.19 billion for the six months from October to March.

Put another way: Take-Two expects to sell far more in the launch half-year than in the previous six months combined, which will come in at roughly $3 billion. Not all of it is GTA 6, since NBA 2K and mobile keep adding every quarter, but only the game explains the jump. That's why, on Monday, the quarter that just closed matters less than one line in the outlook: if Take-Two holds it, it's holding its bet on GTA 6; if it raises it, pre-orders are going better than it expected.

What happens after Monday?

The next investor update will come with the game already out. The October-to-December results, the first to include GTA 6, are expected in February, as every year. Until then, any sales figures you see will either come from Rockstar or Take-Two on their own terms, as with GTA V, which announced $800 million in its first day, or be estimates from analysts and research firms. So if you want to know what Take-Two thinks of GTA 6 before November 19, set a reminder: Monday, 4:30 pm ET.