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May 4, 2018, 5:35 AM

Video game giant Activision had an action-packed afternoon on Thursday after its quarterly financial results were accidentally published hours ahead of schedule by Dow Jones, causing the stock to spike and plummet before trading was abruptly halted.

The company’s first quarter results were scheduled to be published on Thursday at 4:30 p.m. ET, after the stock market’s regular trading session closes. But information from the embargoed report was accidentally published around 1 p.m. ET, during regular market hours by Dow Jones Newswire.

The news agency confirmed the mistake to Business Insider in an email: “We regret our error as well as inadvertently breaking the embargo. We have issued a correction and are reviewing our processes.”

It was not immediately clear whether the mistake by the newswire was due to human error, a computer glitch or some other factor.

Immediately after the report went live, Activision stock spiked – and then slowly crashed. When the error was noticed, soon after 2 p.m. ET, trading on Activision stock was halted. The official halt time was 2:12 p.m. ET, by which time stock was down 5%, overall, hours ahead of normal market close. 
According to the accidentally published report, Activision beat expectations with over $US1.7 billion in revenue for Q1 2018. That number was later revised, according to CNBC, to $US1.965 billion.

Activision stock resumed trading at 3:25 p.m. ET, and has been steadily regaining value since.

Representatives for Activision did not respond to a request for comment as of publishing.





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