Pearl Abyss Q3 2025 Review

Pearl Abyss, the owner of CCP (main revenue is Eve Online), had its Q3 trading update (July - September 2025) today.

Nosy Gamer has done his review here earlier today.

The market was expecting more losses but Pearl Abyss pulled it out of the bag and generated an operating profit of 11 billion Won driven by strong summer updates from Black Desert Online.

(and that turned into 29 billion Won once the impenetrable operations of Pearl Abyss Capital are added in).

The shares rose 8% and have now recovered close to everything they lost since the Q2 update in August.

And for CCP, one new line in the Earnings Call that seems to refer to Eve Online “In addition, we have thoroughly made preparations for new services to increase revenues.”

Background - why we talk about Pearl Abyss

As a reminder, Pearl Abyss, a South Korean gaming companies, bought CCP (Eve Online) in 2018.  It has two main income generating games - Black Desert and Eve Online.  Black Desert was launched in 2015 and is now in decline vs Eve Online was launched in 2003, peaked in 2013 but is now back to growth.

Their Q3 webcast and presentation can be found here.

At the bottom of this post is the full English language translation of the earnings call including questions and answers from the analysts.

The key points were:

First point to make - we compare Q3 2025 to Q3 2024 and so that eliminates most seasonal issues.

Black Desert had revenues of 80 billion Won which are up 47% vs Q3 2024 driven by strong summer updates from Black Desert Online.

Eve Online generated 21 billion Won of revenues, flat on Q3 2024 (I had expected more).

Crimson Desert is due to launch on 19 March 2026 with marketing starting in January - that is not new news but the confirmation was positive.

 
 

Eve Online

The revenue split between Black Dessert Online and Eve Online continues to be disclosed.

The cynic in my says this is being disclosed again because the revenues of CCP are looking good and so making any sale process easier.

Putting the Eve Online Revenues together and going back in time to when Pearl Abyss bought CCP:

The chart below shows the quarterly revenues from the Eve ecosystem.  Does not really make sense to compare consecutive quarters, makes for a right mess.

Therefore the chart below shows the year-on-year change in quarterly revenues.

So, the eighth quarter of consecutive year-on-year growth.  Impressive.  But clearly getting harder to eek out the growth now (lets see if currency is in CCP's favour for Q4).

I suspect what we have been seeing is CCP monetising the player base better and perhaps this is all coming to an end with the end of the major Plex / Omega / MCT real money sales.

The data we don't know is the revenue spilt each quarter between subscriptions vs other ingame real money sales.

The chart below shows the rolling 12 month Revenues (each bar is the sum of the prior 4 quarters):

So CCP has gone from 57 billion Won in its first full 12 months in Q3 2019 to 88 billion won today (Q4 2024 - Q3 2025).

And CCP is hitting new record high rolling 12 month revenues under Pearl Abyss ownership and overall CCP is back up to 2015 revenue levels.  Not quite at the records set in 2013 and 2016 but getting there.

What was said about Eve Online in the Earnings Call?

Not much but there was one line of new news:

“In the case of EVE Online, there was the expansion of packs, Legion, additional update, and starting of the Alliance Tournament preliminary round, which added more fun to the game.”

“User metrics are showing a consistent trend, continuing stable revenues.”

And this was new . . . . .

“In addition, we have thoroughly made preparations for new services to increase revenues.”


Eve Frontier mentioned

“In case of EVE Frontier, while engaging in tests continued from the previous quarter, we finalized our blockchain platform, and are smoothly proceeding with the procedures needed to move on to the next phase.”

“First, in the case of EVE Frontier, we will continue tests in Q4 as well and focus on new user acquisition. Going forward, while validating the game, we will continue with marketing to secure core user acquisition.”


What does the market think of CCP?

It seems that the market is reducing its revenue expectations a bit for CCP – in part I think Q3 was not as strong as hoped but also currency headwinds. . . . . . though I cant really tell, the Korean Won currency has been on a weakening trend vs the USD and Euro for a number of years though more volatile vs USD.

So, for 2025 the market is moving from 88 billion won to 85 billion.  And then in 2026 from 81 to 76 billion and in 2027 79 to 74 billion.


The Balance Sheet has improved

Looks like the debt has been refinanced – so no large repayment due within the next 12 months.



There is one new line that i am not sure what it is - some sort of debt "Financial Liabilities measured at fair value".


Sale of CCP

Nothing was mentioned and there is no indication in the Accounts of a sale (if something is on the block to be sold it would need to be moved out of Non-Current Assets and into Current Assets).


Transcript of the Call

Operator
Good morning, and good evening. Thank you all for joining the Conference Call for the Pearl Abyss Earnings Results. This conference will start with a presentation followed by a Q&A session. (Operator Instructions). Now we will begin the presentation on Pearl Abyss' Third Quarter of Fiscal Year 2025 Earnings Results.

Kim Yoon
Greetings. I am Kim Yoon from Pearl Abyss IR team. First of all, I express my deepest gratitude to the analysts and investors in and out of Korea for taking part in the 2025 Q3 Pearl Abyss earnings presentation despite your busy schedules.

Before elaborating on today's business results, I would like to ask for your understanding, regarding the following: the financial and business results contained in today's earnings release have been prepared for the convenience of investors and is subject to change, depending on the final closing of our books. In addition, the accuracy and completeness of the financial and business results in the earnings results material are not guaranteed, and the company is not obliged to give updates of the accounts given after this date, so please take these factors into consideration.

We have here with us at the earnings presentation today, Pearl Abyss CEO, Heo Jin-young; CBO, Kim Kyung-man; and CFO, Jo Mi-yeong. We will first hear the business performance presentation highlights from CFO, Jo Mi-yeong, and then engage in a Q&A session.

Jo Mi-yeong
Greetings, everyone. I am Jo Mi-yeong. Thank you once again for taking part in our company's earnings conference call despite your busy schedules.

I would like to elaborate on 2025 Q3 major business activities and performance. Q3 revenues on the back of Black Desert and EVE stable live service grew 35% -- 34% in Q-o-Q. Black Desert in Q3 had a new class Wukong and new region Edania, and carried out large scale content update, and recorded the highest quarterly revenue since we started self-publishing in 2021.

In particular, demon realm Edania showed new PvP content Throne of Edana, and then added new stories that can be enjoyed cutscenes and with higher levels of difficulty and more rewards compared to the previous contents added more fun to the game. In case of console, since we started new device pay service from June, we held a first adventurous festivals and revealed our future roadmap.

In addition, based on our new platform, we quickly updated Land of the Morning Light and Magnus and others, and revenues increased more than twofold compared to the previous quarter. In the case of mobile, at Heidel Ball, we shared our updates for the second half of the year and rolled out a range of exciting events for users to enjoy together. In addition, we showcased Land of the Morning Light, Hwanghae province, and new class Seonin, and based on stable service, revenues slightly increased.

In the case of EVE Online, there was the expansion of packs, Legion, additional update, and starting of the Alliance Tournament preliminary round, which added more fun to the game. User metrics are showing a consistent trend, continuing stable revenues. In addition, we have thoroughly made preparations for new services to increase revenues. Crimson Desert participated in Gamescom, PAX West, and Tokyo Game Show, and successfully finished our open world questline demo.

We also announced our release date through Sony's State of Play event, and started pre-orders. In case of EVE Frontier, while engaging in tests continued from the previous quarter, we finalized our blockchain platform, and are smoothly proceeding with the procedures needed to move on to the next phase.

Next, I will walk you through 2025 2025 Q3 performance. Q3 operating revenue posted KRW106.8 billion and driven by strong revenues of Black Desert, it increased 34% Q-o-Q and operating profit posted KRW10.6 billion and turned positive. Net profit stood at KRW29 billion turning also to a profit due to foreign exchange gains and corporate tax refunds.

I will explain in more detail about our operating revenue. First is operating revenue for major IPs. The operating revenue from this quarter's Black Desert IP posted KRW79.5 billion, a 45% increase Q-o-Q. EVE IP operating revenue posted KRW20.8 billion and with the fading away of the effect from large scale updates in Q2, decreased 14% Q-on-Q. Regarding the operating revenue regional breakdown, it was 18% for Korea, 17% for Asia and 65% for NA Europe. And in the case of operating revenue for different platforms, it was 85% for PC, 10% for mobile and 5% for consoles.

Next, I will cover operating expenses. Q3 operating expenses posted KRW96.2 billion, a 5% increase Q-o-Q. In case of labor costs, it recorded KRW46.8 billion and decreased 0.7% Q-o-Q. For your reference, as of Q3 end, there was 1,323 headcount and there 752 with developer positions, which is 57% of the total headcount.

In the case of commissions, with the PG commission increase following increase of payment, it posted KRW20.9 billion, a 15% increase Q-o-Q. In the case of advertisement expenses, with the increase of costs incurred by Crimson Desert Game Show participation and hands-on events, it posted KRW13.6 billion, a 30% increase Q-o-Q.

Lastly, I will cover 2025 Q4 major highlights. Like Desert in October, open the 3-to-3 PvP content, Arena of Solare regular season, and in November, we plan to hold a global Master Class PvP tournament. In addition, we will introduce a new female class for the first time in a long time to make the game even more enjoyable.

Apart from this, in December, at the Calpheon Ball, we plan to share our future direction and give updates to our plans. In the case of Black Desert Console, since we switched to the new device, we are quickly showing off content.

In October, we launched joint content Atoraxxion, Yolunakea, and Orzekea, and we will update the new region, Demon Realm Edania, which was very popular after first being shown in PC in the previous quarter. In the case of Mobile, we held a PvP tournament 2025 Martial God Championship and carried out Land of the Morning Light: Seoul Part 2 update. In addition, we plan to improve the early story and add new co-op raid and continuously upgrade the game.

In case of EVE, we will update the new expansion pack catalyst in November and plan to hold the last round of the annual PvP Tournament, Alliance Tournament, which we held from the previous quarter to elevate user participation.

We are also smoothly proceeding with preparing for new titles to secure our new growth engines. First, in the case of EVE Frontier, we will continue tests in Q4 as well and focus on new user acquisition. Going forward, while validating the game, we will continue with marketing to secure core user acquisition.

For Crimson Desert, in October, we revealed a new chapter through IGN First. IGN showed six videos of direct game playing experiences and the videos received rave reviews from numerous global users and achieved high view counts, greatly helping to boost anticipation for the game. In addition, in Korea with AMD, we opened a pop-up store where visitors could experience the vast open world of Crimson Desert as well as immersive combat, expanding our points of contact with users. Apart from this, Crimson Desert is meeting influencers and media from many places around the world. And while engaging in diverse marketing to increase the game's recognition, we plan to focus on the release.

Crimson Desert this year went to many game shows around the world and met as many potential users as possible and worked very hard to promote the game. In this process, we confirmed our release date and started pre orders and took one step closer to our release. For the remaining four months, we will execute marketing, which will make the game more well known, and we will enhance the game's overall completeness to deliver the best open world experience possible. We know that as many of you have been waiting and we will do our best until the end to deliver research worthy of your support. All the employees here at Pearl Abyss will do our very best until the end. We kindly ask for your continued interest and encouragement.

Thank you very much.

With this, we will conclude Pearl Abyss 2025 Q3 earnings presentation and start our Q&A session.

Questions And Answers
Operator
(Question And Answer)

Now Q&A session will begin. (Operator Instructions). The first question will be provided by Jaemin Ahn from NH Investment & Securities. Please go ahead with your question.

Q - Jaemin Ahn
. Thank you for the opportunity. I am Jaemin Ahn from NH Securities. And I have two questions. First is about your Crimson Desert pre orders. Can you give us a number about how many pre orders that you have taken? And if you can update us on your next year first half marketing plans, it will be greatly appreciated. My second question is a just in case question. Do you think there is a possibility for Crimson Desert to get delayed in its release? Thank you very much.

A - Heo
Thank you very much for your questions. You asked about our pre-order status, and regarding our current situation, well, we have never had AAA game pre-order experience before. So I would like to say that it is quite difficult for us to accurately predict or to give a judgment on the current sales amount accurately. However, we are hearing from our partners that our pre-orders are at the level of other new AAA IPs, so we are receiving very positive feedback regarding the pre-order status.

Looking at the different platforms, we are seeing that it seems that in console, we are seeing the largest pre-orders, and it seems to be mainly because we had demos using the console pad, and we had our release date that was actually announced through the Sony event. However, we are concentrating on our marketing in order for us to have great pre-orders not only on the console, but in Steam as well, so we are confident that we can have very meaningful pre-orders before our release.

Regarding your question about our marketing plans, currently, Crimson Desert is enhancing our quality and are concentrating on the last finishing touches before our release. In the case of marketing, we started off with the Summer Game Fest to the Sony Game Show, and around the world at different game shows, we provided demonstrations to our users and media. We worked hard to promote our game, and in this process, we confirmed our release date and started pre-orders.

So for the remaining four months or so, we are going to work hard to increase the recognition of the game. And from mid-January, which is about two months before the release date, we are going to start off our full-fledged marketing with our partners, so that we can increase our sales.

You also asked if we have a possibility of delay of the release. And at our company, at the Sony State of Play event held in September, we gave the Crimson Desert release date officially as 20th of March in Korean calendar. And this actually was a result of a very long thought out process taking into consideration different situations and different things that could happen.

Currently, we are very smoothly proceeding with preparations for the release. And since we started pre orders, we are going to do our best to release our game meeting the March schedule that we had announced, because we want to meet the users' expectations, who are avidly waiting for Crimson Desert.

A - Kim Yoon
It was our CEO, Heo, Jin young, who answered your questions.

Operator
Currently, there are no participants with questions. (Operator Instructions) It seems that there are no remaining questions in the queue. But with this, we will conclude Pearl Abyss 2025 Q3 earnings conference call. Thank you for your participation.

Month end update - October 2025

I made 45bn profits in October 2025, from this made an accounting payment of 12bn to Omega my 7 accounts and made no distributions.  Therefore, my wealth rose by 33bn to 2.476 trillion isk.

So an average month and a good recovery from last months 6bn.  And this despite being away for the first week.

Total Sell Orders on the market stayed flat at 2.3 trillion and Buy Orders also flatish at 0.1 trillion isk = 2.4 trillion isk on the market in total.

My "purpose" now is to give away my profits to content generators.

Omega / "accounting payments"

In June 2025 i took part in the Omega sale and spent 143 billion isk to buy 12 months Omega on all my 7 accounts.  That 143 billion isk counts to me as an asset in my wealth and i will reduce it by 12 billion each month to wind it down to zero when the Omega runs out.

Therefore, each month i will have this "accounting payment" of 12 billion isk.

More details in the section "Seven Omega Accounts to pay for" below.

Distribution Policy

My plan going forwards is to have 50 billion isk spare in my wallet, on top of isk in my manufacturing operation, for opportunities that come up and therefore i will distribute every surplus 50 billion - i.e. when i get to 100 billion isk in my wallet (on top of the isk in my manufacturing operations) i will distribute 50 billion.

I find there is no longer a "purpose" to watching my wealth rise like there was on the road to my first trillion.

Distributions

These days, the aim is to distribute my profits to the Oz Tank Show or other ventures that generate content in Eve Online.  Watching the numbers go up was great in the first trillion but lacks purpose onwards.

That said, i made no distributions in September but rather i focused on seeding a new market hub Kihtaled - PleniMart station in Kihtaled whcih i talked about in this post.

So far i have given 488bn to Eve shows:

260bn isk to the Oz Tank Show

92.5bn to The Oz Show

50bn to the twitch show TheOneAndOnlySidar

50bn to Gamingsincethe70s

20bn to the podcast Declarations of War to sponsor it.

13.2bn to the Nth_Dimensional Twitch show

1.6bn to the Raff_About_It show

The Oz Tank Show started in July 2023 and i have generated profits of 1.711 trillion in the July 2023 - October 2025 period (after Omega costs) and distributed 488bn.

So that leaves 1.2 trillion isk to distribute to some venture(s).

Seven Omega Accounts to pay for

Therefore, i took advantage of the 20% plex discount and added another 12 months on all my accounts in June.

In June i spent 143 billion isk buying 12 months of Omega for 7 accounts and another 12 months for one of those accounts because i was too far into a bottle of red to be paying attention  (1 of these accounts is a manufacturing account which was an old account going back to 2012 that has been in alpha since around 2016).

My seven Omega accounts will come off Omega from July 2026 to September 2026 with one account going to October 2027.

Rather than being complicated and staggering the depreciation of this asset and figuring out how the extra 12 months will work - I will account for this in the normal way by saying from this July 2025 onwards 1/12 of the 143 billion will be recognised as a cost each month = 143/12 = 12 billion isk and the asset held in wealth will therefore reduce by 12 billion isk each month.

For the accountants amongst you that will mean come July 2026 i will have a number of free months of Omega to come including one account Omega all the way to October 2027!

If i did what i used to do which was to buy 3 months of Omega i would be spending 7x6.2x1200/3 = 17 billion isk a month.  So the 20% discount and 12 month purchase was a good deal.

The basic numbers for October

In October i had sales of 284bn isk vs September of 421bn.  So a large drop of 33% and way below my average of 325bn.

In part because i was away for the first week of October but also competition is higher.

This comes to average daily sales of 9.2bn isk.  In other words, each evening i expect to see across all my accounts an additional 9bn isk (less transaction taxes) sitting on the characters to be reinvested back into the markets.

Item profits were 81bn isk which is a margin of 28% (81/284).  So item profit margins are above the 25% target.

I am still not sure what cause the low margins in September of 21.5%.

Taxes and Courier fees came to 36bn isk.  Within this, the broker relisting fees came to 5.1% of sales vs the spike of 8.0% in September and the more normal range of 2.9%.

The cause of the spike in September was the rise in competition in station trading in Jita and the higher competition in Blueprints across my trading locations.  This is still the case.  I have pulled out of Jita station trading but sticking with Blueprints - fighting to the death.

That takes the Trading Profits to 45bn isk and so a trading margin of 15.7% (45/284).  So back to close to the 16% margin target which was also missed in June, July and September.

And then from this 45bn profits i pay the 12bn Omega charge and distributed nothing this month which leaves me with the 33 billion.

That was how 284 billion isk of sales became 33 billion isk of profits.

A month of improvement but more to go on both sales and profits.  For now, profit margins are the focus.

What is needed to get wealth to rise to 100bn in a month?

At one point i was almost there - but things have pulled right back and i need to revisit my business revenues and profits to up my game.

I would need to make daily sales of 18bn on my 25% item market - that has never happened.  Therefore, to achieve 100bn profits a month i need to do one or some of three things.

1) Increase my item margin above 25% - possible but a risk.

2) Keep on doing Skill Farming - i packed that in when my 12 months of skill farming ended in June / July 2025.  Still making some sales from the tail end of it but it is no longer going to feature in the near term.

3) Expand into station trading - i sort of do that but not to any big deal.  So this is possible.

4) Expand into manufacturing - which i am now giving a real shot.  The interview with Sir SmashAlot on the Oz Show was inspirational.  As was an old youtube series Building my Industrial Empire.

My Sales Strategy

I redesigned how i operate each evening now that i use the Eve Excel Addin fully within my business.

it takes 10 minutes to go through my trading locations to work out what needs to be bought from Jita to be sold and also what Sell Orders need to be updated.

It takes 10 minutes to buy the items from Jita and set up courier contracts and adjust all the noted Sell Orders.

And then 5 minutes to put the couriered items up for Sale when they arrive later.

What used to take 45 minutes now takes 20-25 minutes.

And then once a weak i do a deeper dive into each trading location to see what new items i can sell.  That can take a full 20 minutes.

My overall strategy remains to Buy from Sell Orders in Jita to sell in the trading hubs in other Regions.

I don't sell consumable items such as ammunition given they tend to be high volume and very competitive.  That includes ships.

I rarely sell items used as components in manufacturing because the end buyer tends to be cost conscious (and armed with spreadsheets) and able to manufacture the items themselves if market prices are too high.

I sell items that are in low supply and sell very slowly.  These items tend to have very low competition - sellers want to get cash quickly and so don't bother in these items.  If i put an item on the market and it sells in 15 days that is fine with me.

These items also tend to be price insensitive - players will buy the item almost whatever the price.  The Buyer is much more interested in getting the item to use now rather than setting off to Jita to get it cheaper.

I sell items that are typically bought to kit a ship as a player progresses or has to replace a destroyed ship / pod.

Each month i sell 20-30% of what i had to sell at the start of the month.

I have a rule that the minimum profits have to be 100m isk.  It is no use me buying items for 5m to sell them for 15m.  The profitability may be great but that won't move the dials.  That said, it is surprising how many items i can buy for 120m from Jita Sell Orders and sell for 220m in the other trading hubs.  At that isk level, players re-equipping don't care about spending an additional 100m isk to save time.

And in the secondary trading hubs Amarr / Dodixie / Rens / Hek buyers will not travel even one jump to buy a cheaper item.  For example, i can post an item for sale in the main Rens Trading up for 300m, and even if one jump away the same item is for sale for 250m the item in the main Trading Hub will still be the item sold.

Also, i recently moved to only selling items that sell over at least 500 million isk.  This is also under review - i am thinking i am missing on plenty of sales.

Therefore, i mostly sell Implants, Blueprints, ship equipment and some structure modules.  And more recently Large Skill Injectors.

What is selling well in October

Amarr and Rens were around the same at 45bn of sales whilst Dodixie and Tash-Murkon came in at 35bn.  Hek and Sobaseki came in at 25bn.

The main trade hubs of Amarr, Dodixie, Rens and Hek were all below their average levels.

I still need to work out in my own mind if lower level of sales is due to more competition, slower markets or me focusing too much on higher value items and so missing out.

The main competitive issue remains Blueprints where in a number of my Trading Locations they are all being undercut on the daily basis and so we have a trade war going on.

Furthermore, although Jita is doing well as a trading location i suspected the cost of staying on top of the competition is too high - therefore i have pulled out of station trading in Jita.

So what is selling?  Implants remains positive; mining related items; rigs.  It was quite a mix in October, no clear themes, broad based.

Manufacturing

The Oz Show had a great interview with Sir SmashAlot where he talked about his manufacturing activities to the tune of making over 1 trillion profits per month!

And the author of the blog I wanna be a Trillionaire, so frickin' bad... has moved into manufacturing and is making a good job of it.

And going back a few years there was a great youtube series Building my Industrial Empire (who is now back).

Early days, i am making some profits and will update this blog as i go.

Ideally, i want to create a process that i can scale.

Seeding a player owned station

I am in the process of helping seed the Kihtaled - PleniMart station in Kihtaled.  I now have two characters seeding items for sale.  This is all low value items like ammunition, drones, rigs etc.

It is owned by Guns-R-Us Holdings and part of the Alliance Weapons Of Mass Production.

And the character behind it all Thanak is recording his ventures on on youtube which i have discussed elsewhere in this blog, most recently here and here.

This may be impacting my margins given it is mainly low value items like ammo, drones, rigs etc.  I am not sure.

Planetary Interaction

I have re-started this.  18 planets for now, set to staggered 14 day cycles.

And then i stopped.  It is not worth the effort in High Sec.  So, on my "to do" list is to move it to low sec but, as you would suspect, i don't have the courage to fly into low sec - so i am thinking about how to do this.

Research

For now, i have stopped trying to make this work.

Station Trading

All in Jita.  I focused a bit more on it and made sales of 87bn isk which is a record.

What i was doing was focusing on slow moving but higher valued items where i would make a large profit.  The big bucks are made by buying items for say 20 billion and selling them for 26 billion.

But this suddenly turned very competitive and sales fell to zero.  So i was being hit by daily broker re-list fees for now sales.

Therefore, for now i have pulled out of Jita Station Trading.

My hope is to find new items to trade in but for now i am winding down.

Alpha Accounts

I have 1 Alpha account with a character in Venal left.  All the others were upgraded to Omega last summer to start Skill Farming.

Old Accounts

This is my third outing in Eve Online.  I still have the characters of the prior two attempts and i have resurrected them all.  One account is Omega and does manufacturing the rest remain as Alpha for now.

This month i decided to combine them all into one Alliance, the Merchanting Industry Finance Philanthropy Alliance.

Plex

I had 18,300 Plex at the end of July and spent all of that buying 12 months of Omega across all my Omega accounts (and another 12 months on one account because i was too far into a bottle of red wine to notice).  So i have around 260 Plex left.

Thinking about whether or not to rebuild - for now i won't.  CCP seem to be taking actions to make this less lucrative so for now i will hold off.

Items in hanger for sale

There are a number of items that i sell that can only be sourced from Regions outside of The Forge (the home of Jita).

To make my life easier, i buy them from their home bases and have them couriered to Jita to be stored ready to be couriered to their final sale destination.  Makes life a lot easier for the cost of one transport leg.

Also, given i am skill farming i have a number of Skill Extractors and Large Skill Injectors sitting in hangers waiting to be used / sold - these are being sold down over time.

In all, some 291bn isk of items in Hangers.

Buy Orders

Buy Orders have varied over time and peaked in August at around 128bn.  However, given i pulled out of Station trading this is now down at 22bn.

ISK

I have 252bn spare ISK kicking around.

For the last 12 months the average ISK in wallets has been over 100bn compared to around 50bn before this.

The reason for his is purely real life being busy and so not having the time to make sure everything is invested.

I have seeded the player owned station in Khanid.  Perhaps more to go but most of it has been done.

I now have a new distribution policy where i will distribute all blocks of 50 billion isk above 50 billion + manufacturing isk in my wallet.

Current Wealth

Current wealth is 2.475 trillion ISK made up from:

• Plex held as an investment 2bn ISK
• Items in hanger for sale 291bn ISK
• Items in hanger for use in business 11bn ISK
• Omega brought forward 95bn ISK
• Buy orders on the market 22bn ISK
• items for sale 2.26 trillion ISK

• less a 20% provision 451bn ISK*

• ISK in wallet 252bn ISK

When i add up my wealth, I don't count assets I use in the course of my business such as ships, fittings etc nor do I add back any expenses such as skills purchased etc.  The wealth I disclose is made up of items that are ISK or are in the process of being converted to ISK or are used to generate isk that can be readily resold back onto the market.  Any ships or skills or fittings etc i buy are counted as expenses in that month.  The only exception to this rule is Blueprint Originals i use for manufacturing.  They are held at cost.

* I take a 20% provision against the items I am selling.  Eve calculates wealth by adding up the value of the sell orders hence it is possible to increase your wealth by buying an item for 100m ISK and putting a sell order for 120m ISK (in this case your wealth would increase by 20m ISK).  For me, I want my wealth to be calculated at cost.  I know that the value of my sell orders will likely fall over time as I update my orders downwards as competition reduces their prices before my items are sold.  Hence the 20% provision is my best guess as to what the maximum reduction I would need to make to my sell orders as a whole before they are sold.  In an ideal world I would value my sell orders at the value which I bought the items for.

Pulled out of Station Trading in Jita

Following on from my review of my Business Model in a prior post, i have decided to pull out of Station Trading in Jita.

A reminder of the problem

The costs of my relisting fees had gone through the roof, in part because my business had become unbalanced.

Unbalanced?

I was selling a range of very high value and high value items but here the very high value items in my Jita Station trading were under pressure.

A simple example to make the point.  Imagine you have 100 items up for sale.  99 are up for sale for 500 million isk each and sell ok but the final item is on for sale for 25 billion isk but no longer sells but has to be relisted every day.

The size of the relist fees for that 25 billion item very quickly overruns the profits made from the sales from the other 99 Orders.

Jita Trading unbalance

One such imbalance was my station trading in Jita.  I was Buying and Selling items that cost and sold for over 10 billion isk.

That worked well when there was no competition - so very little relisting.  Sales were very slow but when they came it was party time,

And then there entered competition and the daily relisting of these items with no sales attached.

If my entire business was Selling items for 10-25 billion then i would not notice this.  But given it was only the station trading in Jita that dealt in those high numbers then there was nothing else in my business to balance it all out.

Summary

Therefore, i have decided to pull out of Jita Trading for now.  And see where this takes me on rebuilding my profits.

A review of my business model

I am reviewing the costs of operating my Business Model (see below for a description) which have risen strongly recently.

This is driven by the Broker Relisting Fees which for me normally trundle along at an average of 2.7% of revenues in a month but in September spiked to 8.0%.  And given i aim to make a profit margin of 25% before all these costs then this uplift is material.

This is down to 2 main matters.

1) Competition has entered the Blueprint market across my main trade locations.  This has been building for a few months now.  Every day i am updating the Sell Order for my blueprints but these are items that barely sell at all.  Hence, a lot of relising fees are being spent for no sales benefit.  This is a fight for the market.

2) In the Jita Station Trading i tend to focus on items selling for 15-30 billion isk.  They have also become competitive at a time when sales have fallen to almost zero.  Hence, a lot of relising fees are being spent for no sales benefit.  And a daily relisting on items for sale for 15-20 billion a shot gets costly very quickly.

This is the key chart that shows the costs of each fee/tax as a % of the monthly revenues:

The Broker Listing fee is rock solid stable.  The Courier Fee wings around a bit but this is a feature of how i calculate it here - i offer 2% of collateral as a fee to everyone but this chart looks at the cost divided by revenues that month.

The transaction tax is generally stable at the going rate.

The main volatility comes in the relist fees which rise if i see more competition - and they have been rising all through 2025 and then spiked last month.  They are not an issue if the relisting is leading to sales - but in this case it is not.  For both me and my competition.

Blueprint Competition

This seems to be one player who has entered my main markets of Amarr, Dodixie, Rens and Hek.

They update their blueprint orders daily, like i do.

I am very loathe to drop out of this market and therefore much more willing to accept ongoing relisting costs.  A fight to the death, you might say.  Market PVP.

Station Trading Competition

This is two or three players and we are all updating our Buy and Sell Orders daily.

If i stop for a few days the other players continue to compete.

I am reviewing my future in this market.

I have very little capital tied up in the market, once i buy something it is put up for sale immediately and i tend not to put up another Buy Order until what i have for sale is sold.

My Trading Business Model

My Trading business model is quite simple

I buy from Sell Orders in Jita and have the items couriered by third parties out to my sales locations elsewhere in High Sec (all the usual places Amarr, Dodixie, Rens, Hek and others) where i put them up for sale.

I focus on slow moving and therefore low competition and so highly profitable items.

And, to make it worth while, i only aim to sell items that sell for at least 500 million.  I am reviewing that also.

In Jita i also do some Station Trading = buying and selling items within the station without transporting them onwards.

The competitive advantage

The beauty of this business model is i don't mind if it takes 20 or 30 or 40 or 50 days for an item to sell.  That puts 99% of the player base off who want faster sales and don't want to tie their capital up.

I dont have these markets to myself but the competition tends to be slower to update, if at all.

What this means, though, is if new competition comes in i have to be serious and ensure my item it the cheapest on the daily basis.  That is always enough effort to force the new entrant to give up.

CSM20 Voting started today

We can now vote in CSM20.  The voting goes from today (27 October) to 10 November.

There are 55 candidates.

All capsuleers with Omega status and accounts active for at least 60 days are eligible to cast their vote in the elections.

CSM voting utilizes the Wright-STV voting system, allowing you to select up to 10 candidates on your ballot.  (looks European but is actually designed in Australia).

There is a decent video showing how it works:

Typically what votes does it take to get on the CSM?

As Eve Guru points out, you need around 1000 first place votes to be in with a chance.

Hence, first place votes are really important.

Who will i vote for?

On the off chance anyone cares, my number 1 vote will be for Oz.

He has a campaign video that went up last week:

For me, we will always need someone that focuses on the economy - it is the "oil" that allows this game to actually happen.  He has delivered over the last 2 CSMs and i can't see anyone better this time round.

As a reminder, as well as being on the CSM - he does a twitch show, youtubes, podcast and has own Eve website.

New Youtube Series - From zero to fuel tycoon

There is a new youtube series called From zero to fuel tycoon.

What is it?

Describes itself as nn EVE-Online series going from zero ISK to becoming a fuel production empire through ice-mining, planetary industry, trade and politics.

Each episode is 5-10 minutes.  8 Episodes done to date - so very easy to catch up on them all.

The details

Starts from the beginning, so new character building himself up with skills and isk.

What i always like about these content providers is that they are talking about what they are doing in some detail rather than in wide ranging comments.

Initially via trading in Dodixie.  And then Ice Mining also.  Out near Dodixie.

Moves into PI.

Wealth rises very quickly.

And of course, like all of us, there are times when real life gets in the way.

I have added this show to the youtube list on the right and the Page on this Blog Eve Online: In Game News and Eve Economy Content.

Month end update - September 2025

I made 18bn profits in September 2025, from this made an accounting payment of 12bn to Omega my 7 accounts and made no distributions.  Therefore, my wealth rose by 6bn to 2.443 trillion isk.

That is one of my worst months ever and is down to lower margins overall and much higher levels of competition in some key end markets.

Real Life will get in the way for October, so i am not expecting a recovery this month.

Total Sell Orders on the market rose from 2.1 trillion to 2.3 trillion and Buy Orders flatish at 0.1 trillion isk = 2.4 trillion isk on the market in total.

My "purpose" now is to give away my profits to content generators.

Omega / "accounting payments"

In June 2025 i took part in the Omega sale and spent 143 billion isk to buy 12 months Omega on all my 7 accounts.  That 143 billion isk counts to me as an asset in my wealth and i will reduce it by 12 billion each month to wind it down to zero when the Omega runs out.

Therefore, each month i will have this "accounting payment" of 12 billion isk.

More details in the section "Seven Omega Accounts to pay for" below.

Distribution Policy

My plan going forwards is to have 50 billion isk spare in my wallet, on top of isk in my manufacturing operation, for opportunities that come up and therefore i will distribute every surplus 50 billion - i.e. when i get to 100 billion isk in my wallet (on top of the isk in my manufacturing operations) i will distribute 50 billion.

I find there is no longer a "purpose" to watching my wealth rise like there was on the road to my first trillion.

Distributions

These days, the aim is to distribute my profits to the Oz Tank Show or other ventures that generate content in Eve Online.  Watching the numbers go up was great in the first trillion but lacks purpose onwards.

That said, i made no distributions in September but rather i focused on seeding a new market hub Kihtaled - PleniMart station in Kihtaled whcih i talked about in this post.

So far i have given 488bn to Eve shows:

260bn isk to the Oz Tank Show

92.5bn to The Oz Show

50bn to the twitch show TheOneAndOnlySidar

50bn to Gamingsincethe70s

20bn to the podcast Declarations of War to sponsor it.

13.2bn to the Nth_Dimensional Twitch show

1.6bn to the Raff_About_It show

The Oz Tank Show started in July 2023 and i have generated profits of 1.678 trillion in the July 2023 - September 2025 period (after Omega costs) and distributed 488bn.

So that leaves 1.2 trillion isk to distribute to some venture(s).

It is early days but the Oz Show is considering having some of its tycoons sponsor a new Corporation.  Lets see.

Seven Omega Accounts to pay for

Therefore, i took advantage of the 20% plex discount and added another 12 months on all my accounts in June.

In June i spent 143 billion isk buying 12 months of Omega for 7 accounts and another 12 months for one of those accounts because i was too far into a bottle of red to be paying attention  (1 of these accounts is a manufacturing account which was an old account going back to 2012 that has been in alpha since around 2016).

My seven Omega accounts will come off Omega from July 2026 to September 2026 with one account going to October 2027.

Rather than being complicated and staggering the depreciation of this asset and figuring out how the extra 12 months will work - I will account for this in the normal way by saying from this July 2025 onwards 1/12 of the 143 billion will be recognised as a cost each month = 143/12 = 12 billion isk and the asset held in wealth will therefore reduce by 12 billion isk each month.

For the accountants amongst you that will mean come July 2026 i will have a number of free months of Omega to come including one account Omega all the way to October 2027!

If i did what i used to do which was to buy 3 months of Omega i would be spending 7x6.2x1200/3 = 17 billion isk a month.  So the 20% discount and 12 month purchase was a good deal.

The basic numbers for September

In September i had sales of 421bn isk vs August of 392bn.  So a rise of 7% and above my long term average of £325bn.

So a top 20% month for sales.

This comes to average daily sales of 14.0bn isk.  In other words, each evening i expect to see across all my accounts an additional 14bn isk (less transaction taxes) sitting on the characters to be reinvested back into the markets.

Item profits were 91bn isk which is a margin of 22% (91/421).  So below the 25% target and this was a surprise.

I am not sure what could have caused this.  For now, my best guess is that i am missing a cost.

Or what is possible is that i am seeding a player owned station in Kihtaled which i am supplying low cost items such as ammo, drones etc - this may be playing havoc with my margins.

Taxes and Courier fees came to 70bn isk.  I am still facing a lot more competition in Blueprints which is pushing up my broker relist fees - this was a key reason for the poor month.  Broker relist fees rose from the normal 1-2% of sales to 8% in September having been 3-4% in recent months given the higher competition.

That takes the Trading Profits to 20bn isk and so a trading margin of 4.8% (20/421).  So below the 16% margin target which was also missed in June and July.

This blueprint competition - i need to analyse it and deal with it.  I can either fight to the death or back out of the market.  For now, i plan to fight to the death.

And i also set up an Alliance to combine my 3 Corporations together (every time i restarted Eve i set up a new Corporation).  I made a spelling mistake! - so it cost me 2 billion instead of 1 billion.

And then from this 18bn profits i pay the 12bn Omega charge and distributed nothing this month which leaves me with the 6 billion.

That was how 421 billion isk of sales became 6 billion isk of profits.

A sorry state of affairs

What is needed to get wealth to rise to 100bn in a month?

In some ways, i am there now - lets see if i can get this to work.

I would need to make daily sales of 18bn on my 25% item market - that has never happened.  Therefore, to achieve 100bn profits a month i need to do one or some of three things.

1) Increase my item margin above 25% - possible but a risk.

2) Keep on doing Skill Farming - i packed that in when my 12 months of skill farming ended in June / July 2025.  Still making some sales from the tail end of it but it is no longer going to feature in the near term.

3) Expand into station trading - i sort of do that but not to any big deal.  So this is possible.

4) Expand into manufacturing - which i am now giving a real shot.  The interview with Sir SmashAlot on the Oz Show was inspirational.  As was an old youtube series Building my Industrial Empire.

My Sales Strategy

I have redesigned how i operate each evening now that i use the Eve Excel Addin fully within my business.

it takes 10 minutes to go through my trading locations to work out what needs to be bought from Jita to be sold and also what Sell Orders need to be updated.

It takes 10 minutes to buy the items from Jita and set up courier contracts and adjust all the noted Sell Orders.

And then 5 minutes to put the couriered items up for Sale when they arrive later.

What used to take 45 minutes now takes 20-25 minutes.

And then once a weak i do a deeper dive into each trading location to see what new items i can sell.  That can take a full 20 minutes.

My overall strategy remains to Buy from Sell Orders in Jita to sell in the trading hubs in other Regions.

I don't sell consumable items such as ammunition given they tend to be high volume and very competitive.  That includes ships.

I rarely sell items used as components in manufacturing because the end buyer tends to be cost conscious (and armed with spreadsheets) and able to manufacture the items themselves if market prices are too high.

I sell items that are in low supply and sell very slowly.  These items tend to have very low competition - sellers want to get cash quickly and so don't bother in these items.  If i put an item on the market and it sells in 15 days that is fine with me.

These items also tend to be price insensitive - players will buy the item almost whatever the price.  The Buyer is much more interested in getting the item to use now rather than setting off to Jita to get it cheaper.

I sell items that are typically bought to kit a ship as a player progresses or has to replace a destroyed ship / pod.

Each month i sell 20-30% of what i had to sell at the start of the month.

I have a rule that the minimum profits have to be 100m isk.  It is no use me buying items for 5m to sell them for 15m.  The profitability may be great but that won't move the dials.  That said, it is surprising how many items i can buy for 120m from Jita Sell Orders and sell for 220m in the other trading hubs.  At that isk level, players re-equipping don't care about spending an additional 100m isk to save time.

And in the secondary trading hubs Amarr / Dodixie / Rens / Hek buyers will not travel even one jump to buy a cheaper item.  For example, i can post an item for sale in the main Rens Trading up for 300m, and even if one jump away the same item is for sale for 250m the item in the main Trading Hub will still be the item sold.

Also, i recently moved to only selling items that sell over at least 500 million isk.

Therefore, i mostly sell Implants, Blueprints, ship equipment and some structure modules.  And more recently Large Skill Injectors.

What is selling well in September

For what i think may be the first time ever, Jita was the best Sales location - so that was station trading.  Dodixe and Amarr were both second equal and actually above average).

Rens and Hek, and my other locations, were below average.  That is not a concern - but will be part of my investigation to understand if something is going on.

But, as i said above, Sales overall were not the issue.

The main competitive issue remains Blueprints where in a number of my Trading Locations they are all being undercut on the daily basis and so we have a trading war going on.

Furthermore, although Jita is doing well as a trading location i suspect the cost of staying on top of the competition is too high.

That all said, Blueprints remains a good source of income as do implants and ship equipment.  Mining items tend to come and go - right now they are mainly going.

As part of my investigation i intend to look much deeper into what is selling well.

I am wondering if my step to only sell items that sell for over 500m is an issue.

Manufacturing

The Oz Show had a great interview with Sir SmashAlot where he talked about his manufacturing activities to the tune of making over 1 trillion profits per month!

And the author of the blog I wanna be a Trillionaire, so frickin' bad... has moved into manufacturing and is making a good job of it.

And going back a few years there was a great youtube series Building my Industrial Empire (who is now back).

Early days, i am making some profits and will update this blog as i go.

Ideally, i want to create a process that i can scale.

Seeding a player owned station

I am in the process of helping seed the Kihtaled - PleniMart station in Kihtaled.

It is owned by Guns-R-Us Holdings and part of the Alliance Weapons Of Mass Production.

And the character behind it all Thanak is recording his ventures on on youtube which i have discussed elsewhere in this blog, most recently here and here.

This may be impacting my margins given it is mainly low value items like ammo, drones, rigs etc.  I am not sure.

Planetary Interaction

I have re-started this.  18 planets for now, set to staggered 14 day cycles.

And then i stopped.  It is not worth the effort in High Sec.  So, on my "to do" list is to move it to low sec but, as you would suspect, i don't have the courage to fly into low sec - so i am thinking about how to do this.

Research

For now, i have stopped trying to make this work.

Station Trading

All in Jita.  I focused a bit more on it and made sales of 87bn isk which is a record.

I don't really have a process up and running that is scalable.  But what i am doing is focusing on slow moving but higher valued items where i would make a large profit.  The big bucks are made by buying items for say 20 billion and selling them for 26 billion.

This may actually be part of my problem - i have found that the items i sell are very competitive and therefore relisting items on a daily basis that sell for 20 billion is very expensive.  Therefore, i am reviewing my activity here.

My idea of station trading is not buying items when they look cheap.  For me, station trading is about sticking to the slow moving items and quite often i am the only person in Jita trying to sell an item.  Almost always Selling for over 1bn isk.

What i don't do is Investing.  I.e. i don't buy an item now i think is cheap and hold onto it to sell it a few months later when the price has risen.

Alpha Accounts

I have 1 Alpha account with a character in Venal left.  All the others were upgraded to Omega last summer to start Skill Farming.

Old Accounts

This is my third outing in Eve Online.  I still have the characters of the prior two attempts and i have resurrected them all.  One account is Omega and does manufacturing the rest remain as Alpha for now.

This month i decided to combine them all into one Alliance, the Merchanting Industry Finance Philanthropy Alliance.

Plex

I bad 18,300 Plex at the end of July and spent all of that buying 12 months of Omega across all my Omega accounts (and another 12 months on one account because i was too far into a bottle of red wine to notice).  So i have around 260 Plex left.

Thinking about whether or not to rebuild - for now i won't.  CCP seem to be taking actions to make this less lucrative so for now i will hold off.

Items in hanger for sale

There are a number of items that i sell that can only be sourced from Regions outside of The Forge (the home of Jita).

To make my life easier, i buy them from their home bases and have them couriered to Jita to be stored ready to be couriered to their final sale destination.  Makes life a lot easier for the cost of one transport leg.

Also, given i am skill farming i have a number of Skill Extractors and Large Skill Injectors sitting in hangers waiting to be used / sold - these are being sold down over time.

In all, some 298bn isk of items in Hangers.

Buy Orders

Buy Orders have varied over time and peaked in August at around 128bn and are at 120bn.

This is part of my Station trading which is under review.

ISK

I have 98bn spare ISK kicking around.

For the last 12 months the average ISK in wallets has been over 100bn compared to around 50bn before this.

The reason for his is purely real life being busy and so not having the time to make sure everything is invested.

For now, seeding the player owned station i talked about above is taken up the surplus isk.

I now have a new distribution policy where i will distribute all blocks of 50 billion isk above 50 billion + manufacturing isk in my wallet.

Current Wealth

Current wealth is 2.443 trillion ISK made up from:

• Plex held as an investment 2bn ISK
• Items in hanger for sale 298bn ISK
• Items in hanger for use in business 11bn ISK
• Omega brought forward 107bn ISK
• Buy orders on the market 121bn ISK
• items for sale 2.26 trillion ISK

• less a 20% provision 452bn ISK*

• ISK in wallet 98bn ISK

When i add up my wealth, I don't count assets I use in the course of my business such as ships, fittings etc nor do I add back any expenses such as skills purchased etc.  The wealth I disclose is made up of items that are ISK or are in the process of being converted to ISK or are used to generate isk that can be readily resold back onto the market.  Any ships or skills or fittings etc i buy are counted as expenses in that month.  The only exception to this rule is Blueprint Originals i use for manufacturing.  They are held at cost.

* I take a 20% provision against the items I am selling.  Eve calculates wealth by adding up the value of the sell orders hence it is possible to increase your wealth by buying an item for 100m ISK and putting a sell order for 120m ISK (in this case your wealth would increase by 20m ISK).  For me, I want my wealth to be calculated at cost.  I know that the value of my sell orders will likely fall over time as I update my orders downwards as competition reduces their prices before my items are sold.  Hence the 20% provision is my best guess as to what the maximum reduction I would need to make to my sell orders as a whole before they are sold.  In an ideal world I would value my sell orders at the value which I bought the items for.