NCSoft is expected to report their Fiscal Year 2011 results on February 9, 2012. Aside from providing an outline of how the business is doing financially, it also lays out a business plan for the upcoming quarter/year, and serves as an indicator for investors in deciding where they put their money. A conference call is also held where investors may participate in a brief Q&A session with the board.

Here’s a few key things to be on the lookout for:

1. Disclosure of ArenaNet financials.
NCsoft mentioned in Q1 last year that they would begin disclosing the amount of money being put into the production of Guild Wars 2 starting in Q2. However, these numbers didn’t make the balance sheet for Q2, with their exclusions likely do to being in competition with other MMOs still in development. Chances are highly likely we’ll see them this quarter as most other competing MMOs Q2 have release dates; the act of hiding spending becomes less of a competitive edge once your rivals have set sights on the finish line.

2. Subscriptions up overall. Profits increased in Europe and Asia. Profits decrease in North America.
Several NCsoft properties have gone Free to Play or expanded content in both North America and Europe. Lineage 2 announced a F2P business model for Europe in December and will likely add a good amount of players and additional margin to the books.

3. GuildWars 2 Release Date… sort of.
You’ll likely get a brief outline of GuildWars 2′s production schedule and the quarter the game will be released, not a hard street date. Obviously conference call release date estimations have been off before in the past, but ArenaNet seems to be in line (or in some cases ahead) of expectations set by Q3′s call.

Overall, expect NCsoft to talk a little more openly about GW2 this call due to increased stockholder pressure and favorable results coming out of Closed Beta.

Special thanks to Nord for contributions to this article.