Lainie Goldstein
Chief Financial Officer at Take-Two Interactive Software
Thanks, Karl, and good afternoon, everyone. Today, I'll discuss the key highlights from our third quarter, before reviewing our guidance for fiscal year 2023 and our fourth quarter. Please note that our third quarter results include our combination with Zynga, with respect to the comparability of our results relative to last year. Additional details regarding our actual results and outlook are contained in our press release.
As Strauss mentioned, we delivered net bookings of $1.38 billion, which was slightly below our prior guidance, as consumers displayed more cautionary purchasing behaviors during the holiday season. As in prior periods of economic headwinds, full game sales from our catalog of industry-leading intellectual properties were relatively resilient. However, we felt pressure on some of our newer releases that are in earlier stages of building their player base, alongside softness in recurrent consumer spending.
During the period, recurrent consumer spending rose 117% and accounted for 78% of net bookings. Zynga's in-app purchases performed in line with our revised expectations. However, this was offset by weakness in recurrent consumer spending for several of our console and PC games.
Digitally delivered net bookings increased 72% and accounted for 95% of the total. During the quarter, 69% of console game sales were delivered digitally, up from 63% last year.
GAAP net revenue increased 56% to $1.41 billion and cost of revenue increased 97% to $692 million. Operating expenses increased by 123% to $889 million, primarily driven by the addition of Zynga, as well as higher marketing and stock-based compensation expenses. The GAAP net loss was $153 million, $0.91 per share, which was impacted by $302 million of amortization of acquired intangibles and $24 million of business acquisition costs.
Our management tax rate for the period was 18% as compared to 16% [Phonetic] in the prior year as a result of our combination with Zynga. We ended the quarter with over $1.1 billion of cash and short-term investments and paid down $200 million of revolver borrowings, reducing our debt to $3.1 billion.
Turning to our guidance, I'll begin with our full fiscal year expectations. We now expect to deliver net bookings of USD5.2 billion to USD5.25 billion. Our forecast takes into account the current economic environment and consumer purchasing trends that we have been experiencing and which we expect to continue into the fourth quarter, including lower expectations for some of our recent game releases and softer recurrent consumer spending as well as the shift of an unannounced mobile title and a focus on enhanced profitability for our hyper-casual business.
The largest contributors to net bookings are expected to be NBA 2K, Grand Theft Auto Online and Grand Theft Auto V, Empires & Puzzles, Toon Blast, Rollic's hyper-casual mobile portfolio, and Red Dead Redemption 2 and Red Dead Online. We expect the net bookings breakdown from our labels to be 46% Zynga, 36% 2K, 17% Rockstar Games and 1% Private Division. We forecast our geographic net bookings split to be about 65% United States and 35% international.
We expect recurrent consumer spending to grow by approximately 85% and represents 77% of total net bookings. Our digitally delivered net workings are expected to grow by approximately 60% and represent 95% of the total. Our forecast assumes that 74% of console game sales will be delivered digitally, up from 68% last year.
We expect to generate more than $400 million in non-GAAP adjusted unrestricted operating cash flow and we expect to deploy approximately $170 million for capital expenditures. We expect GAAP net revenue to range from USD5.24 billion to USD5.29 billion and cost of revenue to range from USD2.53 billion to USD2.55 billion, which includes approximately $694 million of amortization of acquired intangibles.
Total operating expenses are expected to range from USD3.4 billion to USD3.41 billion as compared to $1.5 billion last year. This increase reflects the inclusion of Zynga, business acquisition costs and higher personnel compensation and marketing expenses, which we anticipate will be slightly offset by our expected cost synergies from our integration with Zynga.
As we've mentioned on prior calls, in light of the current backdrop, we have been evaluating cost savings opportunities that can structurally enhance our margins and make our company more efficient and nimble for the long-term. After a comprehensive review, we now believe that we can deliver over $50 million of annual savings, which we will begin to execute on this quarter, opportunities include personnel, processes, infrastructure and other areas, particularly in publishing and corporate function. This program is an addition to the over $100 million of annual cost synergies from our combination with Zynga and is not expected to impact the delivery of our robust multiyear pipeline.
We expect the GAAP net loss ranging from USD704 million to USD721 million or $4.40 to $4.50 per share, which assumes the basic share count of 159.8 million shares. We expect our management tax rate to be 18% throughout the year.
Now moving to our guidance for the fiscal fourth quarter. We project net bookings to range from USD1.31 billion to USD1.36 billion, compared to $846 million in the fourth quarter last year. The largest contributor to net bookings are expected to be NBA 2K, Grand Theft Auto Online and Grand Theft Auto V, Empires and Puzzles, Toon Blast, Rollic's hyper-casual mobile portfolio and WWE 2K23. We project recurrent consumer spending to grow approximately 105% and digitally delivered net bookings to increase approximately 70%. Our forecast assumes that 80% of console game sales will be delivered digitally, up from 75% last year.
We expect GAAP net revenue to range from USD1.34 billion to USD1.39 billion and cost of revenues to range from USD688 million to USD708 million, which includes approximately $198 million of amortization of acquired intangibles.
Operating expenses are expected to range from USD871 million to USD881 million. At the midpoint, this represents a 120% increase over last year. This increase reflects the inclusion of Zynga, business acquisition costs and higher marketing and personnel expenses, which we believe will be slightly offset by the realization of some of our anticipated cost synergies. And GAAP net loss is expected to range from USD197 million to USD214 million, $1.17 to $1.27 per share, which assumes a basic share count of 168 million shares.
In closing, while we are disappointed to have lowered our outlook for the year, we are highly confident in our long-term growth potential. We believe that the actions we are taking now will position us to deliver sequential growth and record performance over the next several years, which we anticipate will drive meaningful shareholder value. I'd like to thank all of our stakeholders again for their support. Thank you.
I'll now turn the call back to Strauss.
