Many people like to lambaste Activision for many of their games, but you can‘t argue that they make good business decisions. In another blockbuster move, they have announced the acquisition of Candy Crush studio King Digital Entertainment for $5.9 billion.
To put that into perspective, Facebook paid $2 billion for Oculus last year. In the third quarter of the year, King Digital says that it had 474 million active users, which is nothing to scoff at.
Activision made the following announcement to investors:
On November 2, 2015, Activision Blizzard, Inc. and King Digital Entertainment plc announced the signing of a definitive agreement under which ABS Partners C.V., a wholly owned subsidiary of Activision Blizzard, will acquire all of the outstanding shares of King for $18.00 in cash per share, for a total equity value of $5.9 billion.
Activision Blizzard believes that the addition of King‘s highly-complementary business will position Activision Blizzard as a global leader in interactive entertainment across mobile, console and PC platforms, and positions the company for future growth. The combined company will have a world-class interactive entertainment portfolio of top-performing franchises.
This means that Activision now has gamers of every kind and on every platform. The cater for kids and families with the likes of the Skylanders series, World of Warcraft aficionados, and folks who casually play Hearthstone, the hard core gamers who continuously play Destiny and Call of Duty, and now mobile with in-app purchases in Candy Crush.
We think that is an extremely impressive portfolio and don‘t believe their cash is growing to dry up anytime soon.
Source: Activision
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