Microsoft buys Activision Blizzard in US$69 billion game deal
https://www.theedgesingapore.com/news/m ... -game-deal
With the Activision purchase of US$69b, Microsoft would become the world’s third-biggest gaming company.
Activision is a legendary gaming publisher with timeless titles like Call of Duty and World of Warcraft.
According to Bloomberg, global video-game revenue was about $105 billion in 2016. It nearly doubled to $180 billion in 2020. And it’s expected to cross the $200 billion threshold by 2024.
At the moment, Microsoft is sitting on $20.6 billion in cash and has $80.3 billion in total debt. That gives the company a net debt (debt minus cash) position of $59.7 billion.
PC sales are on fire — which means more copies of Windows are being sold.
Additionally, Microsoft’s Xbox Series X game console still sells out as soon as stores receive a shipment.
Activision owns huge video game franchises including Call of Duty, Overwatch, World of Warcraft and Candy Crush.
Its games are popular online, on PC, on game consoles and on smartphones. It counts 400 million monthly active players spread across 190 countries.
Call of Duty Mobile — brought in over $1 billion in consumer spending in 2021.
With its Azure cloud computing service, Office subscription revenue, Windows licensing, Xbox sales, Bing search revenue, Surface device revenue, the picture is pretty compelling.
“Leadership across key growth categories and CIO's indications of stable Enterprise IT spending into CY22 should help offset impacts of a volatile macro environment.”
Microsoft still boasts “strong positioning across key growth and defensible spending categories.”
As workloads continue the migration to the cloud, these headwinds should be “offset by IT budget share gains.”
All 27 recent reviews are positive, naturally culminating in a Strong Buy consensus rating. At $374.88, the average price target sits just above Weiss’s and is projected to generate returns of 33% over the coming months.
Revenue improved by 18% on a year-over-year basis.
Intelligent Cloud division brought in $19.1 billion in revenue, up 26% from a year ago.
Microsoft earned just over half of its $168.1 billion in 2021 revenues from overseas markets.
Azure rose 46% from last year -- but were flat compared to the December quarter.
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