After a couple of exciting deals in the business world recently, including Dell’s massive purchase of EMC, and Western Digital’s SanDisk acquisition, it’s time for Activision Blizzard to make a significant investment of its own. The company announced it’ll pay $5.9 billion for King Digital, the developer of the immensely popular Candy Crush Saga games.
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Activision Blizzard will pay $18 per share, or almost a 20% premium over King’s recent price, in an all-cash transaction. The sale should be completed by Spring 2016.
“The combined revenues and profits solidify our position as the largest, most profitable standalone company in interactive entertainment,” Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick said. “With a combined global network of more than half a billion monthly active users, our potential to reach audiences around the world on the device of their choosing enables us to deliver great games to even bigger audiences than ever before.”
Activision Blizzard is likely looking to improve its mobile presence, Business Insider writes. According to the company’s latest numbers, only 5% of its revenue comes from mobile and other sources, with 54% coming from consoles, 21% from online games and 14% from PC gaming.
Activision Blizzard’s most popular mobile property right now is Hearthstone, which is also available on PC.
Meanwhile, King reported $490 million revenue in the second quarter, with a third of that coming from Candy Crush. The company, however, has struggled to come up with a mobile game as popular as Candy Crash, whose revenue is declining currently.
The full press release is available at the source link.
