Vivendi: unwinding of hedge and disposal of Activision Blizzard shares

Vivendi Activision Blizzard stock has been sold for $1.1 Billion.

[itsjustexuma]

What if Sony bought those shares and with that will get Crash Bandicoot, Spyro and other charactors to the PS4?

[Kalebninja]

crash and spyro have nothing to do with blizzard though.

[whoyouwit04]

Do you not understand Activision/blizzard stock? Meaning stock in both companies

[Kalebninja]

I looked it up, I understand now. Its not activision and blizzard stock Activision blizzard is one company. I didn't know that Activision merged with vevindi and apparently they are now called Activision blizzard.

[whoyouwit04]

To bad Sony can't afford to. If any consomanufacturer would of bought this stock it's Microsoft.

[MasterCornholio]

They achieve studios through different methods.

[Darkfist]

and then Rare happens

[WeAreLegion]

The Xbox division of Microsoft is separate. Microsoft itself isn't going to do that.

[UltraNova]

@Wearelegion

How's Phil Spencer asking the MS board for 1.1 billion to buy those shares any different than MS buying them?

Does the Xbox division have its own, separate income/revenue and therefor budget?

Who do they answer to, at least economically?

So if the head of Playstation wants to buy a game studio Sony has nothing to do with it?

[joeorc]

@whoyouwit04 + 12h ago
To bad Sony can't afford to. If any consomanufacturer would of bought this stock it's Microsoft.

I would not be too quick to lay claim to the idea Sony could not afford to do such.

You do know or may not know Sony still has billions of Dollars in the bank as cash reserve's.

@ below the PlayStation section for Sony is the 5th largest profit generated subsidiary of Sony and no where near being its #1

2nd the valuation of a companies stock & net worth in market value is really subjective on how its future stock performance can pan out. Or if it can pan out. Since than over all these posts about Sony's stock valuation, Sony's stock value raised fro. 17 billion now well past 17. It went to over 32 billion just 4 months ago.

The company has asset holdings well over 100 billion, and PlayStation as a section is simple a asset held with no stock buy into playstation its simply among other whole owned subsidiary revenue streamers.

So like the purchase of Softkinetic recently its made to generate cash flow for Sony &/the more they invest into such the more increase chance.of increase in Revenue & Profits.

And again its not even the #1 main profit generated subsidiary for Sony. Buying massive stock into another software publisher unless.you intend for 100% control buy out may not be in your companies best Interests when said company is also a software publisher.

It would depend if Sony &/Said company see it as viable.

[OpieWinston]

Sony will probably continue working on their partnership with Activision via future CoD/Destiny titles. That's how they'll work out a deal for a Crash licensed game.

But as far as Spyro... That'll probably never happen, as much as I would love for it to happen. They wouldn't want to create product confusion with Skylanders.

But Sony doesn't have the capital to make that type of investment and even if they did it wouldn't be in their best interests.

[UKmilitia]

exactly.
activision can hear the wants and desires of gamers.
but it will get to the point that numbers take over and amount of ps4 consoles sold will make the deal happen.

[Khaotic]

People disagree because they think your a slamming their precious sony. But youre right it wasnt that long ago they were in serious financial trouble and im sure the success of ps4 has helped alot but it takes awhile to bounce back from near bankruptcy

[Crimzon]

lol @ the disagrees

Anyways, we'll probably see shares for other companies being sold over the coming months as well given the extremely fragile nature of the global economy and stock markets right now. The general message coming out of Wall Street right now is "Sell everything!" so I wouldn't be surprised to see more shares being offloaded from various companies. There's a chance we could be seeing another global financial crisis this year.

[TwoForce]

Well, time change I suppose. The future could happen but when you reach there, it will be different than you expected.

[WeAreLegion]

Spyro hasn't played a big role in Skylanders since the first game. Kids don't care about Spyro. Sony should buy the IP. Same with Crash.

[joeorc]

"But Sony doesn't have the capital to make that type it investment and even if they did it wouldn't be in their best interests."

Sony most likely has the capital.
As for being in their best interests in spending it for such an Acquisition you are most likely correct. And I agree with you.

[Thunder_G0d_Bane]

Yeah neither of those characters would be worth 1.1 billion now.

Despite fanboy nostalgia those games started to not sell well hence why they stopped making those games. If they were selling well they'd still be around.

[BitbyDeath]

But all these would -

Activision:
Call of Duty series
Skylanders series
Spyro the Dragon series
Tony Hawk's Pro Skater series
Guitar Hero series

Blizzard Entertainment:
Warcraft series
StarCraft series
Diablo series
Heroes of the Storm
Overwatch

https://en.wikipedia.org/wi...

I'm reading this over and over, must be reading it wrong somehow....???

[rainslacker]

It means Sony would own about 4% of Activision Blizzard. Doesn't mean Sony would acquire rights to use those franchises.

While 4% is no small sum of ownership in a company, and it does afford some bargaining power, it doesn't actually mean anything otherwise.

Sony owned 20% of Square Enix stock for a while, but it didn't stop SE from going multi-plat. Sony brought the stocks in SE to help them when they were struggling, but ultimately, despite SE returning the favor for many years...didn't change anything other than Sony made profit off of SE dividends.

Since I doubt Vivendi is selling off stock because A/B is struggling, I doubt they'd feel inclined to give away stuff which could potentially make more money by remaining open.

[kopko]

Well, Activision Blizzard is the largest game company on the market. Too bad they hold rights to game and titles like Crash or Spyro and many others. I dont think they would sell it cheap, because why would they? They have shitload of $$$, no need to sell any rights to other companies.

imo the name Activision Blizzard sounds sooo weird

[FinalomegaS]

"Activision Blizzard is the largest game company on the market"

really?

i checked and seems there is maybe even one bigger than them.

Maybe we should just say,

they are one of the largest...?

[kopko]

Thanks for correcting me, you are right. Still, they are one of the biggest players in the market.

[Budrazor]

MS should had jumped on that like they did with Mojang.

[gangsta_red]

Yea, it's amazing how much they spent on the Minecraft devs and I can understand why with its popularity and all but when I see these types of dev/publishers up for grabs I don't understand why no one swoops them off when they have a whole portfolio of strong selling IP's.

Oh well, this is a high level world that I cannot even begin to understand.

[rainslacker]

It's a stable and profitable stock to own, but beyond that, it doesn't really provide much in the way of them getting something exclusive to use for their purposes. If that was the intent in buying the stock, then it's better they didn't jump on it, because not much would have come from it. 1.1 billion is only 4% of A/B worth.