Electronic Arts Proposes to Acquire Take-Two Interactive Software for $26 Per Share in Cash, or Approximately $2.0 Billion
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"Electronic Arts announced today that it has purchased the holding company that owns BioWare [Mass Effect] and Pandemic Studios [Mercenaries 2]. The acquisition will cost EA about $775 million, which includes a $650 million cash payment to the stockholders of VG Holding Corp., which directly owns the two developers, and an additional $155 million in equity to select VG employees. As part of the agreement, EA said it plans to lend up to $35 million to the company through the closing of the deal, expected in January. EA will also assume outstanding VG Holding Corp. stock options. VG Holding is owned by Elevation Partners, which invested $300 million in BioWare and Pandemic in November 2005, creating one of the world's best-funded and largest independent game development houses."
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Reporting its earnings for fiscal year 2009, Electronic Arts has revealed several interesting statistics. First and foremost, the company reports that it had 31 titles that managed to sell over 1 million copies and adds that FIFA 09, Madden NFL 09 and Need for Speed Undercover all pushed more than 5 million units. Spore sold over 2 million units and recently saw user-created creatures exceed 100 million.
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EA has "missed the current hardware cycle" and is unlikely to return to historical operating income margin levels "anytime soon", according to a new report by analysts at Cowen Research. In an occasionally damning critique of EA's plans and guidance the report states that: "We believe that following serial earnings disappointments, Electronic Arts now deserves a lower valuation premium than the company has historically enjoyed."
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"In today's EA investor conference call, CEO John Riccitiello was asked by analysts whether the company's PlayStation 3 development process had caught up with its Xbox 360 development process, an issue that had led to delays at a number of publishers. 'Not quite,' Riccitiello said, adding 'There's no doubt that Electronic Arts, along with many other publishers, had some challenges essentially meeting the technical specifications effectively on the PlayStation 3.' "
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