Activision Blizzard Buys Candy Crush Saga Authors

The “candy” giant King will be acquired for $5.9 billion by a company that owns the rights to brands such as Call of Duty and World of Warcraft.

As it became known this morning, on November 3, the boards of directors of Activision Blizzard and King came to an agreement that Bobby Kotick’s company will take over the authors of Candy Crush Saga.

ABS Partners, a subsidiary of Activision Blizzard, specially formed for this transaction in the Netherlands, will begin buying King shares at a price of $18 apiece after the transaction is approved by King shareholders and the Irish High Court. In total, $5.9 billion will be spent on the purchase of the company.

$18 per share is 20% more than it was given for at the close of trading on October 30. At the same time, this is significantly less than each share was worth when King went on the stock exchange. Then, on March 26, 2014, each share of the company was valued at $22.5.

Activision Blizzard names two reasons for buying King:

• mobile capacities of the company
• King has strong IP addresses

Plus, it is clear that the company is interested in continuing to diversify its business.

King as part of Activision Blizzard will operate as an independent division. The directors of King will remain in their places. By the way, we recall that Activision and Blizzard Entertainment are also functioning independently of each other at the moment within Activision Blizzard.

The deal will be completed next spring. Its details can be found in the original 140-page document.

The announced purchase is definitely the deal of the year in the gaming industry. And it’s not about the amount. Just the fifth gaming company in the world by revenue acquires the tenth in the world.