They say Take-Two would likely take a ”$20-22 bid” per share this time, after looking ”fools for saying no” to EA’s $25 bid. EA might try again to thwart Activision.
”The market caps Activision at $13bn, EA at $6.1bn and Take-Two at $1.3bn. More consolidation is a no brainer in my opinion, especially after Activision shut down Guitar Hero, True Crime, Tony Hawk,” twittered analyst firm First Adopter.
”If you’re Bobby Kotick with a $13bn market cap, buying Take Two for $1.5-2bn is a no brainer, especially since you have nothing now outside of Call of Duty and Blizzard. With Take-Two Kotick picks up IPs like Grand Theft Auto, Bioshock, Red Dead and the NBA 2K series for tiny fraction of his market cap.”
Right now it’s only rumoured that senior level types are whispering an acquisition of Take-Two. If true then Activision-Blizzard would command the Grand Theft Auto license, as well as recent top flyers like Red Dead Redemption and BioShock.
”If I was CEO, I would do it,” added the analysts. Given what happened when EA tried to bid and got shot down, although not without some internal fighting within Take-Two, they may well accept a lower bidding per share to secure a deal.
”I think Take-Two management would take a $20-22 bid because they looked like fools for saying no to EA’s $25 bid last time,” they continued. ”It’s not often you get another chance. Activision said on a conference call they shutting down True Crime because it wouldn’t be near the top in the ‘open world’ genre. Maybe that was a hint.”
EA might try and at least drive up the price. ”Kicker is you might get EA to bid too because EA would be worried about stronger resourced sports competitor from an Activision/Take-Two combo,” said First Adopted. Which is your lesser of two evils?
