MSFT after acquisition.....1. Activision Blizzard
On January 18, 2022, following the announcement of the acquisition, the stock price of ATVI reached its peak at $82 after initially being at $65, which is 25% increase.
Around December 8, 2022, before and after the FTC's indication of opposition, the stock price experienced minor fluctuations of around 10%. However, after the CMA's opposition on April 26, 2023, the stock price plummeted by over 13%.
Overall, since the announcement of the acquisition on January 18, 2022, the stock price of ATVI has risen by over 20% from $65 to $78 on May 19, 2023. Despite this increase, it remains significantly below the premium price of $95 proposed by MSFT (-17%).
2. Microsoft
As of May 2023, Microsoft (MSFT) has a market cap of 2.363 trillion dollars. The acquisition of Activision Blizzard (ATVI) for 69 billion dollars represents approximately 3% of Microsoft's market cap. This indicates that M&A issues related to Activision Blizzard are not correlated with the MSFT stock price. As evidence of this, on January 18, 2022, after the acquisition announcement, Microsoft's stock price only declined by 2.43%. Similarly, on May 15, 2023, when the acquisition received EU approval, the stock price increased by a mere 0.16%. The 7.24% increase in the stock price after the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) rejection on April 26, 2023, was largely attributed to the company's strong earnings report.
3. Overall Microsoft does not show much fluctuations from the acquisition or any other anti-trust issues. May be due to the high premium paid to ActivisionBlizzard that makes the investors slightly lackluster towards the deal.
ActivisionBlizzard – Very enthusiastic towards the deal. Perhaps due to the expected synergy effect and the high premium paid by the Microsoft. Need to talk about why FTC’s rejection shows little to no effect while the CMA’s rejection has a significant impact in the stock market.
Sony – Mostly the opposite of ActivisionBlizzard
