Activision Blizzard to buy King Digital in deal worth $5.9 billion

• Brings together makers of ‘Call of Duty,’ ‘Candy Crush Saga’

Video game maker Activision Blizzard Inc (ATVI) said it will buy "Candy Crush Saga" creator King Digital Entertainment (KING) for $5.9 billion to strengthen its mobile games portfolio.

ABS Partners CV, a unit of Activision Blizzard, will acquire King shares for $18 each in cash, representing a premium of 16 percent to King's closing price on Monday.

** charts before acquisition **

The addition of King's mobile games will position Activision as a global leader in interactive entertainment across mobile, console and PC platforms, Activision said in a statement.

Video game publishers are shifting to the lucrative digital business from physical sales of games as consumers shift from consoles to playing on smartphones and tablets.

The fast-growing mobile gaming segment is expected to generate more than $36 billion in revenue by the end of 2015, according to Activision.

King (KING) reported earnings on Thur 14 May 2015

charts before earnings

daily and weekly

daily heikin

charts after earnings

Ireland-based video game developer King Digital Entertainment (NYSE:KING) dived 9%. Its late Thursday report showed Q1 revenue and earnings well above analyst estimates, but management warned gross bookings would see some impact from game release schedules and a stronger dollar in Q2. The stock has been in a general uptrend since October, trying to climb out of a 15-month consolidation and ending Thursday 33% below its March 2014 IPO price.

King (KING) reported earnings on Tue 12 August 2014

** daily **

** weekly **

King (KING) : 3-month performance

King (KING) began trading on the NYSE on 26 March 2014

Candy Crush maker King Digital Entertainment prices IPO at $22.50 a share

King Digital Entertainment, maker of the massively popular Candy Crush mobile app, priced its IPO late Tuesday in the latest example of young tech companies getting back into the IPO game.

The initial public offering — one of the biggest tests yet of investors' appetite for potentially dicey tech deals — raised $500 million for the 10-year-old company. The company sold shares to initial investors at $22.50 a share. That was somewhat disappointing, because the company had set an initial range of $21 to $24 a share, and other recent tech IPOs have priced above their initial ranges.

King will begin trading Wednesday on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol KING.

King sets range for IPO share price

The maker of the hit mobile game Candy Crush Saga says it plans to offer more than 22 million shares for its initial public offering priced between $21-$24 per share.

King says it will offer more than 15 million shares, while shareholders will add an extra 6.7 million, according to an amendment to its F-1 filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Wednesday.

King believes it could raise nearly $613 million in an initial public offering.

Last month, King attracted 144 million daily active users who played their games 1.4 billion times per day. Candy Crush Saga comprises the overwhelming majority of those figures, with 97 million daily active users and just over 1 billion plays in February.

But that one game has become a huge driver of King's revenue. According to financial information in its IPO filing, the company raked in $568 million in profit off $1.9 billion in total revenue last year. In 2012, the year Candy Crush Saga was introduced, King generated $164 million in revenue and $7.8 million in profit.

Shares of King will trade on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol KING.

British Game Maker Behind Candy Crush files for IPO

King, the British computer games maker behind Candy Crush Saga, has quietly filed documents for an initial public offering in the US, expected to value the firm at more than $5bn.

King.com CEO Riccardo Zacconi

The company has filed for a public offering in the United States, according to people briefed on the matter, in what promises to be one of the biggest debuts by a gaming company in over a year. It has also retained Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Credit Suisse and JPMorgan Chase to lead the offering, according to the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the listing process is being done in secret.

King's reported filing is similar to the one that allowed Twitter to keep its IPO confidential last week. King hired a chief financial officer, Hope Cochran, this week. She held the same title at Clearwire, which built the first 4G network in the USA and merged with Sprint in 2012.

King has increasingly gained the attention of investors and analysts for the worldwide success of Candy Crush Saga. The popular puzzle game has helped King reach nearly 250 million monthly active players and generate a few million dollars a day.

Both anticipated public stock offerings come amid a dearth of tech public offerings. Just one in six new U.S. listings this year have been tech-related stocks, making 2013 potentially the second-worst showing in 20 years, according to data provider Dealogic. At the height of the dot-com boom, in 1999, 69% of all IPOs were technology or Internet companies.

Candy Crush Saga is the most popular game played on Facebook

The 22 tech-related U.S. IPOs this year – out of 134 – have raised $3.4 billion.

Tech's lag is a clear byproduct of Facebook's disappointing IPO debut in May 2012. Before it, Zynga stumbled out of the IPO gate in December 2011.

King could trigger more tech-centric public offerings, including long-rumored IPOs for Box and Dropbox in 2014.