Merger activity remained steady last week with two new deals announced and one active deal completed.
The largest game company acquisition in history was announced last week. In 2018, Bloomberg reported that, Zynga (ZNGA), the firm that created FarmVille and Words With Friends, had attracted takeover interest from other game developers amid a jump in dealmaking in the industry. ZNGA’s price after that report was $4.36.
Zynga has had a tumultuous decade with success in the early days of Facebook driving growth in FarmVille and then a subsequent slump that saw its founder and CEO Mark Pincus step down from the CEO role twice. It is interesting that the two San Francisco based mobile gaming companies I used to follow, Glu Mobile and Zynga, have both been acquired during the last year.
Zynga entered into a definitive merger agreement to be acquired by Take-Two (TTWO), owner of popular franchises like Grand Theft Auto, NBA 2K, and Red Dead Redemption. With this $12.7 billion acquisition, Take-Two plans to significantly accelerate and scale up its mobile gaming business. In recent months, gaming studios have been revealing plans to add NFTs to their games. The digital assets that are verified by blockchain technology, give proof of authenticity and ownership to gamers.
(Source: Company Q3 2021 Investor Presentation)