Activision Blizzard Should Get Boost by New Titles
By Jay Zalowitz
For
Activision Blizzard
(ATVI) - Get Report
, the release of the much-awaited
Starcraft II
and
Diablo III
should lead to some unexpectedly high sales and fuel purchases of the predecessor games in the series.
I expect these rollouts to be comparable to
Bungie's
Halo III
release. My basis for this is that after a short poll of "gamers" among my group of friends and looking at communities that deal with game on the Internet, there are very few gamers who are not considering buying this release.
A short history of these two series is that they are the originating brand for the majority of these types of games.
Starcraft
was released in 1998 and has sold over 11 million copies worldwide, and despite being a computer game that is over 12 years old, is still on store shelves. It has a pro gaming league around it, and there is a class at the University of California-Berkeley that teaches theory and strategy for it; in a word, it's big.
Diablo
has a similar following, with 17 million copies sold, including a programming community built around modding it.
The release prices for these games on Amazon are set at
and
, respectively, and these types of releases often come with one to three follow-up releases priced at a similar amount. No
release date
has been set.
The majority of the research and development cost is already on the books for these games, and it is quite likely that there will be a reduction in expenditures toward R&D after these games are released. Product development is one-fifth of ATVI's revenue ($3 billion and $600 million); this could amount to a significant amount of savings.
ATVI has cash per share of $2.56 and no debt. In a market in which developers are negative cash flow, it would be easy for ATVI to acquire a new and exciting brand that it could employ staff on right now, launching projects that would be very promising but otherwise fail due to the recession.
This is a recovery play, but it will also fare well in a recession in which gamers are forced to choose games that, being increasingly multiplayer, require other consumers to join. ATVI is likely to succeed through the economy.
Finally, ATVI has a team developing products for smartphones and the like (iPad).
ATVI has a forward P/E of 14.59, almost too low for a game company, whereas competitor
Electronic Arts
( ERTS)(beneficiary of a large recent options bet that the stock would grow another 37% by the beginning of next year) has a forward P/E of 30.38.
According to my estimates of $200 million in unpredicted revenue due to a large amount of pent-up demand for these games, as well as the high probability of selling multiple copies of the game to single households, it's not unreasonable to expect a EPS of $1.10 next year. At Thursday's closing price of $11.96, the forward price-to- earnings ratio would be only 10.87 times earnings for next year. If sales would increase $200 million above expected numbers, this represents an interesting opportunity to investors wanting to add some "game" to their portfolio.
If the stock would match the current valuation, it would not be unreasonable to expect a valuation of $16 if you multiplied the same forward P/E of 14.59 to the new earnings prediction for next year of $1.10 a share. (14.59 X $1.1 = $16.05)
Jay Zalowitz is a junior at the Stillman School of Business at Seton Hall University, where he is studying finance and information technology management.
