Video game publisher Activision Blizzard (ATVI) is satisfying its sweet tooth for acquisitions by buying mobile game maker King Digital Entertainment (KING), best known for “Candy Crush Saga.” Activision announced late Monday that it has agreed to pay $18 in cash per share for London-based King, in a deal worth $5.9 billion. The offer is a 20% premium over King’s Friday closing price. King shares jumped 3.9% to 15.54 on Monday in heavy volume
King Digital Entertainment (KING), maker of mobile game “Candy Crush Saga,” saw its stock get crushed on Friday, a day after giving disappointing guidance. King stock was down 11% in afternoon trading on the stock market today, near 13.50, and earlier touched a six-month low below 13. The London-based company late Thursday said it earned 49 cents a share excluding items on sales of $500 million in the second quarter. Analysts polled by Thomson
Casual video game maker King Digital Entertainment (KING) lost an alarming number of paying customers in the first quarter, which likely impacted its weak second-quarter guidance. King stock fell as much as 8% on Friday after the company posted first-quarter results that beat views; it had given disappointing Q2 guidance late Thursday. But King stock recovered to close up a fraction, near 15, on the stock market today. King, best known as the maker of “Candy Crush,” said that it had 364 million unique monthly active users in Q1, up from 352 million in Q1 2014. Wall Street was modeling for 346 million unique monthly users. But the number of paying customers dipped 29% to 8.5 million from 11.9 million a year earlier. And the number is forecast to decline again in Q2. King competes in the mobile and casual games sector with companies like Electronic Arts (EA), Glu Mobile…