Vivendi SA made an official statement, revealing that it intends to sell about half of its remaining stake in Activision Blizzard Inc. The offering is estimated to more than 850 million dollars. The company also shared that the sale is going to be made under an existing agreement. The deal includes selling a total of 41.5 million shares, which amount to 5.8% of Activision Blizzard Inc.
The stake that is going to be sold by Vivendi SA is estimated to about 866 million dollars at current market prices. After the sale, the stake of Vivendi in the videogame company will be reduced by half. The offer for the stake is to expire on May 28th, according to the companys statement. The final sale price is to be announced later today.
Vivendi also shared that it has made a decision of selling the rest of its assets in Activision Blizzard in January 2015. The company plans to carry out the sale through a bookbuilding process.
The sale of its remaining stake in the U.S. videogame company is following the trend established by Vivendi over the past couple of years of selling some assets that are no longer considered profitable. The company is also seeking to pay down its debt and has decided to become more focused on media business. It plans to return 5 billion euros (6.8 billion dollars) to its shareholders by 2015 through dividends and share buybacks.
Activision and Vivendi agreed last year that the latter will sell Activision most of its 61% stake in the company for $8.2 billion. The sale also follows Vivendis deals for the transactions of the African phone operator Maroc Telecom and its mobile telephone division SFR in France.
Vivendi SA was adding 0.4% to trade at 19.05 euros per share by 12:01 GMT, marking a one year change of +21.92%. According to the information published on the Financial Times, the 20 analysts offering 12-month price targets for Vivendi SA have a median target of 20.75, with a high estimate of 27.00 and a low estimate of 16.90. The median estimate represents a 9.79% increase from the last price of 18.90.
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