It still feels weird, watching various gaming and tech companies rise and fall via share price. I’ve actually gone so far as to create an account over at marketwatch.com this morning, where I’m slowly accumulating a list of companies I feel like monitoring.
This came about because both GameStop and Nvidia are in my headlines this morning for taking some manner of fall or another. According to my little watchlist ol’ Activision Blizzard is in the club too.
GameStop’s, though, is the most severe. They seem to have stopped looking for a buyer for the business and as a result their stock price is down somewhere around 25% overnight. It’s sad to watch, in a way, as I have some fairly fond memories of using GameStop, say, around 2012. We’ll see though, it’s not like they’ve gone out of business just yet. Maybe they’ll get their hands on a CEO and find some way to secure their market.
Nvidia seems like less of an issue to me. Their stock is down due to lower than expected sales during the holiday season. I get it, but the whole shares dropping because we made less than expected is a general pet peeve. Their 2018 Gross and Net Income are both up year over year since 2014. Like, a lot. Net income in 2014 was 630M and 2018 was 3B, with a B. Of course, people are people, I guess. It does look like 2018 over was a very flat year for them, quarter to quarter not much has changed. Makes sense though, I’ve been trying to delay major computer upgrades hoping prices would come back down. Maybe this year will be the year.
That’s another thing though. See, everyone talks about Q4 sales, holiday sales, and I get it, traditionally a lot of product moves during that time period. As a consumer, though, the holidays aren’t where it’s at for me. Yeah, some extra spending happens, but I simply don’t spend what some of my coworkers do on the holidays.
Maybe that’s just me though. In a wonderful show of shareholder confidence, AMD, the company I usually buy from, is also down due to Nvidia’s report. Neither case is really a big deal, I don’t think. Especially not compared to the drop they both experienced back in September.
Activision Blizzard is also down a little bit because an analyst changed their opinion of the stock from “outperform” to “perform.” So, y’know, whatever.
Unfortunately this sort of odd analysis doesn’t apply to everyone I watch. Both Valve and Epic Games are private, which means none of these numbers are collected in a nice handy place for me to look at. Apparently Koch Media has decided that Metro Exodus will be an Epic Games exclusive for it’s first year. I’m sure some money changed hands, as it seems to be doing a lot lately with Epic Games. I’m assuming that’s mostly Fortnite money being used to launch the EG Store.
I’ve seen people criticizing the EG Store for it’s use of exclusives as well. I’m admittedly not a fan of having a bunch of exclusive storefronts, and have expressed sentiments against them in the past. Valve needs some competition though, and this may in fact be required to establish themselves. Not that I think they will stop when they’ve done so.
On that note, I’m going to fade back into the swirling thoughts of capitalists and proletariats from which I came and get some “real” work done. Y’all take care.
Unidentified Signal Source 
well the law firms are lining up it seems. A quick search pulled up several articles.
https://www.marketwatch.com/press-release/investor-action-alert-the-schall-law-firm-announces-the-filing-of-a-class-action-lawsuit-against-activision-blizzard-inc-and-encourages-investors-with-losses-in-excess-of-250000-to-contact-the-firm-2019-01-28
I believe Wall Street estimates for the stock were in the $65 range back prior to November, and there have been several downgrades. If it ends up that anyone sold off stock prior to the announcement, there will certainly be a lot of digging into the numbers, and a lot of people are in for some serious scrutiny of their transactions.
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Yeah any employee who sold stock during that time could get hosed pretty easily. A lot of this depends on how far in advance Activision knew Bungie was going their own way. If it all went down in a week or less they might be okay. If they held onto that information though, I’d say it’s a great example of public reporting done wrong. They could have announced that it was being discussed and saved themselves some trouble. It’s a risk that didn’t pay off I guess.
Late October, early November, their stock was right around $65/share. Looks like a weak earnings report on 11/8 is what dropped them to the $50ish range. They went from 62.79 to 55 that day alone.
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Yeah, I wonder if there were other reasons the two CFO’s just happened to seek other employment. It really makes you wonder too if Mike Morhaime voluntarily decided to retire, or if he just got tired of fighting the direction Activision wanted to take the company. I would think we haven’t seen rock bottom yet, and it will be interesting to keep an eye on who ends up looking for work. Activision has been around a long time, they should have a good idea how to operate a company. Stupid mistakes get made when someone is only looking at the bottom line.
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