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Game Retailer GameStop Says It Can't Sell Itself, Sees Stock Drive 27 Percent (arstechnica.com)
GameStop announced today that it has called off a decision to find a private buyer for the company and its subsidiaries. "The announcement ushered in the public company's largest stock-value dip in over 10 years, seeing it plummet in one day from $15.49 to (as of press time) $11.28 -- a dive of roughly 27 percent," reports Ars Technica. From the report: The Texas-based gaming retailer had been linked to acquisition rumors, as The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this month that multiple private equity firms had been circling GameStop -- and its subsidiaries, including the merch-focused ThinkGeek and the gaming magazine Game Informer. That report had suggested a deal might close by mid-February.
However, Tuesday's statement indicated that prospective deals fell through "due to the lack of available financing on terms that would be commercially acceptable to a prospective acquirer." The rest of the statement offers little clear hint of the company's next steps beyond pumping the cash from a recent subsidiary sale into options such as "reducing the company's outstanding debt, funding share repurchases, or reinvesting in core video game and collectibles businesses to drive growth."
However, Tuesday's statement indicated that prospective deals fell through "due to the lack of available financing on terms that would be commercially acceptable to a prospective acquirer." The rest of the statement offers little clear hint of the company's next steps beyond pumping the cash from a recent subsidiary sale into options such as "reducing the company's outstanding debt, funding share repurchases, or reinvesting in core video game and collectibles businesses to drive growth."
If the game packages sold there actually contained the BLOODY INSTALL DISCS. Steam has ushered in a nasty era where you walk into a bricks and mortar shop, plop down 60 bucks for a game, and get a plastic box with only a download code and a little flyer inside. What ever happened to putting actual install DVDs inside a game case? Of course people will not buy at meatspace retailers any more. There isn't much point to paying money for a plastic game box with literally nothing inside it. Now if someone managed to make dirt-cheap 40GB ROM chips for distributing software from physical stores, that might change things quite a bit. In many countries, broadband speeds are so bad that games take hours to download. A lot of people may prefer walking over to a physical game retailer and picking up a little ROM cartridge with a full game on it.
Why did the chicken cross the road? Because Elon Musk put an AI chip in its head.
Actually having the disc don't mean shit anymore friend. I bought Kane & Lynch II (what can I say I enjoy "so bad its good" entertainment like "The Room" and it was only $4) brand new and when I put in the disc? All it did was call the Steam home page and give you the Steam Code for the game!
So yeah discs don't mean shit anymore, its one of the reasons why if there is a choice I use GOG as at least there I can just download the installer and keep it on a backup drive, as buying a box only to get a "disc" that just calls Steam is beyond pointless.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
No not really.
The board had previously announced that it was seriously looking at private equity options and to change that without reason would cause serious questions in the boards judgement.
Announcing that the sale would not go ahead due to inability of a buyer to secure acceptable financing though is a genuine, rational reason not to proceed.
I also strongly suspect that a large part of the share price drop would be through speculators exiting the stock now that a sale is not happening. Looking at the historical share price it looks like the correction to ~$12 is very close the the june shareprice when the buyout noise started.
The game manufactures DO NOT WANT anyone to resell used games, it cuts into their profit margins! Therefore, they are likely to do things to screw over the sellers of used games, as I am sure Game Stop discovered.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
+1 underrated. GameStop's downward slide has been depressing to watch, but every single time in the last 4 years that I've tried to prop them up with my own money, neither the staff on hand nor the stock room were prepared to do their part of the bargain. I really hate having to walk next door to Target or Best Buy. Why do they do a better job at actually stocking the games?