The Gaming Investment Thread - Level Up Your Money

Gaming
1

image

Important: If in doubt, please seek professional financial advice. Investments can go down as well up. Past performance is not indicative of future results.

In the last week, due to various factors, the stock prices of various Tech-companies have been kicked in the nuts. On Friday last week, the combo of the US Job Growth report (more employment then expected), and the emergence of the Omicron variant in California prompted a mass sell off of…almost everything. Especially Tech. This presents a potentially great opportunity for gamers to own part of a gaming-related company and make a return on that investment in years to come.

Disclaimer: I’m invested in both Microsoft and more recently, Nvidia. For now, I’m focusing on them but feel free to mention other gaming companies in this thread.

Microsoft:

image

This was on course to return to $340 before this week. Expected price next year is $410. MS not only includes Gaming (hello Xbox!), but also includes Cloud Computing/ AI (Azure), Surface Hardware and Enterprise Software (Office 365), and a popular operating system you may of heard of (Windows 10/11), along with an app store to go with it.

MS are on a mission to bring gaming to the masses, regardless of what platform you’re on. Xbox. PC. Mobile. 2021 has been the best year ever for Xbox and the year is ending strongly with the releases of FH5, Halo, and xCloud to current and legacy consoles.

Looking ahead, expect the 22 game studios in XGS to produce more great content, which in turn, will increase growth to Game Pass, and there’s plenty of room for more growth - Game Pass is still awaiting its smart-TV debut, and there’s also the Game Pass TV-streaming stick incoming at some point.

Nvidia

image

Gone are the days when Nvidia was just focused on making industry-leading GPUs loved by gamers. The parallel-processing capabilities of Nvidia’s GPU and CPU hardware is now used for AI, and in turn, that means Nvidia hardware is used in data centers around the world (including Microsoft Azure).

Various industries using Nvidia solutions include self-driving vehicles, Healthcare, Smart-City planning, Supercomputing, Telecommunications, Cloud Computing and Data Centres, among others. The Nvidia Omniverse is already being used by thousands of creative professionals. For instance, the SFX for Lucasfilm’s The Mandorian used the Nvidia Omniverse.

Back to gaming - yours truly had the chance to finally play X4: Foundations without needing the PC hardware to play it on – thanks to Nvidia’s GeForce Now, a cloud subscription gaming system which simulates a gaming PC in the cloud. In this age of semi-conductor shortages, inflation, and the struggle for many to purchase expensive gaming-spec PCs and the GPUs for them, GeForce Now is a great alternative, with multiple price points for entry, starting from free for a 60 minute gaming session.

Nvidia gaming GPUs are currently best-in-class for real time ray-tracing and image reconstruction, don’t expect that situation to change anytime soon.

The ARM deal being pursued by Nvidia is all but dead now, hence a drop in share price. More Omicron-related drops may follow. Expected share price down the road is $400 per share.

2 Likes
2

1280×720 133 KB

2 Likes
3

Sony

image

The PlayStation company, Sony are the market-leader of game consoles, with a worldwide strong brand name. They are just now tipping their toes into creating PC ports of their acclaimed 1st party games, and reports suggest they are working on their own streaming service to rival Xbox Game Pass, minus Day One releases.

But Sony are a lot more than PlayStation. They own Sony Pictures, a mass media and entertainment studio conglomerate, along with some valuable IP (hello Spiderman!), and are working on creating TV shows based on some of their 1st party video game content (like The Last of Us).

Sony also makes cameras, TVs, and mobile phones, but in the latter two markets they have lost market share to Samsung and Apple.

Share price is expected to be $184 down the road.

4

Activision Blizzard

image

Not a great year for Activision Blizzard. Certainly not for many of the employees who work there, or those who have left due to harassment scandals and a toxic workplace culture.

There’s been court action and plenty of concern from both Xbox and Playstation about what the frack is going on at this company. Current CEO Bobby Kotick surely won’t remain in place for much longer.

Not surprisingly, the share price has dropped faster than a dead player in Call of Duty, but it did show signs of recovery on Friday. Back in February 2021, the share price was $103. Now? $57.

This should be a no-brainer investment, especially if more COVID lockdowns are incoming. Analyst future target price is $125 per share.

And yet…it probably won’t get anywhere near that for a while. And it doesn’t deserve to until the company is safe for all employees to work at and everyone there is treated with respect, regardless of their gender or skin colour.

1 Like
5
6
7

OR:

You could wait on MS to buy them! :scream:

8

https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/game-microsoft-activision-deal-ignites-151008856.html

U.S. rivals Electronic Arts Inc., Roblox Corp., France’s Ubisoft Entertainment SA and Poland’s CD Projekt SA surged – some of them are being talked-up as potential acquisition targets. The recent selloff in their shares and rising interest in gaming and the metaverse from megacaps such as Meta Platforms Inc. has raised expectations for more deals in the space.

“If Microsoft can get them over the line without any antitrust issues, the rest are all in play,” said Neil Campling, a tech analyst at Mirabaud Securities. “Electronic Arts would then be the most obvious takeout target.” Ubisoft is seen as the other potential target, but could be hurt by the family holding structure, according to Campling.

The Microsoft-Activision deal also follows Take-Two Interactive Software Inc.’s offer for mobile game maker Zynga Inc. last week. “Both recent big deals show that market leaders are undervalued,” said Piotr Poniatowski, analyst at MBank in an email. “Microsoft deal shows also that subscription model is the future of gaming, which should support companies with large catalog of games.”

2 Likes
9

kinda bumping an old thread, and kinda sorta unrelated - but ended up buying some Twitter stock yesterday in my IRA (cause I’m a contrarian) - and I’d like to point out that so far, I think I’ve earned more money on it than Musk has :smiley:

Personally, I can’t stand the guy - and hope that he loses the lawsuit that Twitter filed against him - but at the same time, I definitely don’t want him running the platform either. So somehow I want to have him lose & have to pay up, but still not end up buying it. Not sure how that would go, but in my head-canon, it’s all good.

I also am holding onto a decent chunk of Activision stock at this point, because I see it as being mostly guaranteed - so even though at the moment it’s not much different than what I paid for it, if all goes well I should see a bit of a bump.

10

Assuming the $95 activision purchase price per share is the right number to use for their common (haven’t looked at the deal in detail), it’s a pretty incredible discount than most pending M&A. Assuming the deal doesn’t become a political chess piece, it’s a 20%+ short term return available.

That said, always remember there are thousands of smart-ish to genius rich people who look at this stuff all day every day; don’t invest speculatively more than you would put into a poker game against Phil Ivey.

1 Like