Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) bet on gaming publisher Activision is set to gain over $1 billion with Microsoft’s planned takeover of the company, a Bloomberg report said.
The PIF started building a position in the company at the end of 2020, but shares had declined after the PIF’s investments, according to public records examined by Bloomberg, which said that the PIF owned about 37.9 million shares in Activision at the end of September.
“The deal — if it completes — will help rescue PIF’s bet on the gaming publisher, whose shares had fallen more than a third from the time its investment was first reported to last week. The fund built its stake over the last three months of 2020 and the first half of 2021. While filings don’t show the purchase price, if the fund paid the average price in each of those three quarters, its stake would’ve been acquired at an average of about $89 per share.”
The rise in stock price after news of the pending takeover pushed the PIF’s position up $1.1 billion, Bloomberg reports.
That would make its Activision investment the latest success for the PIF, which recently saw its stake in carmaker Lucid soar after the EV producer went public through a SPAC.
The PIF has around $500 billion in assets, Bloomberg said.
