What if you bought Activision Blizzard in 2005?
US Tech · Games. The hindsight answer, year by year, against the only benchmark that matters.
Could you have picked it? Play19.0× · S&P 500 same money: $5,763
$1,000 in Activision Blizzard at the start of 2005 would be worth about $19,000 today — 19.0 times your money, and ahead of the S&P 500 over the same stretch.
What happened: Activision Blizzard was bought by Microsoft in 2023.
The story
Activision was founded in 1979 by programmers who left Atari, and it went bankrupt once before being rebuilt by Bobby Kotick in the early 1990s. In 2008 it merged with Vivendi's games unit, bringing World of Warcraft maker Blizzard under the same roof as Call of Duty. The combination produced a reliable hit machine, and the shares rose sharply during the late 2010s, helped by the purchase of King, the maker of Candy Crush, in 2016.
The decline was cultural before it was financial. A 2021 lawsuit from California regulators alleging widespread harassment and discrimination triggered staff walkouts and investor anger, and the shares fell well below their 2018 peak. In January 2022 Microsoft agreed to buy the company for 95 dollars a share, roughly 69 billion dollars in total. The deal faced months of opposition from the US Federal Trade Commission and Britain's competition regulator before closing in October 2023, after concessions on cloud gaming. Shareholders got cash, and Kotick left shortly afterwards.
The lesson: A takeover bid can rescue a damaged stock, but merger arbitrage carries regulatory risk; Activision holders spent almost two years unsure whether 95 dollars would arrive.
$1,000 invested at the start of each year
| Bought in | Price then | Worth today | S&P 500 would be | Multiple |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2005 | $5.00 | $19,000 | $5,763 | 19.0× |
| 2007 | $8.00 | $11,875 | $4,789 | 11.9× |
| 2008 | $12.00 | $7,917 | $4,626 | 7.9× |
| 2010 | $11.00 | $8,636 | $6,071 | 8.6× |
| 2012 | $12.50 | $7,600 | $5,312 | 7.6× |
| 2015 | $20.00 | $4,750 | $3,301 | 4.8× |
| 2018 | $63.00 | $1,508 | $2,519 | 1.5× |
| 2020 | $60.00 | $1,583 | $2,092 | 1.6× |
green = beat the S&P 500 · red = lost money
Best entry point in our set: 2005, turning $1,000 into $19,000. The S&P 500 from that same year: $5,763.
On this day
- 18 January 2022: Microsoft bids for Activision Blizzard
- 9 July 2008: Activision and Blizzard join forces
Now try it without hindsight. The wheel decides the year and the asset class, you pick the position, ten seconds a pick, and we simulate to today. Activision Blizzard is one of 258 positions on the wheel — including the ones that went to zero.
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