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Activision looking up
Activision (ATVI) hasn't been looking to bright these days from a shareholder point of view. While they're doing fine in terms of sales, their delayed 10-Q form due to stock option issues tends to worry investors. Now, Activision is starting to look up. In their recent 8-K filling, Activision placed on hold the concerns over the 10-Q. According to Activision, the stock option issue is in regards to the timing of the options, which may have fallen outside of SEC-allowed dates. The dates are mainly an issue with taxes and should be a minor issue at best (compared to other, bigger stock option issues like insider-trading that is). On top of the previously announced expectation that Activision will win big because of its strong support of the Wii, the easing of the tensions over stock options is a breath of fresh air to investors. Michael Pachter (the face of video game analysts) expects the company to do well in 2007. Seems that Activision is back on track.
The mind of a video game analyst
Analysts are the life-blood of investors. We need some kind of opinion of where a company may be going; if we don't get it, we feel uneasy about a company's future. Michael Pachter is one of those people. In an interview with N'Gai Croal, Pachter primarily discusses his bullish Xbox 360 predictions and how they've essentially fallen flat. He cites the bigger impact the lack of HD sets in homes had as well as miscalculated the price-insensitivity of the hardcore crowd. He thinks a simple price cut won't solve the matters (at least until his magical $150 mark is hit). Pachter further states he expects the PS3 to sell at the same rate as the 360 did since launch. Given Pachter's history, we're beginning to wonder if he is on a stretch of bad luck, or shouldn't be listened to at all. He did predict the PS3 would outsell the Wii (then called Revolution) by up-to 60% this year as well as predicted 2006 to be a slow year for gaming (deemed wrong by his future prediction to buy GameStop stock); neither prediction came out close. We guess it is true; analysts are people paid to have an opinion.
