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Tuesday, June 17, 2014

Capcom Is Not For Sale!

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Misinformation spreads! (But it would be cool if they were cheap...)

All of a sudden, out of nowhere, the Internet was abuzz with clickbait article titles: Capcom is for sale! And Nintendo should buy it! It reminds me of when Atlus was for sale. KoopaTV informally was hoping for Nintendo to buy them.

Wait, wait, let's step back a bit. After all, the title of this is that Capcom is NOT for sale. Very recently, Capcom announced that they wouldn't renew their takeover defense tactics that they've been doing for a bit. In layman's terms, that means that if some entity gets over 50% of a publicly traded (like Capcom) company's shares in the stock market, they have control over that company. Capcom, up to now, had strategies to prevent that from happening or to dissuade it from happening.

One of the tactics out there is called the "poison pill." So obviously I took the image from Google with the unrelated ObamaCare reference.

Nested within Capcom's short statement is the following,

"Despite of non-approval of Renewal of Takeover Defense at the 35th Ordinary General Meeting of Shareholders, Capcom will continue to focus on further preserving and enhancing corporate value and common interests of its shareholders. If there is any large-scale purchaser of Capcom stock, we will react to make necessary measures within the admissible limits of applicable laws and regulations." [Emphasis added]
That is a lot different than "Capcom is for sale." They just decided to stop tactics. They aren't going around to different companies auctioning off different IPs or anything.

KoopaTV is historically terrible at talking about stock information, but one thing I can tell is that Capcom's stock went up by 2.5% after this decision. There are, as of publishing, 67.72 million shares outstanding for Capcom, and 43.29 million out in the public. Capcom's shares are around $17.09 per share, or currently 1,746 yen. But that'll change by the time you read this since these things jump around a lot day-to-day. Point is, I don't really care about this.

So an interested party would have to buy shares off all those people at or above that current price. So some math (divide shares-outstanding by 2 to get 50%, multiply by share price) says... Capcom could be hostilely yours for as little as $578.67 million! Except it doesn't actually work that way. There are all sorts of finance-y corporate valuation models companies use where they guess what the best price is and then they ask to merge/acquire them. I'm not your finance professor, and I doubt you've even had a finance professor before. The point is, is that someone has to go through the effort to actually buy Capcom. And no one wants Capcom itself, people want Capcom's franchises. See? Trade volume for today is average, a few tens of thousands above normal isn't much for planning a takeover. People don't do stock takeovers overnight! And if they were doing a takeover, Capcom still reserves the right to fight against it. Unlike Atlus, Capcom isn't up on the auction block. And do you really think any game company is going to just do a hostile takeover of Capcom? They would do a friendly agreement first. No one is going to want Capcom that bad.

People dream about Mega Man or Ace Attorney or Monster Hunter being Nintendo-exclusive and Nintendo-managed, although Ace Attorney basically already is Nintendo-exclusive.


You'd think based off the Super Smash Bros. 4 invitational tournament that Nintendo fans are bigger fans of Mega Man than Mario. Hopefully, that's actually true. Regardless, while Capcom's franchises would be in a happier place under Nintendo's wing, they would probably be in happier places in almost anyone else's, too. Sorry Capcom. I still love you!

In a few weeks, probably two, there will be an event to ask Capcom to localize Ace Attorney Investigations 2 to North America. Would a Nintendo-run Capcom listen to us?
 

Probably not. Still, we'd be the first ones cheering if that happened.

There is some concern that if a Nintendo competitor like Sony purchased Capcom, they could prevent Nintendo from selling Super Smash Bros. 4, much in the same way KoopaTV staff member RawkHawk2010 feared way before Mega Man was ever announced. That is an absolutely ludicrous fear. You have no idea what sort of contract Capcom and Nintendo signed (I don't know either), but in all likelihood, the contract will stay if Sony buys them out.

In conclusion, this is a non-story, like the chances that Mega Man Legends 3 will be released anytime soon.


KoopaTV has plenty of real stories to tell, so stay tuned. We still have to finish up our E3 coverage with our closing thoughts, after all!


Capcom isn't the only company in trouble... There is Konami, too!

4 comments :

  1. My money is on a Nintendo run CAPCOM would localize GK2 and DGS before CAPCOM would.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. My money is on Nintendo localizing Mother 3 before Capcom localizes GK2.

      Delete
  2. I'd like to point attention to two things now:
    1. http://www.gamefaqs.com/poll/5544
    2. http://www.capcom-unity.com/ask_capcom/go/thread/view/7371/30286763/capcom-will-you-please-sale-to-2k-games?post_num=28#540011219

    ReplyDelete

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