Activision stock: buy or sell?
Updated on:
May 21st, 2019
1
Activision Blizzard, Inc. develops and publishes games for video game consoles, personal computers (PC), mobile devices, and online social platforms.
Should I buy Activision stock?
You can't be a successful trader if you don't follow a methodolgy or system that assist you in choosing companies and the correct market timing. That's why is so important to define your own trading strategy that fits your character as inversor. At Stocks2.com, we like to use very simple but trusted and powerful trend following trading strategies. Simple things usually work the best.Currently, Activision Blizzard stock doesn't match any of these trading strategies, so our recommendation is not to buy.
| Buy setup | Elegible |
|---|---|
| New all-time high | No |
| New 52 week high | No |
| Price crossing up 200d MA | No |
| 100d MA crossing up 200d MA | No |
Is Activision Blizzard stock a buy?
Everyday, hundreds of stock ratings are posted by financial analysts to indicate a particular stock's attractiveness.
At Stocks2.com, we gathered 15 ratings published for ATVI stock in the last month. The general sentiment of these ratings is bullish for ATVI stock, with 11 positive ratings.| Date | Analyst / Broker | Previous rating | Current rating |
| 2019-4-22 | Piper Jaffray Companies | Positive | Overweight |
| 2019-4-1 | Wedbush | n/a | Outperform |
| 2019-2-19 | Stifel Nicolaus | n/a | Buy |
| 2019-2-15 | BMO Capital Markets | n/a | Market Perform |
| 2019-2-14 | Jefferies Financial Group | n/a | Buy |
| 2019-2-14 | Barclays | n/a | Buy |
| 2019-2-13 | Wedbush | Outperform | Outperform |
| 2019-2-13 | SunTrust Banks | Average | Buy |
| 2019-2-13 | Needham & Company LLC | Buy | Buy |
| 2019-2-13 | Morgan Stanley | Overweight | Overweight |
| 2019-2-13 | KeyCorp | Overweight | Sell |
| 2019-2-13 | Credit Suisse Group | Outperform | Outperform |
| 2019-2-13 | Bank of America | Neutral | Neutral |
| 2019-2-11 | Benchmark | n/a | Buy |
| 2019-1-30 | Goldman Sachs Group | n/a | Neutral |
Activision stock analysis
Daily outlook
After sliding a frightening -6.37% yesterday, the videogaming company closed today at $43.45 and declined an ugly -0.37%.
After sliding a frightening -6.37% yesterday, the videogaming company closed today at $43.45 and declined an ugly -0.37%. Since SMA50d and SMA100d crossed up on May 9th, ATVI price slid a -7.20%.
Weekly outlook
Activision shares plunged -6.34% this week, ending at $43.45. Late April ATVI climbed an outstanding 5.90% in just one week.
Weekly chart tells us that price is in a simple uptrend, tested $43.17 level and now climbing back aiming its last top at $49.83. Since price and 40-weeks moving average lines crossed down by mid October 2018, ATVI fell $-33.85 per share (-43.79%). Trading stocks that are below the 40-weeks (that is, 200-days) moving average mark is not recommended by many experts, as it indicates that the stock has not enough institutional support. Far behind is the all-time high the "Call of Duty" publisher hit early October and since then the price is -48.28% below that top.
Activision stock price history
Activision IPO was on October 25th, 1993 at $1.13 per share1. Since then, ATVI stock surged a 3,745.10%, with a yearly average of 149.80%. If you had invested $1,000 in Activision stock in 1993, it would worth $37,451.00 today.
1: Adjusted price after possible price splits or reverse-splits.
Activision stock historical price chart
ATVI stock reached all-time highs on October with a price of $84.01.
Activision stock price target is $52.70
Predicting the price evolution of a stock or any financial instrument in a reliable and repeatable way is probably impossible. However, banks and other financial institutions analysts, with the help of lots of data and algorithms do their best to predict the stock prices movement. The accuracy of these stock price predictions is not very high, and you should not blindly believe and make decisions only based on what this ratings or price target predictions say. For the last 30 days we found 14 price forecasts for Activision Blizzard stock:| Date | Analyst / Broker | Action | Previous target | Current target | Diff |
| 2019-4-1 | Wedbush | Reiterates | n/a | $60.00 | - |
| 2019-2-19 | Stifel Nicolaus | Lowers Target | $57.00 | $52.00 | -8.8% |
| 2019-2-15 | BMO Capital Markets | Lowers Target | $45.00 | $40.00 | -11.1% |
| 2019-2-14 | Jefferies Financial Group | Set Price Target | n/a | $75.00 | - |
| 2019-2-14 | Barclays | Set Price Target | n/a | $55.00 | - |
| 2019-2-13 | Wedbush | Reiterates | $64.00 | $56.00 | -12.5% |
| 2019-2-13 | SunTrust Banks | Lowers Target | $49.00 | $2.25 | -95.4% |
| 2019-2-13 | Needham & Company LLC | Reiterates | $60.00 | $50.00 | -16.7% |
| 2019-2-13 | Morgan Stanley | Lowers Target | $60.00 | $55.00 | -8.3% |
| 2019-2-13 | KeyCorp | Reiterates | $64.00 | $57.00 | -10.9% |
| 2019-2-13 | Credit Suisse Group | Reiterates | $70.00 | $64.00 | -8.6% |
| 2019-2-13 | Bank of America | Reiterates | $58.00 | $54.00 | -6.9% |
| 2019-2-11 | Benchmark | Lowers Target | $87.00 | $68.00 | -21.8% |
| 2019-1-30 | Goldman Sachs Group | Initiates | n/a | $50.00 | - |
| (in average) | $61.40 | $52.70 | -14.0% |
Financials and fundamental analysis
Earnings date and Earnings per Share
On February, Activision Blizzard matched the forecasts of the experts and posted an EPS of $1.24 per share. Unfortunately, reported EPS is not yet available in our database.| Quarter | Reporting date | Estimated EPS | Actual EPS | Surprise |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2017-Q2 | - | n/a | 0.32 | n/a |
| 2017-Q3 | 2017-11-02 | 0.49 | 0.6 | 22.4% |
| 2017-Q4 | 2018-02-08 | 0.93 | 0.94 | 1.1% |
| 2018-Q1 | 2018-05-03 | 0.29 | 0.34 | 17.2% |
| 2018-Q2 | 2018-08-02 | 0.3 | 0.56 | 86.7% |
| 2018-Q3 | 2018-11-08 | 0.44 | 0.47 | 6.8% |
| 2018-Q4 | 2019-02-12 | 1.21 | 1.24 | 2.5% |
| 2019-Q1 | - | n/a | n/a | n/a |
| 2019-Q2 | - | n/a | n/a | n/a |
| 2019-Q3 | - | n/a | n/a | n/a |
Annual financial results
In 2018, Activision Blizzard annual revenues soared a more than good 6.88% to $7,500.00 million dollars from $7,017.00 marked in 2017. Instead, its income margin (compared to sales) rocketed to 24.17%, that is $1,813.00 million.| Year | Sales | YoY | Income/(margin) | YoY |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2013 | $4,580 M | - | $987 M21.6% | - |
| 2014 | $4,408 M | -3.76% | $835 M18.9% | -15.40% |
| 2015 | $4,664 M | 5.81% | $892 M19.1% | 6.83% |
| 2016 | $6,608 M | 41.68% | $966 M14.6% | 8.30% |
| 2017 | $7,017 M | 6.19% | $273 M3.9% | -71.74% |
| 2018 | $7,500 M | 6.88% | $1,813 M24.2% | 564.10% |
Quarterly financial results
Activision Blizzard posted $2,381.00 million in revenues for 2018-Q4, a 57.47% up compared to previous quarter. Reported quarter income marked $651.00 M with a profit margin of 27.34%. Profit margin skyrocketed a 10.15% compared to previous quarter when profit margin was 17.20%. When comparing sales to same quarter last year, Activision Blizzard sales marked an extraordinary gain and boosted a 16.54%.| Quarter | Sales1 | QoQ2 | Income1/(margin) | QoQ2 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2017-Q2 | $1,630 M | - | $243 M14.9% | - |
| 2017-Q3 | $1,618 M | -0.74% | $188 M11.6% | -22.63% |
| 2017-Q4 | $2,043 M | 26.27% | $-585 M-28.6% | -411.17% |
| 2018-Q1 | $1,965 M | -3.82% | $500 M25.4% | -185.47% |
| 2018-Q2 | $1,641 M | -16.49% | $402 M24.5% | -19.60% |
| 2018-Q3 | $1,512 M | -7.86% | $260 M17.2% | -35.32% |
| 2018-Q4 | $2,381 M | 57.47% | $651 M27.3% | 150.38% |
| 2019-Q1 | $1,825 M | -23.35% | $447 M24.5% | -31.34% |
Activision Blizzard ownership
When you are planning to buy a stock, it's worth to have a look its ownership structure.Activision Blizzard shares owned by insiders (that is, founders, CEO, CTO, main executives or other management staff) currently counts a 1.15% of all shares.
Bearish positions for ATVI stock account 0.00%, no big difference from last month.
The following table compares ownership indicators for other stocks related to Activision Blizzard:
| ATVI | EA | GLUU | MSFT | PTE | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Market cap | $33.3 B | $28.7 B | $1.3 B | $972.1 B | $167.3 M |
| Total shares | 766.0 M | 299.6 M | 145.2 M | 7,660.0 M | 24.2 M |
| Float shares | 757.5 M | 297.5 M | 114.9 M | 7,560.0 M | 14.0 M |
| - Institutional holdings (%) | 91.5% | 96.7% | 59.1% | 74.7% | 55.9% |
| - Insider holdings (%) | 1.1% | 0.5% | 20.9% | 1.4% | 52.0% |
| Shares in short selling | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% |
Activision summary
| Tuesday, May 21st, 2019 | |
|---|---|
| Open | $43.97 |
| Close | $43.45 |
| Day range | $43.40 - $44.06 |
| Previous close | $43.61 |
| Session gain | -0.37% |
| Average true range | $1.93 |
| 50d mov avg | $46.27 |
| 100d mov avg | $45.55 |
| 200d mov avg | $55.63 |
| Daily pattern | |
| Weekly pattern | lb01a |
Activision Blizzard performance
Stocks performance is always measured in comparision to the market or competitors and related stocks in the same industry. In the following table, we compare Activision Blizzard to Electronic Arts, Glu Mobile, Microsoft, PolarityTE, and Take-Two Interactive Software:| Stock | 3m | 6m | 12m |
|---|---|---|---|
| ATVIActivision Blizza... | 5.54% | -12.49% | -38.71% |
| EAElectronic Arts | -0.28% | 15.70% | -27.46% |
| GLUUGlu Mobile | -2.46% | 28.95% | 56.73% |
| MSFTMicrosoft | 14.78% | 24.11% | 31.11% |
| PTEPolarityTE | -44.41% | -53.62% | -72.70% |
| SNE | 9.00% | 5.05% | 12.74% |
| TTWOTake-Two Interact... | 19.16% | -1.66% | -7.38% |
Activision Blizzard competitors
One check before trading any stock is to review a list of its competitors, in this case for Activision Blizzard. We chose 6 companies as Activision Blizzard competitors as they are in the same industry or have similar market objectives.- Electronic Arts (EA)
- Glu Mobile (GLUU)
- Microsoft (MSFT)
- PolarityTE (PTE)
- (SNE)
- Take-Two Interactive Software (TTWO)
Latest Activision stock news
- Seeking AlphaA 'Deep Dive' On Activision BlizzardMay 21, 2019
- InvestorPlaceIt’s Not Game Over for Activision Blizzard StockMay 3, 2019
- InvestorPlaceFriday’s Vital Data: Zynga, Activision Blizzard and SquareMay 3, 2019
- InvestorPlaceActivision Blizzard Earnings: ATVI Stock Down Despite Q1 Earnings BeatMay 2, 2019
- InvestorPlace3 Big Stock Charts for Wednesday: Charles Schwab, Activision Blizzard and American International GroupMay 1, 2019