Pachter on Take-Two buyout: "A sale is inevitable"

Wedbush Morgan's Michael Pachter is in no doubt that EA will now acquire Take-Two, telling videogaming247, "A sale is inevitable."

EA made a $26 per share tender bid for Take-Two this morning, a move which has just promoted Take-Two's management to warn its shareholders off accepting the offer for at least ten working days.

Pachter explained that, in his opinion, the desired delay was to allow time for more offers to emerge.

"I think Take-Two hopes that a competing offer may surface," he added. "This hope is somewhat naïve, given that the whole world has been aware of EA's overture for the last 18 days, and no interested parties have surfaced. In my view, EA is in a unique position to pay all cash and consolidate Take-Two's operations into its own while eliminating most of the overhead. Other video game companies could do the same on the operations side, but none have the cash. No media company could gain the operating synergies. So there will not be any other purchasers."

Smell that? It's blood.