In short: The arb closed: the PIF / Silver Lake / Affinity Partners take-private completed mid-week at a $53B market cap. His read on the buyers, not the deal: "I think that they got a relatively steal, because they didn't pay a big premium" — a net-cash balance sheet and ~$3B of forward two-year EBITDA for roughly a 10-15% premium to where the shares traded last year. Skinny on an unlevered free-cash-flow yield, attractive once debt is added.
The Electronic Arts takeover completed mid-week — Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund, Silver Lake and Affinity Partners bought it for $53 billion, closing out the arbitrage position.
Singh's observation is about the price the buyers got, not the trade. They paid only about a 10-15% premium to where the shares traded last year for a company with more cash than debt and roughly $3 billion of forward earnings before interest, tax and depreciation. On an all-cash basis the return looks thin, but once the buyers add borrowed money to the balance sheet — standard in a private-equity deal — it becomes attractive. "They got a relatively steal."
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In short: Where the big arb funds' flows are concentrated — "Electronic Arts closing next week," alongside Roku, UNF, VAL and AES.
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In short: Arb housekeeping: EA shares moved higher on positive press around its take-private, with phase-one clearance in the Euro zone.
Deal housekeeping: EA shares rose on positive press around its take-private buyout, including a first-stage antitrust clearance in Europe. A live merger-arb situation moving toward approval.
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In short: Taken private by a Saudi PIF-led consortium at a $55B enterprise value (7.2x average net bookings). Its live-service sports franchises give EA the most predictable revenue base in the cohort — "exactly what a private buyer pays up for." (Now delisting into private hands; recap, not a stance call.)
EA makes the big annual sports games (the FIFA-style football titles, Madden). A group led by Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund (the Public Investment Fund) just bought the entire company and took it private at a $55 billion valuation — meaning EA will stop trading on the public market. The logic: EA's sports games are "live services" that people pay into year-round, giving it the steadiest, most predictable revenue of any game publisher, and that reliability is exactly what a buyer will pay a premium for. Referenced here as the private-buyout benchmark in the peer comparison, not a recommendation.
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Verbatim excerpts from the public transcripts (auto-pulled at each mention's timestamp, lightly cleaned). Timestamps link into the video; "source page" opens that commentator's full analysis at this row. Click a mention's header line to expand it (one open at a time). For personal study — not investment advice.