Moody's withdraws Activison Blizzard's Baa1 senior unsecured notes ratings after Microsoft purchase and note exchange

Moody's Investors Service (Moody's) has withdrawn Activision Blizzard, Inc.'s (ATVI, Activision) Baa1 senior unsecured notes ratings and outlook. Previously, the rating was on review for upgrade. The Baa1 senior unsecured ratings were placed on review for upgrade on January 18, 2022 following Micros...

Moody's withdraws Activison Blizzard's Baa1 senior unsecured notes ratings after Microsoft purchase and note exchange

Moody's Investors Service (Moody's) has withdrawn Activision Blizzard, Inc.'s (ATVI, Activision) Baa1 senior unsecured notes ratings and outlook. Previously, the rating was on review for upgrade. The Baa1 senior unsecured ratings were placed on review for upgrade on January 18, 2022 following Micros...

Dropping Coverage

Model update

This report contains forecasts updated for reported Q218 results. Neither our financial nor PSU estimates are materially changed and we remain Overweight with a 12m PT of $365.

V/MA: strong core, adjacencies more competitive

V/MA remain core long term holdings with secular cash to card tailwinds driving strong growth long term, supported by developments such as contactless. Valuation remains reasonable, although newer growth areas such as B2B face greater competition. We remain Overweight V/MA, raise our price targets to $173 and $250 respectively and currently favour V which trades on a PE of 28x, three turns lower than MA.

Banks: Trading update and 3Q18 preview

Market volatility has moderated significantly since the beginning of the year, ceasing to be a tailwind for the banks' trading revenues in 3Q18. Despite the strong IB pipelines (announced M&A is up 40% YTD), fee pools have been affected by timing issues and are down 15-20% across the industry for the current quarter. Medium term, the outlook remains positive thanks to improving GDP growth, benign credit conditions, rising interest rates and a deregulatory focus. We have lowered our 3Q18 EPS estimates by 3% on average. Our longer term forecasts decline only modestly by 1%. C remains our t...