Carl Icahn will no longer involved with Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc. (NASDAQ:TTWO) after today, and investors don’t seem to be too happy about it. The company announced this morning in a press release that it reached an agreement to back all of the activist investor’s shares. Shares declined as much as 6% in premarket trading after that announcement was made.
Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc. (NASDAQ:TTWO) said it will repurchase Carl Icahn’s shares. It agreed to buy all of the Icahn Group’s shares at a price of $16.93 per share, which was Monday’s closing price. The company said the buyback is not part of its existing share buyback program, in which the board authorized it to buy back 4.2 million shares at an average price of around $17.38 a share.
A few years ago the company and Icahn agreed that if he sold all of his shares, his board designees would resign. As a result, Brett Icahn, SungHwan Cho and Jim Nelson resigned from the game maker’s board this morning. Take-Two will now have a board made up of five directors, who may consider revising the size and make-up of the board again in the future.
Take-Two feels confident going into 2014
In all, Carl Icahn’s group holds about 12.02 million shares of Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc. (NASDAQ:TTWO), and the company will pay a total sum of about $203.5 million for them. The company said it will be funded by its cash and cash equivalents on hand. After the completion of the repurchase, the number of shares left outstanding will be about 81 million. The transaction between the Grand Theft Auto creator and Icahn’s group is expected to complete today.
Regulatory filings indicate Carl Icahn has owned the full 12.02 million shares since about November 2012. He spent much of last year acquiring his sizeable stake in the company. That last batch of Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc. (NASDAQ:TTWO) shares was bought by Icahn in November 2012 at a price of around $11 to $11.50 per share. The activist investor could be walking away with a profit in the neighborhood of $67 million to $68 million on this one, depending on how much he paid for his earlier shares.
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