“Grand Theft Auto V” Making Shareholders, Creators Rich
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LEON NEAL/AFP/Getty Images(NEW YORK) — Grand Theft Auto V sales are racing away like a carjacker.
This latest iteration of the violent videogame, which retails for about $55, had sales of $800 million on Wednesday, its first day out, hijacking the previous record for first-day sales set by Grand Theft Auto IV — $310 million.
Analysts expect GTA V’s sales to hit $1 billion by month’s end.
So where’s all that money going?
Investors, certainly, are profiting. And that might include you, if your 401(k) has any stock in New York’s Take-Two Interactive Software, parent company of the game’s maker, Rockstar Games.
In an analyst’s report earlier Friday, Michael Patcher of Wedbush said the game’s performance had “exceeded our bullish expectations,” adding, “we believe there could be upside to our estimates.”
The stock closed up Thursday to $17.43 and the shares are up more than 50 percent this year. Bank of America analyst Justin Post gave it a “buy” rating.
According to public filings, the largest private shareholder in Take-Two is financier and corporate raider Carl Icahn’s Icahn Associates, which, with a little over 12 million shares, owns about 13 percent of the company. Mutual funds that own the stock include Fidelity, Vanguard and TIAA-CREF.
It’s likely some of the creative talent responsible for the game’s success — including programmer Alex Hadjadj, artist Aaron Garbut, and writers Dan Houser, Rupert Humphries and Michael Unsworth — are getting rewards over and above the appreciation of any stock they own. When asked by ABC News if employees were making out like bandits, a spokesman for Take-Two declined to answer.
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