Viacom has revealed that they intend to sell Harmonix following the release of third-quarter results that showed earnings falling 59 percent due to write-downs at the Rock Band developer.
For those who don’t speak Wall Street, this essentially means Viacom has recognized the reduced value of Harmonix, which they purchased just four years ago for $175 million. As the Associated Press reports, Harmonix has been an earnings drag on Viacom for the last several quarters, and they expect a $299 million loss from “discontinued operations” after selling the developer. Tellingly, outside of Harmonix’s poor performance, Viacom’s earnings were otherwise up for the quarter.
It’s still too early to say who might be in line to purchase Harmonix, but as CVG notes, Cowen & Company analyst Doug Creutz is already making an obvious guess: “We speculated several weeks ago that, given the declines in the music genre, it would make sense to (re)combine the Guitar Hero and Rock Band franchises, thus we believe Activision Blizzard is a potential buyer.”
