Did the deals
pay off?
Four gaming companies. Bigger revenues. A more complicated picture of profitability.
Explore the researchGrowth is only half the story.
Average margins before and after acquisition.
Nazara uses a margin before depreciation. EA's original baseline includes some Codemasters operations.
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A descriptive study of four companies. These comparisons show changes around acquisitions, not their causal effects.
Before and after
Pick an acquirer. Follow the numbers across the deal.
The shaded band marks the completion fiscal year.
What to take from this
View all before-and-after measures
View annual data for this measure
All four at a glance
Revenue expanded in every case. The other measures tell different stories.
Margin, returns and cash flow changes are in percentage points. Revenue is the annualised ratio of window averages, not organic growth. Nazara's margin uses a different definition.
What the deals left on the balance sheet
Goodwill grew as a share of the US companies' assets. Take-Two later recorded $5.9 billion of goodwill impairments across FY2024 and FY2025.
Goodwill is the residual after a purchase price is allocated to identifiable net assets. An impairment lowers its carrying value; it does not uniquely measure a deal's success or failure.
The chart is unavailable. The figures are available in the table below.
View goodwill data
Read the evidence with context.
A consistent window, with a caveat
Three-year averages exclude the completion fiscal year for Take-Two, Unity and Nazara. EA's programme spans FY2021 and FY2022; its original FY2019 to FY2021 baseline includes partial Codemasters consolidation.
Using an entirely pre-programme EA baseline changes its operating-margin decline from 2.1 to 5.2 percentage points.
Comparable numbers need comparable definitions
US company operating margins use operating income. Nazara's measure is before depreciation. Returns use year-end assets and equity; impairments and financing can change those denominators.
Sources you can inspect
US financials are supplied from 10-K filings via SEC XBRL. Nazara's consolidated figures come from Screener.in. The calculations reproduce the supplied CSV; a full filing-level reconciliation remains outstanding.
Read the revised manuscriptFor information only, not investment advice.