Electronic Arts Goes Private in $55 Billion Deal Close
Electronic Arts (EA) delisted from Nasdaq after closing its $210-a-share, $55 billion take-private deal, capping a fiscal year in which net bookings hit a record $8.026 billion.
Electronic Arts (EA) completed its acquisition by Public Investment Fund, Silver Lake and Affinity Partners on August 4, 2026, ending its run as a public company after the videogame maker's stock stopped trading and was pulled from Nasdaq. The transaction closed at $210 a share in cash, the same price agreed when the deal was signed on September 29, 2025, and the $55 billion enterprise value held steady through every interim filing between signing and close.
The close arrived on the back of a fiscal year that showed a widening gap between bookings and reported revenue. Net bookings for fiscal 2026, the year ended March 31, 2026, reached a record $8.026 billion, up 9% year-over-year, while net revenue rose just 1% to $7.531 billion. That divergence traced to swings in deferred revenue tied to game launch timing rather than to underlying demand.
The clearest example came in the fiscal third quarter, when net bookings jumped 38% year-over-year to $3.046 billion on the strength of the Battlefield 6 launch, a sharp reversal from a 13% bookings decline in the prior quarter. Net revenue for that quarter, by contrast, was roughly flat at $1.901 billion, and net income fell to $88 million from $293 million a year earlier as a $1.145 billion positive swing in deferred revenue kept cash bookings out of the current-period income statement.
The pattern reversed by the fiscal fourth quarter, when deferred revenue from the Battlefield launch began converting to recognized revenue. Net income for that quarter climbed to $461 million from $254 million a year earlier, and diluted earnings rose to $1.81 a share from $0.98. Operating cash flow told a similar story of recovery: after falling to $130 million in the fiscal second quarter from $234 million a year earlier, it surged to $1.826 billion in the third quarter on the Battlefield bookings wave before settling at $580 million in the fourth, up 6% year-over-year; full-year operating cash flow reached $2.553 billion, up 23%.
Among EA's franchises, Apex Legends carried the year. The battle-royale title returned to double-digit bookings growth in the fiscal second quarter, held that pace in the third, and posted its strongest bookings quarter of the year in the fourth, finishing fiscal 2026 up double digits. EA SPORTS FC moved in the opposite direction, with bookings growth slowing from high-single digits in the third quarter to mid-single digits for the full year, even as growth continued across FC Online and FC Mobile.
EA suspended its share buybacks as the take-private process advanced. The company repurchased no stock in the fiscal fourth quarter, down from $1.375 billion and 9.8 million shares a year earlier, and bought back just $750 million for the full fiscal year versus $2.500 billion in fiscal 2025. EA also stopped hosting earnings calls and providing forward guidance starting in the fiscal fourth quarter as the deal neared completion.
With the transaction closed, the going-private announcement carries no revenue, bookings or earnings figures of its own, marking the first EA release in years without those disclosures. Future financial detail on the business will come only through the company's pending annual report and any go-forward SEC filings tied to its new ownership structure.