EA's $55B Deal to Go Private, Walmart CEO's AI Warning, CEO Changes 9/29/25

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Carl Quintanilla (0:47)

Market Moving Insight and Analysis joined Jim Cramer, David Faber and me, Carl Quintanilla on the opening bell hour of CNBC Squawk on the Street. Good Monday morning. Welcome to Squawk on the Street. I'm Carl Quintanilla with Jim Cramer and David Faber at Post 9 of the New York Stock Exchange. Futures are higher coming off a down week. Got some M&A to work with. We are on shutdown watch, not knowing if we'll get, for example, a jobs number on Friday, 10 year 415 Our roadmap begins with video game giant Electronic Arts going private in a $55 billion deal. We'll break down the details.

David Faber (1:18)

Plus, we are tracking multiple C-suite changes this morning. Comcast, GSK, Barrick and CSX all announced leadership shake-ups. And there is an AI wake-up call. It is from Walmart. Its CEO, Doug McMillan, out with a strong warning on the impact of AI when it comes to the overall workforce.

Carl Quintanilla (1:38)

Let's begin with Electronic Arts, though, agreeing to be taken private in this $55 billion deal. David, I assume you're all over this. Got some historic levels in terms of LBO history.

David Faber (1:47)

It's the biggest of all time. You know, we go back, 2007 was the TXU deal that I can remember well, of course, having reported on it. KKR and TPG didn't work out well. Natural Gas in Texas right before the fracking revolution and prices and what happened there. You got RJR Nabisco, you wanna go way back? 1989, but what's interesting here, guys, well, any number of things, of course. The stock had moved up on Friday because of reporting that the deal was imminent. And in fact, that did prove to be the case. This is the Saudis buying EA for all intents and purposes. This is the PIF of Saudi Arabia. It's going to be by far the largest single investor in the overall consortium. It's a $36 billion equity check, $20 billion in debt financing from JPMorgan, who I'm told, who just brought in a couple of weeks ago. So they weren't part necessarily putting this deal together, which I'm told as well, started back in the spring. So there have been talks since the spring. Silver Lake, obviously, the very prominent private equity firm, part of the Dell buyout, part of the Endeavor buyout, part of the TikTok USA purchase we've been reporting on lately, will be an investor, Jared Kushner's firm as well. But Kushner acting as much, if not more, also as somebody putting all the parties together and making sure it all sort of happened along the way. They are both writing checks, that is Kushner's firm and Silver Lake, but the check from the PIF, in addition to the 9.9% that they already own of EA, is by far the largest single part of that overall 36 billion. And that's why I say essentially this is the Saudis taking control of EA, which will become a private company, of course. That's why they call it a go private. In the release, it can be a bit confusing. It says it will close first quarter of fiscal year 27, but that really means second quarter of next year 26 So that makes more sense from a timing standpoint. There's sort of what you're going to get, 210 bucks a share. That's the premium at least to the unaffected share price. Also about a 17 percent premium, Jim, to the all-time high. Twenty-three times the last 12 months worth of EBITDA, the company, that compares to about 19 years worth that Microsoft paid for Activision, the last very large deal we saw. They love sports in the kingdom, without a doubt, and in fact, the Crown Prince is a gamer.

Jim Cramer (4:11)