By Agence France-Presse
The video game industry was rife with speculation about Ubisoft’s future Friday after the French company cancelled an earnings announcement at the last minute without saying why.
The company, famed for blockbuster games including “Assassin’s Creed”, “Far Cry” and “Just Dance”, also asked the Euronext stock exchange to suspend trading in its shares, another unusual move, raising eyebrows across the industry.
Euronext said Ubisoft shares could not be traded “until further notice” while the company simply said it would now report half-yearly results, originally scheduled after Thursday’s market close, “in the coming days”.
Contacted by AFP, Ubisoft offered no explanation.
The highly unusual moves sparked speculation over whether Ubisoft, which employs 17,000 people, is gearing up for a major announcement, possibly a takeover.
“It’s never a good sign when an earnings announcement is postponed,” said Charles-Louis Planade, an analyst at the Midcap Partners firm, saying he had been “very surprised” by the news.
In an internal email to staff seen by AFP, Ubisoft’s finance director Frederick Duguet said the company needed “more time” to finalise the results announcement, and that the share suspension was to “limit pointless speculation and market volatility over this short period”.
Analyst Planade meanwhile said that a potential takeover of Ubisoft “is one of the options on the table” after US game company Electronic Arts was taken over by a Saudi-led consortium.
Consolidation in the video game industry could be accelerating after weakness in the sector since the end of the Covid pandemic, he said.
At the end of last year, rumours surfaced that Ubisoft was talking to Chinese tech giant Tencent, which took a stake in the French company in 2018, about linking up.
Since then, Ubisoft announced the creation of a subsidiary holding its three top sagas “Assassin’s Creed”, “Far Cry” and “Rainbow Six”, in which Tencent is to get a 25-percent stake in return for injecting around $1.3 billion.
The deal, to be finalised by the end of the year, is to alleviate Ubisoft’s debt burden.
In a cost-cutting drive since 2023, Ubisoft has shut some of its studios outside France, and cut staff by 3,000.
Ubisoft’s share price has dropped by close to 50 percent since the start of the year, weighed down in part by a mixed reception for its new games.
It was quoted at 6.77 euros at Thursday’s close.—Agence France-Presse
