Washington (Business Emerge), October 7: Ubisoft, the creator of popular video games such as “Assassin’s Creed,” “Far Cry,” and “Watch Dogs,” announced on Monday that it frequently evaluates its strategic alternatives. The company did not provide additional comments regarding recent reports about a potential buyout.
As France’s biggest video game developer, Ubisoft has been perceived as a takeover target for some time, suffering a 50% drop in stock market value over the past year. This decline has been largely due to repeated delays and underperformance of key titles.
Ubisoft stated it would communicate with the market when necessary. When asked about any potential acquisition offers, a spokesperson for Ubisoft declined further comment.
This statement followed a report last week from Bloomberg, suggesting that Ubisoft’s founding family, the Guillemots, alongside Chinese tech giant Tencent, might be exploring a buyout.
After the announcement, Ubisoft’s shares saw an initial rise of up to 6%, outperforming the SBF 120 index, before reversing course and falling by 1.8% as of 09:05 GMT on Monday. According to LSEG data, the Guillemot family and Tencent jointly control approximately 25% of Ubisoft’s share capital, following a 2022 agreement that allowed Tencent to acquire nearly half of the Guillemots’ holdings.
This comes during a challenging time for Ubisoft, marked by multiple delays in releasing new games and several management changes. Last month, the company’s stock price experienced another dip due to weaker-than-expected quarterly sales. The lackluster performance of its new game “Star Wars Outlaws” also followed the three-month postponement of the highly anticipated “Assassin’s Creed Shadows” to February.
Ubisoft had hoped that these two major releases would contribute significantly to a financial turnaround as it works to reduce costs and manage its debt.