On Thursday evening, Ubisoft announced the previously announced restructuring to deal with the ongoing crisis. A few days later, the hoped-for effect on the stock market seems to have already fizzled out.
Game developer Ubisoft averted a new low in its own share price at the start of the week. On Monday afternoon, the price of the French group’s shares fell to around 10.43 euros, just above the single-digit low reached in September 2024.
This is bad news for the company based in Saint-Mandé. After all, it was only on Thursday evening that Ubisoft made public the restructuring that had been expected for weeks – and caused a stir in the process: with Assassin’s Creed, Far Cry and Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six, three of the company’s biggest brands became part of a new subsidiary.
Tencent investment has no effect
The developer valued the new company at around four billion euros. At least the acquisition of 25 percent of the shares by tech giant Tencent gave rise to this assumption. The Chinese company, which already held shares in Ubisoft, paid a good one billion euros.
However, there is little sign of a spirit of optimism on the stock market in the wake of the restructuring. On Friday, there was only a small price gain, which fell again during the trading day. After the weekend, the price continued to fall – around 20 percent compared to Friday’s high and to a total valuation of around 1.4 billion euros.
Uncertainties continue
One possible reason for the continuing negative trend of Ubisoft securities could be insufficiently resolved uncertainties. What exactly does the outsourcing of the three top brands mean for the workforce? What will happen to the studios that are not involved in the premium trio? And what does it mean for the game franchises? All of this remained unanswered in the announcement. And even a livestream held the next day by Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot was unable to provide lasting answers to all of the questions.
For the German market, the only thing that is certain so far is what was already made public at the end of January: jobs will be cut. This includes around 65 in the Düsseldorf branch. The consequence of persistent failures, after which Assassin’s Creed had become Ubisoft’s last straw as a result of multiple postponements.
