(AOF) – Ubisoft announced on Wednesday evening the upcoming launch of Ubisoft +, its subscription service, on Xbox. The company also announced that it will bring Rainbow Six Extraction, its tactical co-op FPS, to Xbox Game Pass and PC Game Pass members when the game launches on January 20.
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= / Key points / =
-Third independent global video game publisher created in 1986, owning the flagship franchises Assassin’s Creed, Just Dance, Watch Dogs, Far Cry and the Tom Clancy series (Splinter Cell, Ghost Recon, Rainbow…) with 141 million active players;
– Revenue of € 2.2 billion, split between North America for 50%, Europe for 37% and Asia-Pacific for 11%);
– Games available on any medium: 33% on play stations, 21% on XBoxes, 23% on PCs, 11% on Nintendo and 8% on mobiles;
– 5 strengths for the business model: ownership of all brands, integration of technological innovations into R&D policy (Google Stadia type for Assassin’s Creed Odyssey), control of internal production at 96%, then ramp-up of the recurrence of revenues (57% provided by the “back catalog”) and profitability through digitization;
– Capital held by 2 reference shareholders – 15.9% of the capital and 23.3% of the voting rights by the founding brothers and the Guillemot family and 4% by the employees, Yves Guillemot being Chairman and CEO of the Board of administration of 11 members;
– Solid balance sheet, with € 1.7 billion in equity, € 80 million in net debt and € 1.6 billion in cash.
= / Issues / =
– Strategy carried out for the community of players:
– Creation and production of video games on all media, dematerialized, multi-player and multi-platform via Ubisoft Connect,
– Development of franchises,
– Respect for player data,
– Quality of infrastructures, reinforced by the acquisition of the host i3D.net;
– Innovation strategy led by the Knowledge management and Technological Group departments on the one hand, and the Innovation Lab on the other hand:
– Open to animation and film via Motion Pictures (The Raving Rabbids series),
– Developing streaming and cloud gaming;
– Environmental strategy steered by the BEGESet report, praised by Sustain Analytics:
– Use of renewable energies for French and Canadian data centers,
– Sequestration of GHG emissions and reduction of emissions per employee by 8.8% in March 2024, compared to 2019,
Member of Playing for the Planet;
– Fallout from the integration of Ketchapp, some games of which will be integrated into the Weixin portable – 980 million users – of Chinese Tencent, and development of a new Starwars game with Lucasfilm Game;
– Visibility of the activity with an order book equal to the annual directory figure;
– Deployment of a new brand, Immortals Fenyx Rising.
= / Challenges / =
– Strong seasonality of the activity: sales concentrated between September and January, hence the closing of accounts at the end of March and dependence of income on the Assassin’s Creed and Far Cry franchises;
– Ambitions in the production of films and series with the new Film & Television division;
– Market under-valuation compared to its competitors;
– Impact of the pandemic: increase of nearly 43% in annual sales, then decline in 1
er
trimester;
– 2021-2022 objective of a net booking between stable and slight decrease and an operating profit between 420 and 500 M €.