While mergers and acquisitions are all the rage now, veteran French publisher Ubisoft is open to being acquired, but they’re confused why none have come yet.
The news of Ubisoft’s openness to an acquisition or merger comes form their third-quarter earnings release (via GamesIndustry.biz), where the company says their “assets have never been so strong at a time when the value of assets has never been so high.”
A post-earnings conference call with the company asked company CEO Yves Guillemot and CFO Frédérick Duguet if Ubisoft is open to being acquired.
“We have always taken our decisions in the interest of our stakeholders, which are our players, employees and shareholders,” Guillemot said. “So Ubisoft can remain independent. We have the talent, the industrial and the financial scale, and a large portfolio of powerful IP.”
He added, “Having said that, if there were an offer to buy us, the board of directors would of course review it in the interest of all stakeholders.”
Further into the call the execs were then asked why Ubisoft hasn’t gotten offers to sell, considering the value in their breadth of intellectual properties.
“We will not speculate on why people haven’t made any offer,” Duguet responded, only to have Guillemot interject and specify “if any offer was made,” to which Duguet said “Absolutely.”
“So I can’t comment on that any further. What we can say is as we mentioned, we high-value assets,” Duguet said. “We have the scale to remain independent and create very meaningful value in the future because we have scale in terms of the workforce, as well as engineering, technology, IPs, and totally engaged communities.”
While most of Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed games tend to be successful, their new IPs like Hyper Scape failed to gain traction, with the games ultimately being dropped. Their ambitious new pirate IP Skull & Bones is also heavily delayed and has no release window in sight.
The company is also focusing on their other reliable franchises to bring in revenue, like the recently announced Splinter Cell remake, their upcoming reboot for The Settlers, and of course – the latest Tom Clancy game, Rainbow Six Extraction, which just launched – you can find our thorough review for it here.
