Ubisoft is facing pressure from an investor to take the company private as its shares continued to fall on the London Stock Exchange.
Less than a week after shares of Ubisoft fell to a 10-year low due to the reception of Star Wars Outlaws, an investor in the company is making a public push for the company to be taken private. This has led to shares falling even further down to €13.66 as of the close of trading on Monday.
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In a publicly released letter, AJ Investments is says that Ubisoft is an undervalued company and should be worth up to €40-€45 per share. The hedge fund says it has concerns about the future of Ubisoft as well as its current management.
“Ubisoft at current state is mismanaged and shareholders are hostages of Guillemot family members and Tencent who take advantage of them,” the letter said. “Management is focused on pleasing investors with beating quarterly results and not focusing on long-term strategy to provide exceptional experience for the gamers. Our company has extensive knowledge about the gaming industry and we were longterm shareholder in Activision Blizzard and we started our Ubisoft position couple weeks ago and still adding to it.”
The company suggests that the company goes private “with Tencent as a significant partner and shareholder”. In addition to that, it wants Ubisoft to “implement a comprehensive cost reduction program and optimize staffing levels to be more comparable with industry leaders.”
“This will involve difficult decisions but is necessary to ensure long-term viability and competitiveness,” they say while also mentioned that they are aware of the layoffs Ubisoft has made in “recent years”.
Lastly, the fund suggests making management changes, including the hiring of a new CEO to replace Yves Guillemot.
Ubisoft has yet to respond to the letter or requests for comment. For what it’s worth, AJ Investments holds less than a 1% share in Ubisoft, per the Wall Street Journal.
Do you think there’s anything to this push to take Ubisoft private from a minority investor? For more Insider Gaming, check out what could finally be revealed on Tuesday morning.
Sell the company to Tencent or have Ubisoft food into EA with the guillemot’s finally leaving
Well, what did you expect from the constant nonsense about outlaws, and the whole thing about the aptly named Assassin’s creed shadows. If you go against the gamers they’ll stop playing your games.
So making their protagonist look like Pedro Pascals ugly twin sister wasn’t a good idea? I know, you should make your next protagonist look like the guy with the deformed face in Goonies. That will surely get gamers to bu your game.
No thank you. Tencent is terrible, EA is nothing without Maden or FIFA. It’s been bad for games across the board.
If anything, these unrealistic investor deadlines need to stop on games and let them take a year or more than investors allow them.
Letting Ubisoft being owned by another company would be terrible. Ubisoft is definitely undervalued. Especially seeing as start up game companies with one game one IP are worth the same….
This company holds less than 1% who are they.
This is some of the most out of touch shit i have read in my life. $40 – $45 a share, i want the cocaine those shareholders have been passing around the meetings cause it must be damn good stuff. Honestly with the current way Ubisoft views gaming and their talent they deserve every failure they have gotten. The management at this company couldn’t find their way out of a paper bag with light streaming in the top, they are incompetent, money grubby, morons who wouldn’t know how to make a good game if you gave the the blueprint and documentation.
Girl-Bossing and race baiting their way to bankruptcy. Are we supposed to be surprised?
I’ll give Ubisoft a hint. Make a bunch of games directed specifically for men, with strong male leads in badass settings, and focus on the story and gameplay.
I can assure you that you ‘will’ become rich, and everyone, even leftists, children, and the gays will throw money at you.
But didn’t Poopisoft tell us “To Be Comfortable Not Owning Your Games”?
So what’s the problem?
Fck around and found out
Imagine if they just made good games. It’s really not that hard. If they stopped shoving their weird dogwater views in to games and started focusing on gameplay/story they probably wouldnt be producing so many flops
Tencent owns 30% of Larian Studios, your favorite studio who brought you BG3
Tencent and Sony owns 30% of FROM SOFTWARE.
IDK why people are karening about Tencent when Tencent is even funding Epic Games and your favorite Reddit 😀
Let’s not forget digital extreme who was bought by tencent with the condition theys kept theirs free will to do as theys please
Let the old oversized, underperforming Giants like Ubisoft and EA be put to rest. There are hordes of new innovative, independent developers that know their audience and wants to cater to them, take the lead.