During Ubisoft’s financial conference call for investors and analysts, chief executive officer Yves Guillemot and chief financial officer Frédérick Duguet talked about the recent trend of acquisitions and consolidation.
First of all, we hear that the publisher is confident that remaining independent doesn’t mean a reduction in access to all platforms. Nintendo was brought as an example. Despite the fact that Nintendo itself publishes many games for the Switch, Ubisoft is still the most successful third-party developer on the platform, also developing games in partnership with Nintendo itself.
About the possibility of acquisitions, Guillemot mentioned that Ubisoft has always taken decisions in the interest of its stakeholders, which are both players and shareholders.
According to Guillemot, Ubisoft can remain independent thanks to its financial scale and portfolio of owned IPs.
That being said, if there was an offer, the board of directors will “of course review it in the interest of all stakeholders.”
Responding to another question asking why Ubisoft has not received offers to be acquired, Duguet and Guillemot declined to speculate on the reason or whether any offer was actually made or not.
They also reiterated that the company has high-value assets and the scale “to remain independent and create very meaningful value in the future” in terms of workforce, engineering, technologies, IP, and strongly-engaged communities.
It’s worth mentioning that Ubisoft already successfully resisted a takeover from financial giant Vivendi in a saga that lasted multiple years.
If you’d like to know more about Ubisoft’s financial results, you can check out our dedicated article from earlier today.
