Ubisoft just announced its financial results for the full fiscal year 2022-23, related to the period between April 2022 and March 2023.
Net bookings for the fiscal year were €1,739.5 million, down 18.3% year-on-year. The company reported a loss of €585.8 million. Within the revenue, €1,485 were on the digital marketplace, 85% of the total. €1,002 were recurrent spending (IE: microtransaction, season passes, etc.), 58% of the total. €1,004 million were spent on games released in previous fiscal years, 58% of the total.
The cost reduction plan enacted by the company has led to a reduction of the headcount by 700 units since the end of September 2022.
Ubisoft is targeting "strong growth" in net bookings in the current fiscal year (between April 2023 and March 2024) and approximately €400 in operating income with the launch of the following games. We'll hear more at the Ubisoft Forward broadcast on June 12. We also get the confirmation of the unannounced "large game" teased a few months ago. On the other hand, Tom Clancy's The Division Heartland doesn't appear to be on the menu before April 2024.
On the other hand, we hear that XDefiant will be released by March 2023.
- Assassin’s Creed Mirage
- Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora
- Rainbow Six Mobile
- Skull and Bones
- The Crew Motorfest
- The Division Resurgence
- XDefiant
- Another large game
As is tradition, we hear from CEO Yves Guillemot, who admitted that the fiscal year was a challenging one. He also mentioned that the company plans to increase the number of developers working on the Assassin’s Creed brand by 40% over the coming years, while development on the lineup mentioned above is "progressing well."
FY2022-23 was in line with our revised financial targets. While this past year was challenging for the industry and for Ubisoft, it was pivotal for the Company as we reinforced our strategic focus on our biggest opportunities, initiated a meaningful cost reduction plan and provided additional development time for our strong pipeline of content. As part of our progressive reallocation of resources, we notably plan to increase the number of talents working on the Assassin’s Creed brand by 40% over the coming years. Our teams are making headway across the board as we look to bring exciting gaming experiences, both premium and free-to-play, to players on all platforms in FY2023-24 and beyond. Development of this year’s line-up is progressing well with big brands like Assassin’s Creed, Avatar, Rainbow Six and The Division, as well as on long lasting Live Service titles like Skull and Bones, The Crew Motorfest and XDefiant. More information will be shared at our upcoming Forward event.
Ubisoft’s unique development model relies on a robust iterative design process which proved successful to enter the Open World and Live Services markets, and that we have been applying to free-to-play. While mastering free-to-play is hard, and it is very important to remain prudent, recent developments are encouraging. This indicates that we are on the right path to bring our brands to significantly larger audiences. The XDefiant closed beta reached over 1 million players with strong viewership, community feedback and retention. Similarly, we expect Rainbow Six Mobile and The Division Resurgence to illustrate our progress and we are happy to see that the gameplay reveal of The Division Heartland has received positive community reception. In line with our commitment, we are making visible iterative progress on which we can build the next steps toward ultimately delivering a breakthrough in this major market.
The industry’s prospects are promising, and Ubisoft has a great opportunity to transform its brands into truly global phenomena and build an increasingly recurring business. We have implemented meaningful evolutions throughout our organization over the past 3 years and will continue to adapt to the fast-moving environment. Ubisoft’s future will be built with the help of its talented teams, its beloved IPs and dependable technologies as well as a strong balance sheet.
The press release also included a comment by Frédérick Duguet, Chief Financial Officer, who added more color about the company's cost reduction plans.
Our iterative, talent-intensive, organic driven approach is a multi-year endeavor. We are now entering a new phase of our development, starting in 2023-24 with a significant line-up of big brands and long-lasting Live services. We continue to work on our cost reduction plan of at least 200 million euros over the next 2 years. With tight control on recruitments as well as initial targeted restructurings, our total number of employees worldwide dropped below 20,000.
The company also published a series of key metrics about its business. Among these, we see a record in active users for the Assassin's Creed franchise and strong engagement for Rainbow Six Siege.
- Assassin’s Creed: Record active users for the franchise in a year. Assassin’s Creed Valhalla now has 44% more players life-to-date than Assassin’s Creed Origins and 19% more than Assassin’s Creed Odyssey on a comparable basis, with materially higher revenue per player, leading to life-to-date net bookings up respectively +82% and +61%.
- Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege: Confirmation of the strong engagement turnaround, with playtime in Q4 strongly up +30% vs. last year. Full year PRI up 13%.
- Tom Clancy’s The Division 2: Session days up 28% YoY in Q4 leading to 36% net bookings growth over 12 months.
- Free-to-play initiatives:
- XDefiant: Closed beta reached over 1 million players with strong viewership and positive community feedback
- Upcoming test phases for Rainbow Six Mobile, The Division Resurgence and The Division Heartland
If you'd like to compare today's results with historical data, you can check out our article dedicated to the previous quarterly announcement, published in February.
