Ubisoft Announces Better than Expected Financial Results & Boasts Ubisoft Forward Success

Ubisoft just announced its financial results for Q1 of the fiscal year 2023-24, related to the period between April 2023 and June 2023.

Net bookings for the quarter were €267.7 million. While this represents an 8.7% drop year-on-year, they were still well ahead of the €240.0 million forecast. Digital net bookings were 90% of the total. The drop year-on-year was due to the lack of new releases. 

As usual, the press release includes a statement from CEO Yves Guillemot, who mentions that the Ubisoft Forward event in June has been "highly regarded."

This quarter, we delivered a betterthan-expected performance and we continued to progress on our two-pillar strategy of reaching a significantly larger audience and growing our recurring revenues.

We showcased our promising big-brand games and Live experiences during the highly regarded Ubisoft Forward event, positioning us favorably for the upcoming months and years. In addition to increased engagement and positive sentiment from players, Ubisoft Forward was an important moment of pride for our teams across the world.

Our test phases for our Free-to-Play titles during the quarter provided key data to our teams as they are getting the games ready for release.

We also announced that Level Infinite will be publishing Assassin’s Creed Codename Jade on mobile. It reflects the powerful appeal of our brands and the significant value creation our shareholder agreement with Tencent is delivering.

This publishing partnership greatly enhances our medium-term mobile footprint while delivering significant financial value to the benefit of Ubisoft and its shareholders.

As we look to the future, we are confident that our sharp focus on our biggest opportunities coupled with significant cost reductions will result in meaningful progression of revenue, earnings and cash-flow generation over the coming years.

Among the highlights for the quarter, Ubisoft boasts that Rainbow Six Siege's net bookings and daily active users grew double digit year-on-year, driven by strong activity throughout the quarter thanks to Year 8 Season 2 and seasonal events. 

Tom Clancy’s The Division 2 also enjoyed "strong activity" due to seasonal content,  while The Crew 2 reached record monthly active users in June ahead of the release of The Crew Motorfest. 

We also get more details about the Ubisoft Forward event, which generated "64% higher max concurrent live views and a 26-point progression of community sentiment versus the previous Forward, and total organic views surpassed 24 million. The event generated 102 million impressions on social media and more than 4,000 media articles."

As usual, the developer provided a breakdown of sales across platform families and regions, as you can see below.

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 May.