(Bloomberg) -- Ubisoft Entertainment SA shares fell to their lowest in more than a decade after the French video game company cut its outlook on weaker-than-expected sales and delayed the hotly anticipated Assassin’s Creed Shadows.
Shares fell 19% to €9.25 at 10:27 a.m. in Paris on Thursday, the lowest since November 2013.
While Assassin’s Creed Shadows is “feature complete,” it will now debut Feb. 14 2025, the company said in a statement on Wednesday. The game was initially planned for November. The company said it needed more time to improve the game after its recent Star Wars release had underperformed.
Ubisoft has over the past couple of years struggled to recover from a pandemic-era production crunch that resulted in delays in the release of new games and canceled titles. Pushing back the latest Assassin’s Creed title means it skips the lucrative holiday period.
Ubisoft said it now expects bookings of €1.95 billion ($2.2 billion) in fiscal 2025, which ends in March. Analysts were expecting €2.42 billion, on average, according to a Bloomberg survey.
Net bookings in the fiscal second quarter are now projected to be €350 million to €370 million, the company said. It previously forecast about €550 million.
“The revised targets are mainly a reflection of decisions taken for Assassin’s Creed Shadows and the softer-than-expected launch for Star Wars Outlaws,” Ubisoft said.
Star Wars received middling reviews after its August launch. Ubisoft said it would strive to avoid similar mistakes with Assassin’s Creed Shadows ahead of the holiday season.
“This will enable the biggest entry in the franchise to fully deliver on its ambition,” according to Ubisoft. Unlike prior entries in the Assassin’s Creed series, the upcoming title will not include a Season Pass, which supplied new content in exchange for an added fee.
The latest guidance miss is Ubisoft’s fifth in six years, said analysts Doug Creutz and Mei Lun Quach from TD Cowen. The board has not held management accountable for “repeated failures in a way that serves the interest of external shareholders,” they added.
“Ubisoft has both high-quality game IP and talented developers; despite that, the last six years have been an almost non-stop parade of game delays, followed by game launches that are still undercooked, as well as misallocation of capital to games that probably never should have been green-lit in the first place,” they said.
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