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    Ubisoft shares drop 33% following its ‘major company reset’ announcement

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    Ubisoft shares drop 33% following its ‘major company reset’ announcement

    Ubisoft’s share price dropped sharply this morning following its announcement of a “major company reset”.

    On Wednesday the Assassin’s Creed company detailed a complete restructure that will see its creative operations split into five separate divisions.

    The organizational restructuring, which has been in the works for a year, is designed to help the French publisher “reclaim its creative leadership” and “drive a sharp rebound”, following a turbulent few years of disappointing game launches and plummeting stock value, which recently resulted in a minority sale to Tencent.

    Wednesday’s announcement hasn’t helped the share price situation, however, with CNBC reporting that Ubisoft‘s share price dropped 33% this morning.

    At the time of writing, the share price currently stands at €4.36, down from €6.64 when the stock market closed on Wednesday – a drop of slightly more than a third.

    This marks the lowest share price for the company in just over 14 years. The last time the share price dropped below €5 was back in late 2011.

    After that point, Ubisoft saw a dramatic change in fortunes, with the company’s price continually rising throughout the 2010s, culminating in a peak share price of €107.90 in July 2018 (according to TradingView), the same year as such releases as Assassin’s Creed Osyssey, Far Cry 5, The Crew 2 and South Park: The Stick of Truth.

    Since the start of the 2020s, however, Ubisoft’s share price has seen a gradual decline, to the extent that its current share price drop today means it has now dropped 95.9% compared to that July 2018 high point.

    Ubisoft shares drop 33% following its ‘major company reset’ announcement
    Over the past 15 years, Ubisoft’s share price has seen a gradual increase, followed by a gradual decline.

    As part of its announcement on Wednesday, Ubisoft stated that it expected to make an operating loss of around €1 billion for its current financial year ending March 2026, following a €650 million write-down caused by the restructure.

    It also announced that it was cancelling six games – including its remake of Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time – and delaying a further seven.

    Ubisoft is also accelerating its cost reduction initiatives, it said, and is now aiming to reduce its fixed costs by an additional €200 million over the next two years.

    The company wouldn’t comment directly on the number of layoffs that could happen as a result of the restructuring and cuts, but regarding cancelled projects, CFO Frederick Duguet said, “There are some people who will be refocused on other big projects, and some may leave the company”.