Another publisher is reporting a terrific year of sales, profits, and big honking piles of cash. This time, it’s Ubisoft’s turn to crow, as based on the 2007-2008 fiscal results they have released, spotted over at Next-Gen. The upshot for the French software giant: 928.3 million euros in sales (at current exchange rates, that’s $1.5 billion US), up from last year’s 680.3 million; an increase of 36%.
The report has all sorts of good news for Ubisoft and its investors — record-high profits, lower R&D costs, earnings per share rising by 2.3 euros, and high expectations for the coming year. Ubisoft’s outlook puts their Q1 sales at 154 million euros, and sales for the full year at one billion euros.
From the report:
Yves Guillemot, chief executive officer at Ubisoft stated: “The surge in our profitability and net cash in 2007-08 was driven by continued strengthening of existing franchises such as Rainbow Six, Rayman, The Settlers and Ghost Recon, combined with the sharp ramp-up of the “Games For Everyone” casual range and the successful launch of the new releases, Assassin’s Creed and Imagine. Going forward, 2008-09 is set to be another record year for Ubisoft. We now have 14 multimillion unit-selling franchises and will be launching 5 new IPs during the period as well as new brands in the casual games segment.”
All this awesome business talk and sales and swell games have left Ubisoft with 150 million euros in net cash. That’s a lot of money! What could Ubisoft do with all that money? Why, now is the time to be bold! Ubisoft could take these high profits and use them to fund all kinds of new games. Maybe a game whose production process is already underway, that would be a good use of that money. Something based on an underappreciated IP, and this time, they could market it properly. Oh, the possibilities!
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