Today Ubisoft announced its financial results for the fourth quarter of the fiscal year 2018-19, ended on March 31, 2019.
Below you can read the full results, which are described as a “record performance” in-line with Ubisoft’s targets.
Of course, all the relevant numbers are firmly in the black, and Ubisoft boasts over 100 million active players during the fiscal year between console and PC.
We also get the outlook for the current fiscal year, ending on March 31, 2020.
On top of Ghost Recon: Breakpoint, which Ubisoft plans to release on October 4, there will be three additional unannounced AAA titles coming in the fourth quarter (between January and March 2020).
The press release included a comment from Chief Executive Officer Yves Guillemot, who explained the publisher’s performance and view for the near-term future.
“The incredible work of our teams has enabled us to reach the non-IFRS operating income and free cash flow targets we set ourselves three years ago. We ended fiscal 2018-19 with another outperformance from back catalog and digital, including PRI, confirming the success of our transformation and the increasingly recurring profile of our business. Our momentum continued to be buoyed by the quality of our games and live services, as well as our ability to reach a wide audience on more and more platforms and geographic regions.
The video game industry is at the dawn of a deep-seated transformation, which, as barriers between platforms and between geographic regions continue to disappear, should allow us to reach five billion players over the coming ten years. These major changes will be driven in large part by the growing success of console and PC franchises on mobile and the advent of cloud gaming. The latter will allow for, among other things, appealing multi-screen offerings and the creation of amazing new experiences that make use of unprecedented technological capacities. A clear indicator of the future scale of this transformation is how an increasing number of platforms are competing with one another to obtain quality content and access to communities of engaged players.
Ubisoft is ideally positioned within this overall context. We are building our organization sustainably while retaining our agility. We are striving to foster a strong corporate culture, aimed at attracting the best talent. We directly own all of our key brands, which gives us excellent visibility. Leveraging our extensive worldwide network of studios, and drawing on our collaborative approach, we have an unrivalled production capacity, delivering high-quality content at a sustained pace.
Over the past years, we have built up a close relationship with our communities. These communities are highly engaged and constantly growing, and they are at the heart of the value of our games. And lastly, with Uplay, we now have a high-performing and fast-growing on-line service and distribution platform, enabling us to embed these close community ties for the long term.
Considering the numerous value-creation opportunities that await us in the coming years, we are speeding up our investments in our teams and studios in order to support the Group’s growth and continue to increase our profitability over the coming years”
As usual, the report included a breakdown of Ubisoft’s of video game sales by platforms and by region. North America is still the biggest market for the publisher, with Europe and the rest of the world following.
The PS4 topped Ubisoft’s sales for the whole fiscal year, followed by PC, Xbox One, Mobile, and Switch. Interestingly, the PC is actually at the top of the latest quarter (between January and March), followed by PS4, Xbox One, mobile, and Switch.
We also get the schedule for the release of the upcoming games by the publisher.
If you want to compare, you can check out the results related to the past quarter, which were published in February.