In This Article:
Ubisoft Entertainment (UBI.PA) stock is surging following the successful release of "Assassin's Creed Shadows," which hit 2 million players over the weekend.
Wedbush Securities managing director of equity research Michael Pachter joins Market Domination hosts Josh Lipton and Julie Hyman to discuss the game's success and the pressure on Ubisoft.
To watch more expert insights and analysis on the latest market action, check out more Market Domination here.
Michael, great to see you, as always. So let's talk about Ubisoft here. It's surging about 8% in today's trade, Michael. Does that does that move make sense to you, Michael? Is it justified?
So, so Ted, you know that I'm a sell-side senior, and I used to be head of strategic planning for an oil company. So you have me right in in the right row and the right block of of content. Um, look, I think a lot of people gave up on Ubisoft when they when they pre-announced this year, and they had started the year saying they were going to earn 400 million euros of operating profit, and they changed that to zero. So, you know, clearly a disappointing year. And a lot of people really were spooked when Assassin's Creed was delayed out of holiday. Um, you know, the company said the reason for the delay was they were trying to polish the game and get it right. Uh a big contributor to that was the trolls on X and other social media platforms were really bashing the game because it has a black samurai as a main character, and it has a female ninja as a main character. And the trolls just said it's not right. You can't have women or black people in Japan, you know, that are powerful and strong. It happens, there really was a black samurai in real the real world back in 1600, and this is historically accurate. So, you know, there was a lot of concern that the game might get bad reviews. It got great reviews, and in fact, two different reviewers have told me it's their game of the year. Um it's pretty clear Grand Theft Auto was going to be game of the year, but you know, absent that competition, this would be right up there. So the stock is rallying because expectations were low, and the company has delivered something that's really good. The early metrics, two million users the first two days is a lot, so they're doing really, really well.