Nioh 2 physical sales were higher than its predecessor. We will have another data point when GoT 2 launches.That's true, but we can still look at numbers to try to determine how. Otherwise, as conditions keep changing, we can conclude history has nothing to tell us and we should ignore all past data.
I don't expect anyone here to do a proper investigation, but if someone wanted to and pulled up the sales numbers for other franchises, we'd see if Shadows fit the same general trend of decreasing sales or if it's trending lower/higher.
We're not really going to though because there are too many variables out of our control. We can only accumulate different metrics and try to compare them fairly to accommodate variations in an attempt to determine general relative performance. Either people are free to present a piece of the puzzle and, pulling them all together from different pieces, draw up a picture, or we wait until someone somewhere investigates properly and present a full analysis.
AFAICS, Shadows definitely sold less than other titles, and notably different to the big sellers Odyssey and Valhalla. A decline of physical sales could account somewhat for that, which should be reflected across other titles. If digital was to account, given Shadows sales are less than half Valhalla's that launched in 2020, we should see a similar halving of sales numbers for other recent, comparable franchise releases.
UBIsoft in potential financial trouble
- Thread starter Silent_Buddha
- Start date
I can’t tell which Ubisoft ticker is their ‘main’ ticker, but either way it’s dropped double digits today. I think that closes out most discussion on if Shadows was successful or not.
I think UBI.PA (on Paris stock exchange) is the main one. The "Tencent news" climb was on 3/28 where it climbed from 13 Euro to more than 14 Euro, but the gain vanished the same day as the stock closed lower at 12.69 Euro. Now it's even lower at 11.27 Euro.
Yeah, I was gonna say... Stock valuations are often disconnected from underlying company performance. Sure, they will absolutely link to company performance when announcements are made (quarterly sales updates) however most of the rest of the valuation is driven by swings in and directionality of the larger market.
Down 40% is not a gyration lol that’s a plummet.
Stock valuations in the long run roughly equal a collective opinion on the future profitability of a company. In technical terms it’s the discounted price on future cash flow. VTI is up 5% in the past 12 months and Ubisoft is down 40%, that’s not just correlating with the rest of the market lol.
I didn't say it was, and I'm unsure of why it's "lol"-worthy.
It's down 40% YoY because they've consistently underperformed as evidenced by their quarterly earnings reports. At the same time, given the release date of the most recent AC game, I fail to see how AC sales and a downtick in stock price in the last few days are linked. Care to elaborate how you know differently?
It's down 40% YoY because they've consistently underperformed as evidenced by their quarterly earnings reports. At the same time, given the release date of the most recent AC game, I fail to see how AC sales and a downtick in stock price in the last few days are linked. Care to elaborate how you know differently?
Johnny Awesome
Veteran
This story hasn't been written yet. AC:S has done well enough to stave off Ubi's execution, but likely not well enough to propel them into the sky. How long the tail is for this game will likely matter a lot.
If sales were good, that point point towards better profitability in the future.
Maybe it sold well but if the market is this pessimistic on the company despite a huge release that tells me the release wasn’t very huge.
(Also, you did say it was, it’s right in the quoted post)
And as I also said: there's no hard data on AC sales, so then how are you connecting AC sales to a stock downtick? You've yet to substantiate such a claim, yet you keep talking about it.
The singular data element produced in this thread showed it was the #2 selling PS5 title in physical form for the prior week of reporitng, which indicates sales aren't as abysmal as you seem to be suggesting. Do you have more actual data to present?
Yet again, I feel it necessary to point out I don't have a dog in this fight -- I have not purchased a single AC game in the franchise history, and while I do really enjoy some of Ubi's titles, none of their current stuff really holds my interest. I'm not saying their AC sales are good OR bad. What I am saying is the data we have is, at very best, inconclusive, and pointing at stock volativity as any sort of sales indicator isn't based in hard, quantifiable data.
The singular data element produced in this thread showed it was the #2 selling PS5 title in physical form for the prior week of reporitng, which indicates sales aren't as abysmal as you seem to be suggesting. Do you have more actual data to present?
Yet again, I feel it necessary to point out I don't have a dog in this fight -- I have not purchased a single AC game in the franchise history, and while I do really enjoy some of Ubi's titles, none of their current stuff really holds my interest. I'm not saying their AC sales are good OR bad. What I am saying is the data we have is, at very best, inconclusive, and pointing at stock volativity as any sort of sales indicator isn't based in hard, quantifiable data.
Wall Street always has this data way ahead of the public. I’m saying if the market is continuing to devalue Ubisoft, then it follows that WS has some evidence that Shadows hasn’t sold enough to change course for Ubisoft.
This isnt ‘volatility’, this is a sustained drop. A ticker bouncing around for a few days is noise, but when there is a continued drop and sellout that says the company continues to perform under expectations and the major players in the market will continue to revise the price downwards (by selling).
Let me rephrase: if the sales data was good we’d likely see a bounce. However as is even if the sales are halfway decent they don’t appear to be good enough to reverse Ubisoft’s fortunes.
That all said; I actually do have a dog in this fight. I love Ubisoft games and I hope they get dismantled because they have been mismanaging their franchises and talent for a decade at this point.
If true, this is what's called insider trading, and it's illegal. The rest is a fan-fiction op-ed piece at best. Find data, present data, and if you have no data, then your opinion is just as valid as mine -- which is to say, it's equally invalid.
I disagree. Shadows could be a huge success and still the market might decide it's a last death-throe and not indicative of future success. As to sales data, they won't get breakdowns until Ubi is ready to offer them, which is why analysts have a job trying to guess in between press releases. There'll be estimates likely based on the same metrics we've seen/heard. We won't know what Shadows has sold until the next announcement. Certainly it's not there in the tea-leaves of share pricing.
You guys are discussing what the speculative nature of trading is.
The stock market is always representative of where things are headed, usually by 6 months. The real estate market tends to lag behind the current by about 6 months.
So what’s happening is that the investors believe the stock will be X in 6 months time just looking at their financials. So if they sell now they are getting a bargain.
At the end of the day it’s still speculative. Most people lose their shirts trading, for Ubisoft, it becomes difficult to borrow more money if their stock price is low. But other than that, the stock price can do whatever
And largely not affect the company.
Haha, yup! It's the old r/regards mantra of "it's already priced in!"
And also exactly yes to all of this. Stock prices (outside of earnings calls or some other sort of direct news) are largely speculation and not necessarily founded in anything other than which way the wind seems to be blowing. Which, again, shows that a 5% drop in any given day is an indicator of typical market volativity and not some key indicator of sales, which insofar as I'm able to discern, hasn't been communicated to anyone.
No, it isn’t insider trading and it isn’t illegal lol.
This isn’t a wallstreetbets saying originally, this is just how trading works. What made it funny on WSB is that that’s why these guys usually lost: they are trading assuming everything isn’t priced in (even things the general public doesn’t have easy access to), which is incorrect, it’s all priced in, and before our eyes Shadows sales figures are being priced in before we even know them.Haha, yup! It's the old r/regards mantra of "it's already priced in!"
The point is the Street probably has a decent idea of how Shadows sold and clearly they don’t think it’s enough. They probably don’t have literal sales figures, but for the people buying and selling stock for large funds it’s not like it’s impossible to come up with very close approximations of sales data.
There is one caveat: Ubisoft is basically a penny stock at this point so the people trading it likely aren’t reputable large mutual funds with accurate sales models, but more amateur shops, so they could absolutely be wrong about how well they think the game sold.
Which, even if true, in and of itself tells us nothing about the sales because the measure is 'enough' for what? Maybe it's the best selling AC title of all time, but as far the investors are concerned it's not enough to save the company. One could easily look at Shadows selling the best of any AC game, and then look at the cost, the time taken, Ubi's leadership, the lack of similar titles in development, the lack of consistent output of profitable titles, and determine even if Shadows sells loads, the company overall is heading nowhere.
Considering argument earlier about how little can be read into Steam concurrent user numbers, it's most perplexing why some would then try to determine Shadow's sales from share prices!
I’m not talking about raw sales, I’m talking about if it sold enough to reverse Ubisofts fortunes. I say probably not.