Ubisoft delaying its earnings call and suspending stock trading at the last minute brings turnaround narrative into question
Ubisoft Entertainment SA abruptly delayed its 2025-2026 earnings call at the last minute, sparking speculation and panic amongst shareholders and investors in the industry alike. The first-half fiscal year earnings conference was postponed just 15 minutes before it was set to begin, making it even more irregular than other delayed earnings calls.
Ubisoft announced the delay in an unexpected press release that caught analysts and shareholders off guard and subsequently halted trading in its shares at Euronext Paris.
The suspension of share trading occurred at the market open on November 14 and is expected to remain in place “until the publication of its first-half 2025-2026 in the coming days.”
The official announcement via Reuters reads as follows:
Ubisoft announces the postponement of the release of its results for the first half of fiscal year 2025-2026.
Ubisoft has requested Euronext to halt trading of its shares (FR0000054470) and its bonds (FR001400DV38, FR001400MA32, and FR0014000O87) from the market opening on November 14, 2025, until the publication of its first-half 2025-2026 results in the coming days. Ubisoft will inform the market of the date on which trading will restart.
Industry watchers and investors have described this as one of Ubisoft’s “weirdest delays yet,” which has brewed concerns of turmoil at the publisher. Ubisoft has gone through a turbulent year with numerous project cancellations, like a cancelled post-American Civil War Assassin’s Creed, an ambitious sci-fi project called Project Scout due to development costs, and a new mainline Splinter Cell game, which was reported to be in development for more than a decade.
Amid the halt in trading and delay in the earnings call, Ubisoft’s CFO Frederick Duguet addressed staff in an internal email that Ubisoft’s stock had been paused to “limit unnecessary speculation and market volatility.”
According to Insider Gaming, the internal email reads as follows:
Hello everyone, I wanted to let you know that we are taking extra time to finalize the closing of the semester, and as a result, we will publish our first-half earnings results in the coming days instead of tonight.
Due to legal regulations, we cannot share more information with you at this time. To limit unnecessary speculation and market volatility during this short delay, we have asked Euronext to suspend trading of our stock until the results are announced.
We know this is likely to raise questions and drive media coverage. I encourage you all to listen to the conference call, which will be available via the Investor section of our site – just after the results are released, so that you have a more detailed view of our earnings. Thank you for understanding.
Analyst Daniel Ahmad of Niko Partners chimed in, stating that this could imply an acquisition of sorts or an accounting or financial issue at the publisher. However, Ubisoft has provided no further information as of November 15, leaving investors and industry watchers in limbo.
This comes at a time when not only speculation indicated that Assassin's Creed: Shadows may have had softer-than-expected sales but Ubisoft removed one of its longest-standing Assassin's Creed directors in what can only be described as an unceremonious exit at the very least even as rumors continue to accumulate about a potential acquisition of the troubled publisher and game developer over the last year.
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