Ubisoft Q4 Up 37%, Yearly Sales Rise 24%

Ubisoft has announced that its fourth quarter sales rose 37.4 percent from €144 million to €197 million ($267.5 mil) on strong sales of GRAW2 and TMNT, beating both analyst and the company's own quarterly estimates. The publisher also announced that sales for the full 2006/2007 fiscal year were up 24.4 percent to €680 million ($923.4 mil), the company announced. Ubisoft's fourth-quarter sales beat the €152 million ($206.4 mil) target it had projected, as well as recent analyst estimates, with Wedbush Morgan's Michael Pachter recently raising the publisher's estimates from €157 million ($213.7 mil) to €167 million ($227.3 mil) following March's NPD software sales report. Ubisoft said its performance was driven by sales of Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2, which sold a million units on the Xbox 360, and its multiplatform Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie license, which has thus far sold 1.1 million units across 8 platforms. The company has also seen strong sales of previous quarter titles such as Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Vegas, with 1.7 million sales, and its Wii lineup, where Rayman: Raving Rabbids and Red Steel have seen respective sales of 830,000 and 950,000 units since the console's launch. The company also says its Petz franchise has collectively sold 3.5 million units throughout the fiscal year. The company has said that throughout its past quarter it has notably become the second largest independent publisher in Europe, with growth of 31 percent outpacing market growth of 15 percent. It has also become the number one third party publisher on the Wii, DS, and Xbox 360, and the third largest independent publisher in the U.S., with growth of 41 percent outstripping the region's 28 percent growth. Looking forward to 2008, Ubisoft has raised its full fiscal year targets to €800 million ($1.09 bil) "to reflect the quality of its games line-up and favorable outlook for the sector." The company also expects Q1 sales to rise 71 percent to €120 million ($163 million) on sales of its movie license tie-in to Sony Pictures' Surf's Up, four new games for both the Wii anad the DS, and the PlayStation 3 release of Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Vegas. Said Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot, "Our fourth quarter performance was an excellent way to round off 2006-07, a year in which we exceeded all of our targets... Our investment in games for the Xbox360, Wii and Nintendo DS systems has paid off and we have successfully broken into the casual games segment with the Petz series of games... We intend to reap the full benefits of the ramp-up of new generation consoles and grow, again this year, our presence in the casual market on the Wii and Nintendo DS systems. Ubisoft should continue to win market share and significantly boost its profitability in 2007-08."