Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Ubisoft Q1 FY 2024 sales conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star one and one on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star one and one again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to our speaker today, Yves Guillemot. Please go ahead. Welcome, everyone, and thank you for joining the call today. In fiscal year Q1, we delivered a better-than-expected performance, and we continue to progress on our two-pillar strategy of reaching a significantly larger audience and growing our recurring revenues. We showcased our promising big brand games and live experiences during the highly regarded Ubisoft Forward events. It positioned us favorably for the upcoming months and years. In addition to increased engagement and positive sentiment from players, Ubisoft Forward was an important moment of pride for our teams across the world. This quarter, we also made progress on our free-to-play titles, with many test phases, which provided a great amount of fresh, new data to our teams as they are getting the game ready for release. We also announced that Level Infinite will be publishing Assassin's Creed Codename Jade on mobile. It reflects the powerful appeal of our brands and the significant value creation our shareholder agreement with Tencent is delivering. This publishing partnership greatly enhances our medium-term mobile footprint while delivering significant financial value to the benefit of Ubisoft and its shareholders. Last week, we were pleased to announce that we will be presenting to our shareholders vote, two highly qualified independent directors candidates, Katherine Hays and Olfa Zorgati, increasing the board woman representation from 45% to 55%. Over the past decade, Ubisoft board has demonstrated its commitment to continuously adapting its governance to the best standards. While the appointment of Katherine and Olfa, together with the additional director refreshment made over the last three years, we further strengthened the board with a diverse set of relevant skills, experiences, and perspectives. Additionally, the board appointed Claude France as Lead Independent Director and Chair of the Audit & Risk Committee, who has deep digital and tech expertise, as well as experience in managing large-scale organizations. As we look to the future, sorry, we are confident that our sharp focus on our biggest opportunities, coupled with significant cost reductions, will result in meaningful progression of revenue, earnings, and cash flow generation over the coming years. I now hand over the call to Frederick. Thank you. Thank you, Yves, hello, everybody. Our Q1 net bookings of EUR 268 million came out ahead of our guidance of around EUR 240 million, notably driven by our live games over performance. Net bookings were down 9% year-on-year as Q1 this fiscal year, no new release. Our solid back catalog stood at EUR 246 million, down 4%, MAUs across console and PC were 36 million, up 2% year-on-year. This quarter, despite a fierce competitive landscape, Rainbow Six Siege net bookings and daily active users grew double digits year-on-year, driven by strong activities throughout the quarter on the back of the year eight, season two content and seasonal events. All the live games performed solidly, in particular, The Crew two and The Division 2. Total digital net bookings reached EUR 241 million, down 8% year-on-year, and represented 90% of our total net bookings. PRI stood at EUR 127 million, down 17% year-on-year, and represented 48% of our total net bookings, mostly explained in terms of comparison with last year by the positive impact of Dawn of Ragnarök, that was launched towards the end of March 2022, as well as the live release late last year. Mobile amounted to EUR 28 million. The quarter was marked by Ubisoft Forward and our return to a conference live from L.A. We unveiled gameplay and new trailers from some of our most anticipated upcoming releases, including big brands like Assassin's Creed Mirage, Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, Star Wars Outlaws, and long-lasting live games such as The Division Resurgence, The Crew Motorfest, and Skull and Bones. As you said, the event was well-received and was an important milestone for the company. What's more, I would like to note Star Wars Outlaws just made the cover of Edge Magazine as it leads the magazine's lineup of the 100 new games to watch. Today, we confirmed our fiscal year 24 guidance. We continue to expect strong top-line growth, non-IFRS operating income of approximately EUR 400 million, and positive cash flow from operations. The other large game present in this year's lineup will be released in fiscal Q4. We continue to progress on our cost reduction program. Our employee base is now down by more than 1,000 compared to last September, mostly thanks to a tight control on recruitment. Looking at Q2, we expect net bookings of around EUR 350 million. This reflects ongoing solid back catalog trends, the first weeks of release for The Crew Motorfest, as well as pre-shipments for Assassin's Creed Mirage, and limited initial contribution from XDefiant. As a reminder, Q2 last year included the first material benefits from the mobile licensing partnership, which was behind that quarter's EUR 115 million mobile revenue growth. In the coming days and weeks, with dedicated test phases for The Crew Motorfest, Skull and Bones, and Assassin's Creed Codename Jade, we will continue to iterate and optimize our games as we are getting closer to their releases. We are now ready to take your questions. Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question, you will need to press star one and one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star one and one again. We will take our first question. This question comes from the line of Charles-Louis Scotti from Kepler Cheuvreux. Please go ahead. Your line is open. Yes, hello. Good evening. I have three questions. If I made the first one on your Q1 beat, I see that Player Recurring Investment is down 17%, it means that what drove the beat is the full game downloads. I'm just curious to hear which games perform best during the first quarter. Is it again, Assassin's Creed Valhalla? Second question on your Q2 guidance. Please correct me if I'm wrong, if I remember well, you booked last year EUR 110 million from the licensing deal in Q2. Restated from this impact, your guidance basically suggest 17% growth year-on-year. It doesn't look particularly, you know, aggressive considering the expected release of The Crew Motorfest, initial, you know, shipment of Mirage and potentially a good launch of XDefiant. If you could be a little bit more explicit on this guidance, it would be very helpful. Then my third question is on Skull and Bones. It seems that you have, you know, lowered the price of the games, at least on the Ubisoft Store when it comes for to pre-orders. Does that mean that you have also lowered, generally speaking, your expectation for this title? Thank you very much. Thank you, Charles-Louis. On the Q1 bit, actually, yeah, it came from back catalog, and it came primarily from our live services. You're right, full games have done well, but the overperformance primarily came from live services, including Rainbow Six Siege, that came back with a strong turnaround as we expected to come at some point in time. We're happy to see that coming now. We also had The Division 2, The Crew 2, Riders Republic, that did well, and Far Cry 6 as well. On the Q2 guidance, we actually set the guidance the usual way, I would say, to give you a bit more color. In terms of pre-shipments of Assassin's Creed Mirage, it's gonna be very limited, as Mirage will be released on October 12th. We took a prudent initial revenue assumption for XDefiant. We will be relying on actually a pretty solid back catalog. As we said, we've been happy with the overperformance and very limited decline in the 1st quarter with our live services doing well. Yes, we're happy to come with The Crew Motorfest launch. Actually, it's interesting to see that The Crew 2 has been enjoying all-time record activity levels since the beginning of July after the launch of the reveal of the gameplay of Motorfest. We have a good momentum on the brand. We will be leveraging a good beta coming soon, and so we're confident with the success of Motorfest. That will expand the brand on, as a long-standing live service on the open world racing genre. On the Skull and Bones, the game will be launched with full price, and the game continues to make good progress. We will have the beta coming at the end of August, and that will be a good milestone to see where we are. It's, we are very happy with the progress we are making. Okay, thank you. If I understand well, the game is still planned to be released at full price next gen? Please continue to stand by. Your conference will resume shortly. Excuse me, this is the operator. You are reconnected. You may resume. Excuse me, this is the operator from the speaker line. Are you able to hear me? Hello? Hi. Hello, do you hear me? Yes, I do hear you. Please stand by. We are reconnecting the speaker line. one moment. Mm-hmm. Thank you. Mm-hmm. Please continue to stand by. Your conference will resume shortly. Hello? Operator? Hi, this is the operator. Yes, you're connected. You may resume. Okay. Apologies for the technical issue we just had. We are open again, to answering your question. Apologies again. Okay, it looks like we need to move on to the next question as the previous line has been removed. One moment, I will take the next question for you. Yes. Did they hear the answer to the previous question? Your line did cut out midway of the answer. Would you like to take the next question? No, we'll. Maybe we can repeat. The second and third. We can ask the previous analyst to ask this question again. No, no, we are not going to ask again the question, but we are going to take back the question. I think the maybe question one was answered. Maybe we are going to come back to question two, which was about the Q2 guidance, and question three about Skull and Bones. Okay. We are doing back these questions, these answers. Can you put us back to the call? We are on the call. Yes, you are live. Please continue. Okay. shall we... Sorry, everyone for that. Sorry, everybody. I will start again, the question two on the guidance for the second quarter. What I was saying is that we set the guidance the normal way, I would say. In terms of key building blocks, we are relying on a solid back catalog for Q2. We've been happy to see the other performance in the first quarter, and we've seen solid performances across all our live services. That will be relying on these dynamics, and notably with the strong rebound we've seen on Rainbow Six Siege and moving forward. The second building block will be indeed, we'll get the benefit of the first weeks of releases of The Crew Motorfest. That will come mid-September. We are happy to leverage a strong momentum that we see on the brand, notably with The Crew 2, that enjoys record level of activities, all-time record activity levels. We are coming soon with a new close beta ahead of launch. The demand is that we will have a very limited pre-shipment impact from Assassin's Creed Mirage. That will be released on October the twelfth. The last, as we said, we are factoring in an assumption of prudent early revenues of XDefiant. Yeah, to answer the third question about Skull and Bones. Skull and Bones will be published as a full price game, we continue to make really good progress on the game, we will be able to unveil the game with a close beta at the end of August. We think you will be happy with what you will see. We've seen a good progress on all the tests we've been doing on Skull and Bones recently, so it's budding well. Thank you. We will take our next question. Your next question comes from the line of Nick Dempsey from Barclays. Please go ahead. Your line is open. Yeah, good evening, guys. I've got three questions. Just for the pre-shipments of Assassin's Creed Mirage in September, I think you said limited amount. Can you give us a bit of a sense of whether we're talking about a very minor factor in the quarter, or could it be as much as tens of millions of EUR that you are factoring in from that? Second question, regarding the other large game, how far ahead would you normally announce a game of this kind? If we got to September and it was still an unannounced game, would that not be rather late for you to have the usual marketing buildup and still release before the end of March? The third question, does your guidance for non-IFRS operating income allow you to delay one of your smaller games? I'm not saying one of the big ones, but one of the smaller games on your slate. Have you got that kind of flex? On the first element, Nick, I won't give you much more color. As I said, it's a very limited pre-shipment impact, and knowing that Assassin's Creed Mirage will come in on October 12th. That's what we can say on this right now. On the other large game, we will have a strong marketing plan, and it's well-shaped, but we can't provide any more information at this stage. In terms of our AB guidance, we are factoring in the games that we announced to be released this fiscal year. All these games are well oriented to release on time, and that's what is reflected in our current guidance. Thank you. We will take our next question. Your next question comes from the line of Mike Hickey from The Benchmark Company. Please go ahead, your line is open. Hey, Yves, Frederic, John, good evening, guys. Thanks for taking my questions. Just the first question is, can you hear me, guys? Fingers crossed here. First question, just on the, you know, one of your peers came out with the numbers yesterday, like you, had strong results for the June quarter. Like you, they didn't raise their numbers for the fiscal year, also ending in March, or I guess it wasn't calendar year. Regardless, just they sort of highlighted concerns, Yves, on the economy. I'm just curious, given the size of your slate, sort of over the next three quarters, sort of updated view of what you're thinking on the economy here and how that could impact your performance, and how much that played into you not raising your numbers for the year, given the outperformance was so strong in the first quarter, second quarter looks good as well. The second question, looks like Microsoft is gonna be successful, fingers crossed, on Activision, you know, acquiring Activision. Curious if you feel if they are successful here over the next couple months in getting this deal done, if this will sort of be a catalyst for further consolidation in the space? If so, curious your view on remaining independent in a industry that's consolidating, I know the backdrop of your partnership with Tencent and all the benefits there. Yves, historically, you've been a real champion of remaining independent. Just sort of curious, given all the changes in the environment, if you do think consolidation is coming here, given the success, seemingly success of this deal, how you'll play into that? Thanks, guys. Well, thank you for your question. On the Microsoft side, Activision, Microsoft, I think it's good news that the transaction can go through, because it's really showing the power of IPs and where the industry is going. There will be lots of opportunities to in the future for all the companies. It's also showing the value of IPs that, you know, can be now on console PC, but also mobile, and become more worldwide brands. When we say worldwide, it's really everywhere in the world, and that's a fantastic opportunity. Microsoft is saying that the mobile part of the Activision deal is important, so all the investment we are making to be stronger on mobile are also in line with that. All those elements will help the value of the company to grow. Mike, on your first question, yes, we've been happy with the overperformance in the first quarter. Of course, we'd, we still have important 3 quarters ahead of us, so, as is customary, we don't change the guidance at this stage. No, the economy has nothing to do with the fact that we're not changing guidance. It's really what we usually do at this stage of the year after a first quarter. Thanks, guys. Good luck. Thank you. Thank you. We will take our next question. Your next question comes from the line of Ali Naqvi from HSBC. Please go ahead, your line is open. Hi, good evening, I hope you can hear me, and thank you for taking the questions. Mm-hmm. Just in terms of the contribution mix, from the smaller and larger titles, I mean, could you give us any steer as to what you think, when you came up with your guidance, what the split could be from the larger and smaller titles? Is it something like, you know, 70/30 in terms of sales and net operating income, or is it more or less extreme? Secondly, obviously there's been more updates in the industry and on game title releases, with everyone marketing for, you know, calendar Q3, and then going into Q4. Is there anything that's happening in with respect to how your releases are being perceived, especially after the Ubisoft Forward event, that makes you more confident or less confident on how the games could perform? Can you share any data at all, for example, you know, pre-orders or social media impressions or anything of that nature? Finally, is there anything you can say about the commercial terms regarding Project Jade? I appreciate it's very early. On the first question, Ali, what we can say is that we expect the strongest contributions from Assassin's Creed Mirage, from Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, from the large game that we mentioned. Now, as we said, also, to give you more color, we had mentioned that we expect limited contribution at this stage from our free-to-play games. On the second point, yes, we've been very happy with the feedback from the Ubisoft Forward events. We've seen player sentiments being very good across the board. It's really boding well for us. Notably, as we mentioned, Star Wars Outlaws has been very well received, it's really leading the games to be expected in the future. That's really, really positive. On the third question, what we can say is the royalty on Jade is going to be a good royalty, so it's something to consider. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. We will take our next question. Your next question comes from the line of Thomas Singlehurst from Citi. Please go ahead. Your line is open. Sorry about that. Yeah, Tom here from Citi. Thank you very much for taking the question or questions. Three, if it's okay. One, I'm just interested on whether you have any view around the delay to the Avatar movies impacting the launch of the Avatar game. Just, I mean, I appreciate it's a multi-year project and maybe it doesn't have a huge impact, but it would be great to get your thoughts on the delay to the forthcoming sort of movies, and whether that alters your thinking on the game launch. Second, which is vaguely linked, is on actors' strikes. Is there any fallout for you or the video games industry more broadly from actors' strikes, in particular in getting some of these games over the line this year? Then the third question, it's a general question on testing. I mean, it feels to me like you're doing a lot more testing. I suspect you're probably not, and you've always done it, you're just talking about it a bit more. Can you just talk about how, you know, both closed and open betas, you know, how that process has evolved and how much more visibility and confidence that gives you on the success or otherwise of forthcoming titles? Thank you. Yes, on the Avatar movie impact, what we see is that it's been, the movie has been a gigantic success, we are coming with a brand that enjoys a very strong awareness and that will actually benefit the game. Our focus now is really to come with a beautiful world that will pay tribute to the movie. On the actors' strike topic, what we see today is that we don't expect a meaningful impact on the video game business. From our film and television business, we are watching, of course, what's going on there. There are a few projects being stopped, but we expect a limited impact for the company. In terms of the test, yeah, you're right. We've been focusing a lot on this, and notably for our live services and even more so for free-to-play. It really helps us create first of all, a strong link with our players that really enjoy the transparency and the feedback loop with the developers. Also it really helps us optimize KPIs and notably retention ahead of launch. Very clear. Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you. We will take our next question. Your next question comes from the line of Nicolas Langlet from BNP Paribas Exane. Please go ahead. Your line is open. Hello, good afternoon, everyone. I hope you can hear me okay. I've got three questions, please. The first one on the fifth announced game. Can you confirm it's not Star Wars Outlaws that you presented in June, and it's another one that has not been revealed? First question. Secondly, it has been reported that actually that Star Wars game might not be released on third-party PC distribution platform. I just want to see if it's something you could consider. Can you remind us what is the share of Ubisoft Play today in your total PC sales? Finally, you have announced that Tencent is the partner with who you signed last year, the licensing deal on mobile. On that project, can you tell us who is developing the game? What sort of investment you are making with that, and how the structure of the partnership with Tencent works? Do they need to recoup the entire upfront payment before starting paying you royalties or not? Thank you. Thank you, Nicolas. On the first question, I would suggest you, we don't assume anything at this stage, and we will, of course, provide more information in due time. On the second question, we have nothing to announce on this topic yet. As for the Ubisoft channel on PC, it's really going well and actually is growing. In terms of the Assassin's Creed Codename Jade project, we will provide the name of the developer at a later stage. Overall, to your question, with Tencent, as we said on the licensing part of that we mentioned last year, it's coming with an upfront significant upfront payment. As Yves mentioned, there is also good royalty structure attached to it. We can say it's a very large amount, for the development of the game. It's a very big project. Okay. And it's bigger than Rainbow Six Mobile or The Division Resurgence, for example? It's in the same ballpark. They are very big games, with large investments. Okay. Clear. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. We will take our next question. Please stand by. Your next question comes from the line of Brian Fitzgerald from Wells Fargo. Please go ahead. Your line is open. Thanks, guys. Maybe two questions that you could opine on. We wanted to ask about in terms of, you know, obviously a very rich slate back half of the year, curious if your thinking has changed recently on whether or not you decide to slide games out, not for development prospects, but just because of your own rich slate or a rich industry slate? Maybe secondly, related to that, is just could you update us with what you're seeing in terms of developer efficiencies? The industry was obviously hit with some delays. Have those normalized now? Any changes in terms of how you think about timing dynamics between when you have something out in beta, and then when you tune it up, and when it actually gets released? The windows between beta and release. What we see on the production side is the teams have been now more well adapting to the work from home and the return to the office. There's more people in the offices. There's a very good now training of the newcomers, and there's a good collaboration between the team. We see an increase in the industry and in Ubisoft in the capacity to come on time and predict where it's coming. On your first question, Brian, we have spread our titles from Q2, September, to Q4, in a way to optimize our launch window. We feel good about the way we set up the release dates across the year. Thank you, Yves. Thanks, Frederick. Thank you, Brian. Thank you. This is now the end of the question and answer session. I would now like to turn the conference back for closing remarks. Thank you very much for all your questions. Sorry for the small incident, and, have a good day or a good evening. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.