There’s this strange silence. You know the type. When everyone pretends things are normal, but you can feel something is brewing underneath.
Ubisoft halted trading of its own stock. Just like that. Pause. And this happened right before they were supposed to present their half-year results. That presentation is now pushed back “a few days”. And sure, all of this is technically allowed, but it feels a bit like someone in the kitchen yelling that you really shouldn’t come in yet because “it’s not quite ready”. You get the picture.
The CFO sent an internal email. Very polite. He says the halt is to “limit unnecessary speculation and market volatility”. Sounds soothing. But when a publicly listed company asks the exchange to stop trading its stock… you usually don’t need to prevent speculation. There already is speculation.
And Ubisoft hasn’t exactly had a smooth few years. Games underperforming. Studios closing. Layoffs. That whole mess around misconduct. It’s not a company where everything suddenly snaps into place overnight. So a trading halt doesn’t feel like an isolated hiccup. More like the next bump in a long line of bumps.
What is certain?
They asked for a delay. They requested the trading halt via Euronext. The internal explanation is vague. And the timing is right on top of a scheduled earnings call. Moves like that don’t happen because someone misplaced a spreadsheet.
What don’t we know?
Whether it’s something big. There were reports last year that the Guillemot family was exploring taking Ubisoft private again, with Tencent’s help. That never materialized, but Tencent is now deeply involved and through Vantage Studios oversees the big franchises like Assassin’s Creed and Far Cry. So yes, it’s possible. It even feels like things are sliding in that direction again.
But it’s not certain. It could also be boring accounting trouble. Broken formulas. Numbers that don’t add up. That happens too. Even in buildings filled with expensive glass walls.
Still. The silence. The pause button. The timing. Everything about it feels like there’s more going on than “we need two extra days”.
We’ll see. But this wasn’t just another normal Thursday at Ubisoft.
