Ubisoft Entertainment SA (UBI) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good day, and welcome to the fiscal year 2021 earnings and sales conference call. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Yves Guillemot. Please go ahead, sir.

Welcome, everyone, and thank you for joining the call today. Our assets have never been so strong at a time when the value of assets in the industry has never been so high. This was achieved thanks to our teams who have demonstrated incredible resilience during a challenging year, delivering amazing games and experiences. We also relied on a deep and diversified back catalog, which, again, outperforms our expectation and represented for the third consecutive year more than 50% of our total net bookings, progressively cementing the recurring profile of our business. As you know, we are building our ambitious long-term growth strategy in an organic manner. To do so, we are creating mostly internally a diverse portfolio of brands to fuel our direct-to-player ecosystem. While this model has generated above-market shareholders' returns over the long term, we understand it may raise questions. One of the corollary effects of this value-creation process is indeed that we may regularly adapt our release schedule as our decisions will always be dictated by the long-lasting value of our diverse portfolio -- of what our diverse portfolio can bring to players and ultimately to Ubisoft. This approach is key to continue generating above-market shareholder returns over the long term. For this model to be effective, we have to continuously challenge ourselves and remain nimble. Over the past year, we have pursued the transformation of our organization that we have initiated 18 months ago to ensure Ubisoft is positioned to meaningfully grow audience, recurring revenues and predictability over the coming years. We have also implemented profound changes to ensure the continued development of an inclusive working environment where our talents can thrive and deliver the games -- the game experiences that players will love and share. I will now let Frederick detail our full year performance. Frederick?

Yes. Thank you, and hello, everybody. Ubisoft achieved a record year in fiscal '21, both in terms of net bookings and non-IFRS operating income. This was achieved thanks to an underlying performance that has been significantly stronger than expected. This reflects the progress achieved in the diversification and recurrence of our revenues through the unique breadth of our IP portfolio. As Yves mentioned, Ubisoft has continued to evolve its organization over the past 18 months to adapt to a fast-changing industry and to ensure our culture is stronger than ever. To continue delivering high-quality standards, strong marketability and differentiation, we have notably added expertise and production acumen to our editorial department. We have been reorganizing our processes, HR organization and remuneration policy to ensure even stronger accountability. We have hired a new Chief People Officer and co-opted a new independent Board member, both of them with recognized experience in conducting change in major corporations. We have also appointed new Heads of Diversity and Inclusion and Workplace Culture to formalize Ubisoft's value and align the organization around these values. This is only a glimpse at all the changes that have happened to adapt our organization. Now let's turn to Q4 and full year figures. I will start by pointing out that as of now, I will base all my comments after the mobile reclassification that was implemented in Q4 of last year. As a reminder, the reclassification for fiscal '20 amounted to EUR 29 million, with the full impact being accounted for in Q4. In fiscal '21, the reclassification amounted to EUR 42 million, of which EUR 11 million is in Q4. Q4 last year is, therefore, artificially inflated versus this year. Our Q4 net bookings reached EUR 485 million, up 16% year-on-year or up strongly 28% at constant currency and before the mobile reclassification and within the range we had set of between EUR 464 million and EUR 524 million. As we mentioned last February, while we grew strongly this quarter with record levels of engagement, we faced a tough back-catalog comparison due to the strength of March 2020, the impact of the Six Invitational and the Warlords of New York expansion. Of note, only a small fraction of the Assassin's Creed Valhalla season pass has been accounted for in the year as most of the content is yet to be released. Full year net bookings reached a record EUR 2.241 billion, up 46% year-on-year or up 50% at constant exchange rates. Activity and engagement levels were at all-time high with 141 million active players across our consoles and PC games, up 20%; and MAUs of 41 million, up 19%. Our Q4 quarter also delivered record engagement. As we mentioned, one of our biggest achievements has been the significant growth of Ubisoft portfolio over the past 12 months. Starting with Assassin's Creed, the franchise registered by far a record performance in fiscal year 2021 with total bookings up more than 50% versus the prior record set in fiscal year 2013. This amazing performance was supported by the release of Assassin's Creed Valhalla, which was the biggest [ opus ] launch ever; and by our back catalog, which delivered double-digit year-on-year growth. The Just Dance franchise continues to outperform with spectacular net booking growth. Here again, both the new release and the back catalog performed remarkably well, leveraging the immense success of Switch and the brand's phenomenon on TikTok. We're also starting to see traction for the Just Dance Unlimited subscription offer, enhancing the recurring pattern of the brand. Immortals Fenyx Rising, our new IP, continues to see healthy sell-through as the game benefits from one of the highest community sentiments a Ubisoft game has ever had. It has all it takes to become an evergreen title, notably on the Switch where it contributes to broaden Ubisoft audience reach. Rainbow Six Siege saw double-digit growth in player acquisition and continued to be 1 of the 10 most played games in the world of consoles, including free-to-play games, during a transition year that saw the rollout of the Battle Pass model, the release of the new-gen version and a new e-sports organization. The game had a promising month of March with great events and content that delivered record RPU, record viewership for our original leagues and double-digit engagement sequential growth this quarter. We expect the Rainbow Six brand to continue on these trends, benefiting from the team's amazing work from the Six Invitational that started today and from the upcoming release of Rainbow Six Quarantine. Growth was also very robust for the Far Cry, Rabbids and Watch Dogs franchises as well as for our live brands, Brawlhalla, For Honor and The Crew. Brawlhalla, with its super strong growth, continues to prove to be a very profitable acquisition in the free-to-play space. Overall, this demonstrates that Ubisoft can rely on major industry-leading franchises and a deep and high-quality portfolio of successful brands. Highlighting the increasingly recurrence of our business, full year back-catalog net bookings reached EUR 1.288 billion, up 15%. Of course, the year benefited from the increased engagement resulting from lockdown measures. This, however, is a remarkable performance when considering the very limited release slate in fiscal '20. Back catalog as a percentage of total net bookings was over 50% for the third consecutive year and stood at 58%. Full year digital net bookings represented 72% of our total net bookings. PRI was up 11% for the full year at EUR 780 million. Excluding mobile, it represented 29% of total net booking, up from the 26% we recorded in fiscal year '19. The 5 biggest contributors to PRI were the Rainbow Six, Assassin's Creed, The Division, For Honor and Ghost Recon brands. Mobile revenue was up 16% to EUR 187 million, thanks notably to the full year benefits of the Green Panda and Kolibri Games acquisitions. Last but not least, the year was also marked by the rising value of our technology assets, notably with the rollout of Ubisoft Connect. We have also seen the acceleration of i3D.net growth as it nearly doubled net bookings versus the previous year. This confirms its position as a hosting leader in the video game space, thanks to its global low-latency network, focus on performance as well as its capacity to scale. We expect i3D.net to generate great future value for Ubisoft. Let me now go into the details of our full year earnings. First, Slide 6 of our presentation, our gross margin was up 2 percentage points to 85.5% despite the lower digital share. This reflects the strength of our underlying business as well as great pricing power. R&D was up EUR 104 million. I will review the details in the following slide. Variable marketing expenses were up 17% on the back of a much bigger slate of new releases. It stood at 13.7 percentage of net bookings. Structure costs were up 15% and notably reflects stronger bonuses as well as strategic investment in our direct-to-player platform and in the fast growth of i3D.net. It stood at 15.6% of net bookings. Operating income came out at EUR 473 million, an all-time high for Ubisoft, with a 21% margin. To be noted that at fiscal '20 rates, foreign exchange headwinds negatively impacted operating income by around EUR 45 million. Turning now to Slide 7. Total R&D expenses reached EUR 785 million. The 15% increase reflects the more important release slate this year versus last year as well as the 35% increase in noncapitalized R&D due to stronger bonuses and our investments in post-launch content to fuel recurring revenues. Total cash R&D was up 21% to support our future strong top line growth. This represents a 17% CAGR since fiscal '19. Moving forward, we anticipate our yearly growth rate to decelerate in line with our expectation to grow cash R&D by 15% on average per annum. Moving to Slide 8. The IFRS/non-IFRS reconciliation shows 3 types of adjustments. The traditional stock-based compensation charge standing at EUR 57 million, broadly in line with expectations and last year. We booked a noncurrent goodwill amortization charge of EUR 110 million. Despite this amortization, our overall acquisitions have delivered a solid return since their integration. This solid return is notably reflected by the EUR 27 million earn-outs included in the financial income EUR 32 million adjustments. Of note, the non-IFRS net financial charge was impacted by a EUR 8 million foreign exchange loss. On top of these adjustments, I would like to mention that the income tax rate came out at 30%, within our communicated range of 30% to 35%. Looking at our cash flow statement on Slide 9. Free cash flow stood at EUR 72 million versus minus EUR 191 million in fiscal '20. This EUR 263 million progression reflects mostly the following impacts: first, the EUR 234 million improvement of our cash flows from operations driven by the EUR 324 million increase of net income, which was partly offset by the gap between cash and P&L R&D; second, the EUR 21 million improvement in change in working capital requirements. Of note, we launched a share buyback program from March 22 to April 9 at an average price of EUR 65.80 for a total amount of EUR 39 million, of which EUR 16 million were reflected in our accounts at year-end. Overall, we have significantly improved our non-IFRS net cash position to EUR 79 million versus the EUR 101 million net debt last year. Moving now to fiscal '22. As discussed during our Q3 communication, fiscal '22 will be an important year in building Ubisoft's long-term growth as we are launching new initiatives, notably to expand audiences for some of our biggest brands. As a consequence, we expect net bookings to grow single digit and non-IFRS operating income to [ add up ] between EUR 420 million and EUR 500 million. Growth is expected to come from both back catalog and new releases. To be noted that after the negative EUR 45 million impact in fiscal '21, our top end EBIT targets include foreign exchange headwinds of around EUR 35 million. We expect to benefit from our back-catalog solid momentum spurred notably by its underlying robust dynamic, by a significantly stronger release slate in fiscal '21 than in fiscal '20, by substantially bigger post-launch life plans notably for Assassin's Creed Valhalla; and by the Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time Remake. All this more than compensates for last year high comparison base resulting from the lockdown impact on overall engagement. On the new release side, our lineup is based on the following key pillars. First, it is a deeper and more diverse lineup with premium games as well as free-to-play titles for mobile, consoles and PC. The diversity of business models and platforms is intended to reach a significantly larger audience. Second, the profile of our lineup is geared towards strong player engagement with regular updates, multiplayer, social and community features and further contributes to our long-term recurring profile. On the premium lineup, we expect Far Cry 6 to build on the success of Far Cry 5 and be a top seller of this year as the franchise has been going from strength to strength since the release of Far Cry 3. As a reminder, Far Cry 5 grew 45% versus Far Cry 5 -- versus Far Cry 4, sorry, life-to-date and was the industry's fourth biggest seller in 2018. Rainbow Six Quarantine will leverage the strength of the Rainbow Six franchise, its 70 million player community and will participate to the expansion of the brand. The year will also see the release of Riders Republic, which will notably bring a massively multiplayer game to the extreme sport [ genre ] with more than 50 players racing against each other, with a goal to expand our overall audience. We expect the new entry in the Just Dance franchise to continue the growth dynamics it has been delivering over the past 2 years. On the free-to-play side, our ambition is to grow our audiences by widening our brands' top of the funnel. We have recently announced The Division Heartland, an upcoming PC, console and cloud free-to-play game set in The Division universe. We will be starting the first testing phase soon, and the game is expected to be released in fiscal '22. We have also announced the development of The Division mobile game that will be released beyond fiscal '22. Additionally, Roller Champions, the 3 versus 3 competitive multiplayer sports game, is progressing following feedback from its February beta phase to deliver the most complete experience. Finally, as previously mentioned, the first mobile game stemming from our partnership with Tencent will soft launch in fiscal Q4. These free-to-play initiatives are intended to generate meaningful value over the long term. They can both increase significantly our audience reach as well as our recurring revenues. However, this is year 1, and our targets reflect no contribution at the top end of our EBIT guidance. Overall, we expect net bookings from our new releases, premium plus free-to-play, to be up versus last year. We plan to showcase our premium games during the next Forward event on June 12 and provide more detail on the release schedule, while our free-to-play games will have dedicated communications. Skull & Bones is now expected for fiscal year '23. We strongly believe in the team's creative vision and have been given an increasingly ambitious mandate for the game. Production, led by Singapore, has been advancing well over the past 12 months and the promise is better than ever. The additional time will allow the team to fully deliver on its vision. Digital and PRI are expected to grow and represent a higher share of total net bookings than in fiscal '21. We expect gross margin to be up and R&D and SG&A to be in our long-term range of, respectively, 35% to 40% and 25% to 30%. Regarding other items, we expect stock-based compensation of around EUR 65 million and a non-IFRS net financial charge of around EUR 16 million, of which EUR 2 million is coming from the IFRS 16 impact on lease accounting. Tax rate is again expected between 30% and 35%. The number of diluted shares is expected around 127 million. We continue to invest to organically grow our top line double digits over the long term. We, however, expect cash R&D growth to decelerate in fiscal '22, closer to our objective to grow R&D by 15% on average per annum. Regarding Q1, we forecast around EUR 320 million in net booking, a decrease of around 20% versus Q1 fiscal '21. To be noted, our target is higher than the EUR 310 million achieved in Q1 fiscal '20, which had benefited from the recent release of The Division 2 and the record launch of Anno. The year-on-year decline assumption is, therefore, a reflection of last year boost related to the full lockdown impact as well as a quite meaningful foreign exchange headwind. While it is important to remain prudent and trends can vary between franchises depending on the type of the game, we know that industry trends for the first few months of the year are quite supportive. Before I hand over the call to Yves, I would like to highlight that in line with the evolution of our high-quality lineup that is increasingly diverse, we are moving on from our prior comment regarding releasing 3 to 4 premium AAAs per year. It is, indeed, no longer a proper indication of our value-creation dynamics. For example, our expectation for Just Dance and Riders Republic are consistent with some of the industry's AAAs' performance. Additionally, we are building high-end free-to-play games to be trending towards AAA ambitions over the long term. This is purely a financial communication evolution and does not change the fact we continue to expect a high cadence of content delivery, including powerful premium and free-to-play new releases as well as continued expansion of our post-launch plans with an increased focus on growing our biggest franchises. I now hand over the call back to Yves.

Thank you, Frederick. There are 3 things we want you to keep from this call. First, our revenues are more and more recurring, and our performance will be set on a broad base of revenue sourced from back catalog to premium and free-to-play titles. Again, the value of Ubisoft assets has never been so strong. We invest to grow our biggest brands and expand the depth of our portfolio. This is exemplified by our recent announcement on the expansion of The Division universe. We also continue to build the strength of our technology, notably, i3D.net, our fast-growing video game hosting activity that we expect to generate great future value for Ubisoft; and also Ubisoft Connect. Third, over the past 18 months, we have conducted a profound transformation of our organization, from human resources, portfolio management, marketing and business to production and editorial. We believe Ubisoft is well positioned to grow meaningfully audience and recurring revenues in a sustainable manner. Leveraging these assets and a solid balance sheet, we are in a strong position to capitalize on the many opportunities offered by the market and are entering an exciting phase of our development. We are now ready to take your questions.

[Operator Instructions] We can now take our first question from Brian Fitzgerald of Wells Fargo.

I had a couple of questions on Assassin's Creed. It seems to be reaching a next level of success with Valhalla. How close to $1 billion run rate is Assassin's Creed? And do you have ambitions to bring it there quickly to that level? On the cost side of Assassin's Creed, any unique cost there relative to other franchises? And to what extent are investments you're doing now going to drive leverage for Assassin's Creed in the future?

Thank you. Thank you for the question. Yes. What we can -- we are extremely happy with the success Assassin's Creed had this year. And for sure, Valhalla did a great job, but the back catalog was also extremely powerful. And this is due to the fact that we have been creating a lot of content on a regular basis on Odyssey. And on the brand itself, we really looked at improve the quality of the experience on all the games that we created. So that is helping the brand to grow. So we are not yet at the level of EUR 1 billion, but our goal is at one point to get there, and we are going to continue to invest heavily to make sure it happens. But Frederick can probably give you more info on that.

Yes. It's -- what we see with Assassin's Creed is that we have a fantastic recipe. And that's why we decided to expand the post-launch program to make it the biggest, longest, strongest that we have ever had on the franchise. So we're already going through a great transformation, building on the RPG recipe and on strong play time. So that's what we see for the franchise as a focus in the short term, notably in fiscal '22 and beyond. But also, we are building a very strong road map for the next 5 years for that brand.

And we can now take our next question from Matthew Walker of Credit Suisse.

The first one is on the guidance. I think you mentioned something about free-to-play not being in the EBIT guidance. I missed exactly what you said and maybe if you could sort of go over that again. The second question is really around Skull & Bones. It's obviously been delayed again. What confidence can you give us around this title? Like for example, what has the Singapore studio -- in terms of sort of successful titles, what's the track record of the Singapore studio that is producing it?

Yes. So in terms of guidance, what I mentioned is that for the high side of the guidance, we have assumed a 0 contribution for our free-to-play launches this year.

And -- okay. Does that include -- forgive me, does that include Roller Champions? Or is that not free-to-play or...

Yes, that's valid for our overall launches of free-to-play. So we announced Roller Champions as well as Heartland on The Division universe and a soft launch on the Q4 quarter on the mobile game.

On the Singapore studio, the Singapore studio has been developing for a long time a big part of the Assassin's Creed franchise. So it's a really good studio. What we have been doing to make sure they could really come strongly with Skull & Bones is we increased the associate studios that are working with them at the moment. So there's a good and big team now working on the game. And the last 12 months have really been good in terms of the way things were coming along. So we are confident they can really bring something really exceptional for the market.

Singapore developed a unique expertise in naval combat, contributing to Assassin's Creed 4 Black Flag.

And we can now take our next question from Omar Sheikh of Morgan Stanley.

I have a couple of questions, if I could. So the first is again on the guidance. I wonder if you could just clarify on the top line, whereabouts in the single digit range you expect net bookings to be. So is it the typical 1% range or the 9% range? That's the first question. And secondly, on margins, your guidance at the midpoint implies margins around 20% in fiscal '22. I wonder whether you could just talk about what your long-term ambitions are for EBIT margin and how long you think it will take to get there.

Yes. Thank you, Omar. So in terms of guidance, yes, we made the comment that we expect to grow single digits. We won't provide you with more granularity at this stage. What is important to have in mind is that we will rely on back catalog to grow and from our new releases to grow as well. In terms of margin development, for the medium to longer term, we expect to grow double digits on the top line growth. Together with a significant increase on the gross margin, that would grow even faster and with an increased share of our recurring revenue, so back catalog and PRI. And that's why we anticipate that operating margin will progress over time. Of course, the magnitude and the pace of operating margin will be, to some extent, a function of how big and how fast we are successful on our free-to-play new IP initiatives.

Okay. That's clear. And just again to clarify, would you anticipate the margin would go up in '23 versus '22?

It's too early to provide you any more color on fiscal '23. We really project to improve operating margin in the medium term.

And we can now take our next question from Ken Rumph of Jefferies.

Two questions. First one was just if you could tell us a little bit more about the revenue and profit impact of i3D because you mentioned it on a number of occasions. I don't have a sense of what's driving its revenues and how significant they are. Second question -- profitability. Second question. If I look at revenues back in FY '19, so skipping FY '20, which was an unusual year, at the middle of your single-digit range, we'd have 3 years of compound growth of about 5%, which lags the industry and your peers. I haven't, I have to say, worked out the dollar versus euro [ effect on ] that, but I think it still applies. It feels like the investments you're making in free-to-play and mobile are kind of coming at the expense of the sort of traditional premium AAA model, and that appears borne out by kind of the delays and the kind of lower number of those releases. I kind of expected that investment to be in addition to revenue. Am I misunderstanding what I can expect?

So on i3D, yes, we're very happy with the development of this great asset that is coming from an acquisition we made 2 years -- a bit more than 2 years ago. We close to doubled net bookings this year. We expect very strong growth in fiscal '22 and beyond as it's very well positioning in the hosting space with strong competitive advantages. Of course, we are at the beginning of the development of this great asset. So relative to the overall size of Ubisoft, it's still relatively small but fastly growing and being strongly profitable. In terms of the development of our top line growth since fiscal '19 and beyond, as we said 2 years ago, and that's the decision we took 3 years ago, actually, we really want to expand our biggest franchises. And that's why we've decided to invest in an organic manner, while others might spend sizable money in M&A, to really pursue a strong progression of our audience, recurring profile of our portfolio and to really have a big focus on our biggest PC and console franchises to expand. So of course, that takes a bit of time, but we believe that by combining very high-quality content on [ paymium ] and premium new releases. And adding to these premium brands, access to free-to-play across all platforms, console, PC and mobile, this would provide a very attractive growth model in the next years.

And we can now take our next question from Nick Dempsey with Barclays.

First question. Can you give us some help on how to think about revenue from The Division Heartland in terms of how that will flow into the business, assuming it is a major hit or a major disappointment? So should we think about a relatively low contribution in its first quarter, but then some ramping off of that and then persisting for several years? I was hoping if you can help us out from a modeling point of view. Second question. You haven't mentioned Watch Dogs: Legion at all in your review of FY '21. Is it fair to assume that [ one achieved units ] below what you hoped for. And then the third one. Cash R&D grew 21% in FY '21 and I think you said about 15% in FY '22. Can we expect it to grow nicely below 15% in FY '23? Or when do we start averaging out 15%?

Yes. So in terms of Heartland, yes, the way we think about building our -- the audience reach growth for our biggest franchises, so starting with The Division, is to indeed come with high-quality free-to-play games. We recognize this is the first year we're coming meaningfully into the space, and that's why we need to take reasonable assumptions for year 1 on the top line as well as on the contribution. But of course, we want to make sure this is a strong contributor in the long term into the expansion of the overall brand on console and PC. And then, of course, it will come on mobile at a later time. On Watch Dogs: Legion, we've seen a good quarter from the online mode release that we made in March together with a Free Weekend. So that had a good impact in terms of increase of acquisition of new players and in terms of engagement. So far, the PRI per player for Legion is higher than on Watch Dogs 2, and that's why we are encouraged to come with a strong post-launch program online in fiscal '22.

And we also expect to launch lots of content in the next 3 to 6 months that will actually help this game to continue to grow actually.

And in terms of R&D growth rates, so at end of fiscal '21, we've been growing on a compounded growth rate at 17% since fiscal '19. And as we mentioned earlier in the call, we plan to decelerate from that base. So we should be pretty soon around 15% year-on-year since fiscal '19.

And we can now take our next question from Robert Berg of Berenberg.

Just a couple of questions left. The first is, within the guidance, can you talk through whether you're trying to be more prudent than normal across all of your assumptions, so AAA, back catalog, or just on the free-to-play side? It'd be interesting to hear whether there's any shift in your thoughts on setting guidance here. And the second question. You just reiterated you expect double-digit revenue growth over the medium term and it's somewhat reliant on free-to-play. Are you expecting 1 or 2 of your free-to-play games to become huge or at least significant, which is typically how free-to-play works? Or do you plan to have kind of more of your launches a little bit more of a moderate contribution? Just trying to gauge the risk here on the free-to-play side.

So on the guidance, we've taken reasonable assumptions on the high side of the guidance with a specific a caution on free-to-play, as we mentioned, to make sure that we start with a 0 contribution assumption. And we've taken more general prudence for the lower end of the target. In terms of free-to-play, it's still early to say on that front. What we think is that we have a great opportunity to meaningfully expand the audience of our biggest franchises. We've taken the time to learn from what we did last year with Hyper Scape. We're also learning, of course, with the launch we'll be making on Roller Champion. We've been learning a lot with Brawlhalla and that is fastly growing. And we think that it's now the time to come with high-quality free-to-play games across all our biggest franchise, across all platforms. But of course, it will take time before proving it in a more assertive way. That's why we want to be cautious in year 1.

And just to clarify...

Of course, if we are successful, that can have a very meaningful impact on the value creation of Ubisoft.

Okay. And...

And it's a combination of -- sorry. Go ahead.

No, no, no. That's fine. Sorry on the delay. But on the first question, you've mentioned a couple of times there's no contribution from free-to-play at the top -- the high end of the guidance. I'm a little confused. Do you mean there's no contribution from free-to-play at the bottom end of the guidance?

So what I'm saying is that from a contribution to the bottom line point of view, at the high side of the guidance, there is a 0 contribution. And for the low end of the target, we've taken more general prudence across the business.

Okay. So across the whole guidance range, there is no contribution from free-to-play?

Yes.

And we can now take our next question from Doug Creutz of Cowen.

So you talked about the fact that you're no longer going to be trying to make 3 to 4 AAA games a year because you're spreading investments between free-to-play games and other things. Can you talk a little bit about what the investment profile for a free-to-play game like Heartland looks like compared to a AAA game, the length of development cycle, whether the investment comes from primarily before the launch versus after the launch? Can you just talk about that a little bit?

Yes. So it's -- we have now a meaningful investment for such games but not to the same level, of course, as for premium AAA games yet. What we anticipate, of course, for that type of game is that you need to sustain a significant level of R&D investment over time as you need to come with regular updates and drive retention over the long term.

So it's high-end free-to-play. Yes.

Yes. We're talking about high-end free-to-play for our biggest franchises.

And we can now take our next question from Richard Eary of UBS.

Just a couple of questions from me. Just going back -- I'm sorry to go back to this guidance. But obviously, on the EBIT number of EUR 420 million to EUR 500 million, you said that there's -- you've been clear that there's 0 contribution from free-to-play in that. On the revenue guidance of single digits, where you said you expect growth from new releases and from back catalog, does that include free-to-play? Yes or no?

Yes, it does. So we expect growth coming both from back catalog and new releases, including our new releases from free-to-play, indeed.

Can you then frame, obviously, what the basically range is then on the free-to-play revenue? I mean obviously, you've put revenues in there, but you haven't put any profit in there. Can you give us a feel in terms of what your revenue expectations are for the free-to-play?

We won't provide any more color today. We rely on a strong and powerful lineup on the premium side. But also, we will expect growth from the free-to-play side versus where we are today. But we have taken reasonable assumptions for year 1.

Can I just ask in terms of guidance again? Is that if, for example, the free-to-play games are delayed towards the back end of the year, you said the Tencent mobile game is now basically, obviously, right at the back end, is there a possibility that the free-to-play games are actually negative profit contributions this year as in more cost to launch them and delayed launches means that revenues don't come until fiscal '23?

So far, we have a good visibility on these games to be released in fiscal '22. If they were delayed, there will be no impact on EBIT.

And we can now take our next question from Richard-Maxime Beaudoux of Societe Generale.

I have 2 questions, if I may. You expected Far Cry 6 and Rainbow Six Quarantine to be released in the first semester of fiscal year '22. Now that Skull & Bones is postponed, what is your new timetable for these 2 games? And my second question is, could you quantify the other investments in R&D and marketing you expect for free-to-play games this year?

So we -- on the timetable for Far Cry 6 and Rainbow Six Quarantine, we have no change to make to our prior comments. And the teams will provide more precision during the Ubisoft Forward event in June. In terms of R&D and marketing for free-to-play games, as we said back in February, so we will, of course, have the past investments that we've done on free-to-play flow into P&L next year in terms of R&D. We have a meaningful marketing investment, of course, to support our free-to-play game launches. As we said, we sized and framed the guidance in a way that we've had reasonable top line assumptions together with 0 contribution. So cost equaling revenues in this top end side of the guidance in terms of assumption.

So you won't have any AAA games for the second semester of fiscal year '22?

We have no AAA games planned for fiscal -- for H2, indeed.

And this concludes today's question-and-answer session. I would now like to hand back to your speakers for any additional or closing remarks.

So thank you very much for listening today, and have a great day.

This concludes today's call. Thank you all for your participation. You may now disconnect.