Ubisoft shares plummet to lowest price in over 14 years amid its recently announced 'restructuring' centered on cancellations, layoffs, and generative AI

Yves Guillemot, chief executive officer of Ubisoft SA, at the company's headquarters in Paris, France, on Wednesday, Jan. 18, 2023. The five Guillemot brothers have forged a common vision for Ubisoft which they founded in the 1980s in a sleepy northwestern French town, catapulting it into one of the largest stand-alone studios in the $200 billion global video games industry. Photographer: Nathan Laine/Bloomberg via Getty Images.

Wednesday, Ubisoft announced a "major reset" of its organizational hierarchy and game development plans that CEO Yves Guillemot said would foster "the conditions for a return to sustainable growth." That included a fundamental shakeup to its internal studio structure, the cancellation of six projects including the Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time remake, and for some reason, a promise that more "player-facing generative AI" was on the way.

As you might expect when a company announces everything is on fire, everything is on fire: as CNBC pointed out a day after the announcement, the company's share price went down by around 34% after the restructuring was announced. When the stock market closed yesterday the price sat at €4.06 (around $4.80) a share.