After the deal with Tencent, Ubisoft’s CEO says the company is still open to working with other companies.

PARIS

After a deal in which China’s Tencent will increase its stake in Ubisoft, the company’s co-founder and CEO, Yves Guillemot, said on Thursday that Ubisoft is still looking for other partners.

Guillemot’s comments, which he made at a closed press event whose content the company asked not to be made public before a showcase event online on Saturday, came after a bad day for Ubisoft’s stock, which fell 17% after the company said Tencent would become its single biggest shareholder with an overall 11% stake.

With this deal, the company that makes “Assassin’s Creed” is worth about $10 billion.

Related: Tencent weighs on Hong Kong’s stock market as a result of Japan’s positive GDP growth.

“We stay completely independent, and if we want to, we can work with any outside company,” said Guillemot, who started Ubisoft with his four brothers in 1986. “That was a tough talk with Tencent,” he said. “We are free to do what we want.”

Traders and analysts said that the Tencent deal, in which the world’s biggest games company by revenue made a shareholder agreement with the Guillemots, took away the appeal of Ubisoft shares for speculation.

Since the Guillemots own a small share of the group, it has long been thought that they might try to take it over. Still, the Guillemot brothers were able to stop a raid by French businessman Vincent Bollore through his media company, Vivendi (OTC:VIVHY).

Six years ago, Vivendi bought the smaller mobile game company Gameloft, which was once run by Yves Guillemot’s brother Michel.

Sons of farmers from a small town in Brittany, Western France, the secretive siblings have vowed to keep their independence. Yves Guillemot, 62, reaffirmed this goal on Thursday. “Our first goal is to be in charge of our own lives,” he said.

MEANINGFUL PROGRESS

This hope was recently put to the test by poor financial results and claims of sexual harassment. This led to a change in the company’s board of directors and promises to change what some former employees called a sexist corporate culture.

“Yes, we made a mistake, and we know it,” Guillemot said. “We’ve learned a lot along the way, and our leaders have helped us make real progress with action plans that we’ve all worked on together.”

During its 2020–2021 financial year, Ubisoft spent about 200 million euros on operations. The year before, it made 169 million euros from operations.

In the middle of a boom and wave of mergers and acquisitions in the video game industry, the company’s financial problems came on top of several delays in the release of new video games and increased pressure on management.

Microsoft’s (NASDAQ:MSFT) plan to buy “Call of Duty” maker Activision Blizzard (NASDAQ:ATVI) for $69 billion was one of the most important things that happened during this time.

Guillemot said that as part of Ubisoft’s plan to get back to growth, the company wants to put its three “pillar” games—”Assassin’s Creed,” “Far Cry,” and “Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six”—on all digital platforms.

Related: Tencent Stock Drops to a 3-Week Low as a Possible Stake Sale Could Net $7.6 Billion

Guillemot said that the group wants these three brands to bring in a total of 2 billion euros a year in sales by the end of five years.

Guillemot said that the next version of “Assassin’s Creed,” called “Mirage,” will come out in 2023. Ubisoft is also working with Netflix (NASDAQ:NFLX) to make three new mobile games, one of which is based on the Assassin’s Creed series.