Q3 20/21

Feb 9, 2021

Earnings release

Welcome everyone and thank you for joining the call today. Our strategy continues to bear fruit despite a competitive environment. We achieved the strongest quarter in Ubisoftie's story by far. Thanks to the quality of our releases and the depth of our catalog, we are immensely proud of our teams who in exceptionally challenging time launched 4 great cycles across multiple platforms and simultaneously continue to enrich our live services. This is an unparalleled achievement and they showed remarkable adaptability and resilience. I thank them sincerely for their dedication and determination. Our ability at such a high level of quality demonstrates the power of our production model and the sustainability of our organization. In the context of increasing engagement and very supportive industry trends, the 1st 9 months of the year confirm that we are continuing to move toward an increasingly pronounced recurrence of our revenues on the back of growing audiences. Therefore, we expect our highly profitable back catalog to account for an even larger share of our business going forward. Ubisoft model is mostly based on internally created wholly owned IP and assets. It is a tried and tested model that has enabled us to build 1 of the broadest most diversified portfolio of successful franchises in the industry and delivered remarkable shareholder value, the benefit and opportunities offered by this strategy are still growing in a context of strongly rising video game brand value and of AAA quality asset scarcity due to the increasingly higher barriers to entry. This virtuous momentum confirms our confidence in our ability to carry on generating strong value for our teams, our players and our shareholders over the long term. I now hand over the call to Frederic for the Q3 review. Frederic? Thank you, Iain, and hello, everybody. I will start my review with 3 impressive high level highlights on our calendar 2020 performance. 1st, Ubisoft was the number one publisher in terms of total number of units sold across all platforms last year, driven by strong digital growth. Also in terms of units sold, we were the 2nd best publisher on the new generation of consoles and the number one third party publisher on Switch as we continue to benefit from the console's mass adoption. This speaks highly to the depth and strength of our catalog and our capacity to reach a wider and diverse audience. Turning now to Q3. As I mentioned in the prior quarters, For the sake of comparability, I will base all my comments today before the new mobile reclassification rule to ensure a like for like comparison with fiscal 2020. The reclassification amounted to €10,000,000 in Q3 €32,000,000 for the 1st 9 months. At the industry level, we continue to see very supportive trends overall with stronger levels of engagement than before the pandemic started. More people are playing, they are playing more and they are spending more. These are powerful tailwinds for the industry. For Ubisoft, traffic and engagement levels were once again very strong in Q3 with a record quarter in terms of unique active players and with December being our biggest month ever. MAUs reached 40,000,000 this quarter and are up nearly 50% over 2 years. Furthermore, we reached a 120,000,000 unique player mark across console and PC in the 1st 9 months of the year, already outpacing the prior full fiscal year figure. Q3 net bookings reached €990,000,000 up 117% and above our target of between €850,000,000 €950,000,000 excluding the mobile reclassification. This is by far Ubisoft's biggest quarter ever. As Yves mentioned, this better than anticipated quarter was delivered thanks to our team's excellent execution, the high quality release slate that to the 3 AAA titles plus Just Dance 2021 and to the continued appeal of our deep and diversified portfolio franchises. This performance was all the more remarkable as it was achieved in a competitive environment and in a context marked by production challenges linked to work from home, the transition to next gen as well as the rollout of Ubisoft Connect. Our teams had plenty on their hands and they delivered. They deserve a big congratulations. Thanks to this strong release slate, Ubisoft plays 3 games in the top with best selling titles on the new generation consoles. With our early positioning, we are set to benefit from the new gen momentum, especially given the limited upcoming competition. Let's move on to our new releases. After a strong first week, Assassin's Creed Valhalla confirmed its position as the biggest Assassin's Creed game launch in history. Valala was one of the biggest sellers of calendar 2020 and the 2nd best selling title on NewGen. It was acclaimed by critics was notably awarded best RPG of the year by PC gamer. Player reception and engagement were very strong with daily average users up twofold when compared with Assassin's Creed RDC on a comparable time frame. It is also interesting to note that Valhalla is the greatest Ubisoft game launch in terms of digital and PRI. We look to maintain this momentum with a significantly longer and and stronger post launch content roadmap that will continue this spring with the combined rollout of free and paid content. For its part, wardrobe Legion was praised for its beautiful recreation of London, the Players Anyone innovation and was the 4th best selling title on the new generation of consoles. The award winning game was also the 3rd largest contributor to PRI this quarter. We have a robust post launch roadmap that will bring fresh content to the single player mode and introduce a dedicated online multiplayer mode as part of free game updates. The introduction of PLAYER DENNIS 1 into the online sandbox as well as upcoming PvE and PVP live content will drive and sustain engagement. With Immortal Phoenix Rising, Ubisoft is making a promising foray into the fantasy genre, further broadening its potential audience. The game generated significantly high positive sentiment from the community and journalists alike with its lighthearted tone and fresh gameplay. On top of ranking as the 7th biggest seller on the new generation of consoles, the game also has a clear bias towards the Switch audience and is benefiting from excellent word-of-mouth. We therefore expect ImmortalfeX rising to have very long legs. Thus dense continued its excellent run, benefiting from the widespread adoption of the Nintendo switch as well as from another successful massive campaign on TikTok. Just Dance 2021 performed very strongly with net bookings up sharply year on year and was the best selling Just Dance title of the past 6 years. On top of the very strong performances of Assassin's Creed, Valala and Just Dance 2021, The quarter displayed another remarkable progression of our back catalog, up strongly 18% despite the very limited release slate in the prior year. Quarter after quarter, year after year, our back catalog has become a central force of our business, bringing both strong visibility and very high profitability and driving growth in our franchises this year. Rambo 6 each has demonstrated resilience in the context of a stronger competitive landscape, notably on PC. It has recently reached a tremendous milestone of surpassing 70,000,000 players having added 15,000,000 over the past 12 months, a significant moment as the game enters its 6 year of live service and continues to maintain stable MAUs and robust acquisition. For Q4, the game faces the continued albeit temporary headwind of reduced physical Esports events. Looking ahead, Rainbow Six Siege early positioning on PS5 and Xbox Series as well as the progressive return to a normal pass for esports events, combined with the full expansion of the Battle Pass model and of course, the halo effect from the upcoming release of Rainbow Six Quarantine will contribute to further grow the franchise over the coming years. On the back catalog side of the Assassin's Creed franchise, Odyssey and Origins continue to benefit from the transition to the RPG model and to the additional boost brought by Valhalla. As an illustration, There were more daily average users on Odyssey in December 2020 than in December 2019, which testifies to the impressive current dynamic of the brand. The combined strong release of Halala and the back catalog momentum enabled the franchise to break by far a new record for Ubisoft brand over 9 months. Many of our other games performed very well over the including strong year on year net bookings growth for the Far Cry, The Crew and Anno brands as well as for our free to play title, Broilala. For its first part, Just Dance back catalog was up 3 fold over the quarter and Mario Rabbit Kingdom Battle fully benefited from great word-of-mouth and the switch momentum with close to 50% year on year net bookings growth. Q3 total digital net bookings stood at €588,000,000 up 68% and represented 58% of our total net bookings. PROI reached €208,000,000 strongly up 27% year on year, representing 21% of net bookings. Over the 1st 9 months of the fiscal year, total net bookings reached €1724,000,000 up 54% year on year despite strong foreign exchange headwinds. Back catalog reached €990,000,000 up 29% and represented 57% of net bookings. Interestingly, while Rainbow Six Siege continues to grow over the period, the ever expanding breadth of our portfolio franchises and live services offering means that our back catalog is less and less dependent on any particular single franchise. Looking at Q4, we expect a strong growth with net bookings of between €464,000,000 524,000,000 including an estimated €9,000,000 from the mobile reclassification. The quarter is off to a solid start with January's activity sharply up year on year with notably very strong trends on Switch. As a reminder, Q4 last year benefited from the first impact on engagement from lockdown and from the highly successful release of the Division 2's expansion Warlords of New York. Let's now turn to our full year guidance. We are tightening the range of our targets with net bookings now expected in the range of €2,220,000,000 and 2.2 €80,000,000 and non IFRS operating income now expected in the range of €450,000,000 €500,000,000 This is in line with the midpoint of our prior operating income target, while at the same time offering us the opportunity as announced over the past few weeks to give more time to some of our games and additional content, including Riders Republic and remain in the remake of Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. We also took into account the postponement of Rainbow Six Siege in Videcino due to new COVID restrictions. After this record year, fiscal 2022 will be a springboard year. We indeed remain deeply focused on crafting the building blocks essential to significant value creation as we set the foundation for a double digit growth trajectory and for the progression of our profitability over the long term. As a consequence, we expect to deliver top line growth and another solid financial performance in fiscal 2022, leveraging the power of our established franchises and back catalog, while our guidance will also reflect meaningful organic investments in our new IP and free to play releases. Being in the early stages of our free to play ramp up, we will be making reasonable assumptions for these games. The year will see the reveal and launch for some of the exciting initiatives we have been working on. As we have previously mentioned, This investment will allow us to grow our existing brands and our portfolio franchises while reaching a wider audience on more platforms and business models over the long term. Fiscal 22 will hence be marked by the strength of our recurring revenues as well as innovation and rich experiences for our community of gamers to capture the many optionalities of the market. Our strong release slate will include free to play games and numerous paid titles out of which a total of 3 AAAs. The known releases are Far Cry 6: Rambus 6: Quarantine, SKUD and BONES, Riders Republic, the remake of Prince of Persia: The Sense of Time and Roller Champion. As we look to expand the reach of our franchises on more platforms and business models, our first mobile title in partnership with Tencent is expected to soft launch in the 4th fiscal quarter of fiscal 2022. A few other surprises are in the works and will be unveiled in due time. In fiscal 2022, we will continue our evolution from a AAA release centric model towards a model where AAA stand alongside new premium and free to play innovative experiences across platforms. These diverse experiences will feed on each other through complementary gameplays and business models. As we traditionally do, we will provide more color on the outlook mid May. Before I hand over the call back to Yves, I would like to highlight the recent ratings that recognize our environmental, social and governance efforts. Earlier this calendar year, ISS ESD, the ESD Investment Research Analytics provider issued a prime status for Ubisoft. Prime status recognizes top companies within their industry on various ESG indicators. This is putting us in the top 2 deciles within the software and IT services industry with notably very strong ratings in terms of transparency. This follows other solid ratings over the past year from SAM's Corporate Sustainability Assessment, MSCI ESG, by Geomudi's and the Financial Times Diversity Index. I now hand over the call back to Yves. Thank you, Frederic. We are well set to deliver a record year, demonstrating our team's amazing resilience and the sustainability of our organization. Our actions have always been taken with a long term mindset. We are grateful our commitment to being at the forefront of all ESG matters is being recognized. Our quarter was also marked by the nomination of Rashi Cikha as VP Global Diversity and Inclusion as well as Belen SCU Toujeo as an independent director to our Board. I'm looking forward to working with them to continue building a stronger Ubisoft. I would also like to highlight the collaboration we revealed mid January with Lucasfilm Games on a new video game set in the beloved Star Wars Galaxy. We are very happy to be partnering again with Lucas Fin Game. The project will be headed by our massive studio, who will make the most of their cutting edge technologies, including the Snowdrop engine to deliver a groundbreaking Star Wars adventure. We are very proud of this collaboration, which is a testament to Ubisoft leadership and expertise, notably in creating amazing works. It is another demonstration of our capacity to build partnerships with the biggest names in the entertainment and technology space. To conclude, our prospects are bright, as we continue laying the foundation to expand our portfolio and to reach a wider audience on more platforms and business models, while at the same time leveraging the strength and visibility offered by our recurring catalog business. We are now ready to take on your questions. We can now take our first question. It comes from Nicholas Langlas of Exane BNP. Hello, everyone. I've got 3 questions, please. The first one on the back catalog, which continue to perform quite well in Q3. What sort of trend are you expecting for Q4? So you mentioned probably some headwind for Rainbow Six Siege, but are there any reason why the growth momentum would slow down materially compared to Q3? Okay. 2nd question on the AAA game for full year 2022, I think the plan was to release at least 2 game Far Cry 6 and Air6 Quarantine during H1 full year 2022, is it still the case? And finally, regarding the partnership with Lucasfilm and Masiv, What are the implications for the division franchise? Should we expect the franchise to be put on pause for some times? Or you think you have enough resources to manage both the division, Star Wars and Avatar projects? Thanks. Yes. Thank you, Nicolas. Yes, so the back catalog, yes, we were very happy to see such over performance across the board on Q3 on all franchises including our major franchises. For Q4, what we see and to take we need to take into account When we look at the outlook is that last year we had a strong base for comparison for different reasons. First is that we had The month of March that was hit by the 1st early restrictive lockdown measures on a global scale. So that had a positive impact, if I may say so, in March. And second, we had also the very successful launch of Our expansion on the Division 2 was a lot of New York that worked very well. The last point that we also need to take into account is that, As you know, last year was a very successful 6 Invitational event for Rambosix each and we had to recently and decide to postpone it, so we won't have it in this quarter. As for the AAA for fiscal 2022 plan, Yes, the plan is still to release the 2 games you're referring to in H1. For the partnership with Lucasfilm, the implication on the division, you have to know that the massive studio is a large studio and they are also collaborating with lots of studios in over the world, lots of inside studios. So you are going to see more on the division in this year and the year after. Okay, perfect. Good to hear. Thanks. Thank you. Our next question comes from Omar Sheikh of Morgan Stanley. Good evening, everyone. I have three questions as well, please. The first one's on the guidance for Q4. Just We're clear on the message here. You pointed out a couple of, I guess, the headwinds for the net bookings in the quarter, including The pushing out of the content Prince of Persia and Writers Republic into next fiscal. But I mean, could you maybe comment on some of the tailwinds you also have, Notably, the impact of the lockdowns on engagement, which you highlighted is started strongly in January. And also, are you seeing any benefit From the ongoing issues with Cyberpunk? That's the first question. Secondly, on Lucasfilm, could you give us A sense of the timing of the releases or the release rather of the game that you're working on? Is it just broadly going to be fiscal 2022, 2023 or beyond? And are you seeing any benefit already from the on hiring? I noticed that you immediately went out with some Hiring ads at the time. So I wonder whether you could give a sense whether there's any sort of benefit on that side. And then thirdly, on the Tencent mobile game, it's good that you've confirmed launch in Q4, 2022. I just wonder maybe just taking a step back on that on your mobile strategy more broadly, I don't know whether you might be able to Maybe comment in the context of what EA did last night, whether Ubisoft's mobile strategy is where you would like it to be? You made some acquisitions in the past, Colubri, Greenpanda. I wonder whether you have any thoughts on whether you have the right enough skills in mobile games development to take you where you want to get in mobile? That's my third question. Thank you very much. Yes. Thank you, Omar. Good evening. So on Q4, we expect a strong growth But in terms of range is expecting between plus 17% to plus 33% versus last year. Indeed, we recently decided to postpone the Riders Republic and Prince of Persia to benefit from such a strong financial year. And while we maintain the midpoint of our EBIT target, we thought it was the right focus to provide them with even more polished time and pursue a higher quality at launch. So that's a good move for us. On top of as we said, we had to recently decide to postpone the 6th invitation. In terms of tailwinds, it's true that we see today a very strong engagement across the board, across all our back catalog. We mentioned during the prepared remarks that we start with January with very strong engagement growth versus last year. Notably on the switch as we have a good lineup that benefits from the mass adoption on the consoles. In terms of lockdown, today it's still a bit difficult to isolate the elements of more restrictive or less restrictive It's a necessary measures, but overall we see the strong engagement across our portfolio. We are happy for having come with such high quality of across all our AAA games in Just Dance 2021 on top of coming with high quality on live services and live content and we see that it should benefit for to us in the coming months in a context where we don't expect such a big competition in terms of new game being launched. On Lucasfilm, we can say we are at the early stage of development on the Star Wars game. To answer your question about the benefit from that in terms of hiring, yes, We see lots of people wanting to participate in this adventure and it's really a good very good thing. On the mobile strategy, yes, we have seen what happened yesterday for We have a strategy to work on high end games, where we want our brands to be on AAA, but also to be on mobile. So we have been doing some work with Tencent on that front and also inside the company. So we our strategy is very much around AAA quality games on mobile and to expand our existing franchise. Our next question comes from Ken Rump of Jefferies. Good evening, gentlemen. Three questions also. Firstly, specifically on Valhalla compared to the previous kind of record holder in the series. At SAS 23, back then in 2013 at this point, the game has been out think for a week or two longer it came out in October, but you'd sold 12,000,000 units. Could you comment whether Valhalla is doing better or maybe were the sales kind of front loaded and therefore it performed better at the beginning, But there was a kind of acceleration. It seems to have also sold more digital, more PC. So maybe the pattern is different. So basically, Is it kind of continuing to set records? Secondly, was just to kind of in a sense To confirm that you're saying 3 AAAs for next year, not 3 or 4 as previously. And your comment about The transition to a kind of modified a sort of hybrid model where there are AAA games, there are free to play games. Should we assume in a sense that the focus on AAA titles is a bit less and we should think about other things and Maybe it's 2 or 3 and the games last longer. That would appear to be another implication of Assassin's Creed that Valhalla is going to continue just as Odyssey is Continuing to generate revenue for a longer time. And regarding the for play games next year, Should we be expecting $70 price tags? Or I'm not sure if preorders are already kind of fixed for Far Cry and so on. Thank you. Thank you, Ken. Good evening. We so on the Assassin's Creed franchise in terms of unit count End of December, Assasin Creed III is still the biggest launch, but in value clearly Assasin Creed Valhalla is the biggest launch ever for the franchise and benefits from a much stronger level of engagement of playtime and will also benefit from a stronger and longer post launch program than Assasin Frit, Odyssey. And we refer to the level of engagement of Assasin with Valala relative to Odyssey, which was already a super top class game in terms of engagement and we see that Valala is really starting very well. So it's really heading to very long legs and we should rely on strong engagement growth over time. In terms of the 3 games that we mentioned for fiscal 2022. Yes, we said for a number of years that our normal template is to come either with 3 or 4 AAA Again, so we stick to this pattern for fiscal 2022, but we see that we are progressively continuously moving from a model that used to be only focused on AAA releases to a model where we have a combination of strong releases on AAA and strong back catalog dynamics, but also complementing our program of new releases with free to play and other premium experiences. And the idea being to continuously driving higher audience, but also progressively progressing on getting higher share of recurring revenues as you rightly pointed out with longer lifetime for our gains. In terms of the price $50 point, sorry, yes. Yes, in terms of pricing, we've been analyzing competitive dynamics of the last quarter. And we're still looking at the opportunity, but we have not made any decision yet. Okay. Could I ask you a follow-up, by the way, just confirming on Star Wars? My understanding was the EA's Inclusivity ran out in 2023. I'm not sure if that was fiscal or calendar 2023, but it seemed to me to imply that Along with your comments about it being at an early stage, the game couldn't be before fiscal 2023, more likely Or 2024, is that wrong? We didn't mention any specific dates. The game is at an early stage of development. So we will have to wait a bit before telling you more about timing. Okay. Thanks. Thank you. You're welcome. Our next question comes from Matthew Walker of Credit Suisse. Thank you very much. I've got 3 questions as well. Good evening. First thing is on Rainbow Six. It seems to slow down. Rainbow Six seems to slow down a bit, maybe some competition from a couple of other strong titles. What's the plan to sort of revitalize The revenue growth from Rainbow 6? The second question is, We saw Diablo and League of Legends get approval in China. Can you say anything more about your China approval process? How many games are you trying to get approval for? Is it only Rainbow 6 or is it other games you're also trying to get approval for? And then last question is, I think on the last couple of calls, you said that Fiscal 2022 net bookings would be above 2021. I'm guessing you'd still say that given that you pushed some of the gains From 2021 into 2022, you haven't previously commented on whether you see operating profit in 2022 Above 2021. So would we be right to assume operating profit in 2022 will be above 21, thanks. So on the Rainbow Six Siege, it's been slightly growing this year. It It shows again a strong resilience in the context of stronger competition than a year ago, notably on PC. What is remarkable on this game is that it continues to drive robust acquisition of players. We added 15,000,000 new players over the last year. So that provide a good base to monetization over time on the game. We see that the fact that we put the game early on new gen consoles should drive acquisition further or reactivate laps players. And as we are today completing finalizing, I would say, the transition in terms of monetization model from a full season pass model until a year ago to full battle pass model that should drive higher value and higher engagement for our players, we see that the game should benefit from a good momentum on top of, of course, having the possibility to get back strongly on physical Esports event, hopefully in the course of the year. On the approval process in China. We are encouraged by the fact that there were lots of Western games approved, one of which was one coming from Ubisoft because Raymond Legend on Switch was approved. We are working very hard with Tencent also to make sure the games can be approved in the short run. So it's the process is improving and we hope it will have a good impact. So for fiscal 2022, what we expect to grow on the top line. We expect another solid financial year. What we see is that we will rely on the big slate of new releases that will include AAA games, the 3 that we mentioned, other premium game launches as well as for the first time a big step into free to play launches. On top of relying on strong back catalog trends for next year. And what we mentioned is that coming with new IPs and free to play games. We, of course, come with strong initial R and D and marketing investment that will lay strong foundation for us to pursue strong top line growth in the outer years and to continuously improving operating margin year after year. In terms of operating income for fiscal 2022, we'll give you more color in May. But again, we expect a strong Financial year again on the back of top line growth. Okay. Thank you. You're welcome. Our next question comes from Doug Creutz of Cowen. Yes. This is for Yves. You've been around the industry for a long time and it seems to me to be a level of Capital markets activity we've seen around gaming in the last 6 months, but even particularly in the last couple of months has been pretty hectic. Just curious as to your reaction to this. What do you think is going on? And has it changed your thinking about M and A as a strategic priority for the company? Thanks. Our strategy has been more to develop internally our own IPs and invest inside the company and in our studios. So we use M and A more in acquiring some technologies or teams that will help us to enter a new field. So at the moment, we are very much investing inside the company than outside actually. What we've seen over the last 15, 10 last years is that our Internal model has delivered tremendous value and we that's what we want to continue doing. We think that we have a tremendous value creation of opportunities ahead of us in developing our business in an organic fashion. So we don't need to rush or and to do M and A at any expensive cost. But again, as Yves mentioned, we are very vigilant and we'll see the opportunities on specific skills that can complement our organic development at reasonable cost. And we have the cash we need if necessary. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Our next question comes from Nick Dempsey of Barclays. Yes, good evening, guys. I've got three questions left. First one, Okay. So does the free to play games are pretty uncertain in terms of their launch. Is your comment that you will grow in FY 2022 versus FY 2021, reliance on delivering some successful launches in the free to play games you're referring to. Second question, just on the Rainbow Six quarantine, do you not worry there are some PR problems about launching a game about an alien parasite when And we're in the middle of a global pandemic. Is that not something that has made you wonder whether you should delay that game? And third question, You referred a couple of times to the investment you're expecting in FY 2022. Are you suggesting that the cash R and D would grow More than the kind of low teens level that you talked about before in that year? Or are we talking more about a P and L impact around marketing and and in the So our comment for next year on growth is related to the fact that we will rely on the big slate of new releases that will be a combination of 3 strong AAA, a premium game that will be launched for a number of them that we have not announced yet and also a first big step on free to play. So free to play will be one element, but the growth for us is the combination of strong slate of neurodisease overall as well as relying on the robust trends on the back catalog. On RENVUSIX quarantine, we are creating a product that is actually as its name today. It is something we are evaluating and we'll see what comes in the future on that product. On the investment expected. So we stay consistent with our view that we can pursue The top line growth year on year on average in the coming years being double digits and that will come with an even stronger progression on gross margin. So that's the long term view that we see and we expect R and D to continue being growing at a good pace and because we see that we have immense value creation opportunities ahead of us. What we really mean for fiscal 2022 is that we because we come with new IPs and you know we've had a great track record in terms of establishing new IPs that comes initially with strong investment in R and D and also in marketing and we expect it to be the same as we come meaningfully on free to play. On free to play, we made a specific comment that because this is a first big step in this new model, we will, of course, take reasonable assumptions in the way we forecast the year as it will be year 1 in our ramp up. Thank you. Thank you. Our next question comes from Michael Ng of Goldman Sachs. Hi, thank you very much for the time and the question. I was just wondering if you could Share a little bit more detail about the Watch Dogs Legion performance. Was this the game that More similar performed to Watch Dogs 1 or Watch Dogs 2. And then I was just wondering if you could Talk a little bit about the Immortals Fenix Rising performance as well. Was that in line with expectations? And do you see further opportunity there? Or is there a longer tail on Switchville? Thank you very much. About IFRS performance, we are actually very happy we were able to launch a new brand in that segment of the market. That is a game that is very much family oriented and that is also very strong on the Switch. So it's helping us to actually be the number one third party publisher on Nintendo. And that game is also played at home and also in outside homes. So it's something interesting and important. We see that this game is going to have long legs. So we need time to make sure it becomes a huge success. For wardrobe Legion, we've seen that it was well received by players and critics alike. It was ranked well on the new gen console being number 4. It was our 3rd biggest PRI contributor, which has been a good start with a sharp very sharp increase in terms of engagement relative to WarJox II. While we didn't even Launched the multiplayer yet, so that's still ahead of us. We're coming with a strong post launch program for the single player, but Also importantly, with a dedicated online multiplayer with gameplay that would be competitive and cooperative. So that should allow us to drive and sustain engagement over time focusing also on replayability. Great. Thanks, Yves. Thanks, Thank you, Mike. Our next question comes from Tom Singlehurst of Citi. Good evening. Thank you for taking the question. It's Tom here from Numisio. So I suppose the first one, I mean, it feels like you're just pushing back releases to sort of hold back central revenue for next year Because you've got the back catalog effect from extended lockdowns, etcetera, etcetera. So the question is, with those So delayed launches. Should we think about growth being double digit in 2022 in line with the sort of medium term aspiration? That's the first question. And the second question, going back to Nick's comment on free to play. I mean, once again, at a high level, it feels like you've had So one big success in Boulhala and one, not big failure, but less successful attempt in hyperchase. I'm just trying to work out, was there any sort of lessons that you've learned from that and you can share with us in terms of trying to predict whether free to play Games will be successful when they land, given it's now a meaningful part of the guidance. Thank you. Yes. So in terms of pushing releases to next year, it's true that we benefit from such a stronger in fiscal 2021 such a strong Q3 and as you mentioned rightly, such strong back end product trends. So that gives us even more comfort to certainly postpone some of our productions and focus on even more polish and higher Quality, so yes, it provides us with higher visibility for next year. We plan to grow next year. We come back to you in May to qualified the progression that we see. But again, what is important to have in mind is that we rely on a big slate of neurodisease and strong back catalog trends that we observe today. Of course, on the back catalog side, we will need to take Into account the fact that in H1 and notably in Q1, we had a positive impact, if I may say so, in a significant manner from the early lockdown respective measures. But we also see today that we benefit from stronger dynamics and we will get the tailwind of the stronger slate of neurodisease of fiscal 2021 comparing favorably versus fiscal 2020. But again, in terms of qualifying the growth for next year, we'll come back to you in May. In terms of free to play, so Bro Alaya was a fantastic acquisition that has driven a fantastic return for us and indeed right learning curve in the multiplayer side. We've been implementing the Battle Pass over the summer and that has a strong impact on engagement. And we see that bringing the games on so many platforms is a good model for us and that we of course want to expand into other franchises in the future. In terms of hyperscape, we've been learning in terms of implementing a great engine. We learned a lot in terms of making the infrastructure very robust to host many, many players. So as we said, it was The first step in our learning curve, the same way as we had launched the crew when we came into live services and then learn from there and expand more meaningfully into live content. So we are following this same learning path and will come stronger in fiscal 2022 on free to play. Very clear. Thank you very much. Thank you. Our next question comes from Richard Eiry of UBS. Yes, good evening, everyone. I Just got a couple of questions. Just on the guidance numbers that you've given out, obviously, you pulled down the top end of the day range by CHF 70,000,000. Just to be clear, you said that obviously we've got delays of Reuters Republic, delays of Prince of Persia, But also the 6 Siege Invitational is now not going to happen in this quarter as well. If we look at those delays, do they more than offset the benefit from back catalogs? So what I'm trying to get at is that if you hadn't delayed those games, Would you actually upgraded guidance rather than change the guidance? So just a bit of clarity in terms of those three games on the numbers. The second side of it is just as we look in terms of changes in the landscape around digital distribution, I don't know if you can update us in terms of thoughts around digital distribution and what's happening within the space and how that will potentially impact margin. And then just largely lastly on the free to play release. I'm not sure if I picked it up correctly. Are you Is that going to be in calendar Q4 or fiscal Q4? I'm just trying to understand that For 2022 on a release basis. And when can we expect to get, obviously, some clarity on that release with Tencent? Thanks. Yes. So in terms of the updated guidance, what we where it reflects the very strong performances of Assasios Skid, Valala and Just Dance 2021 and indeed the over performance of the catalog. But yes, it was partially offset by the fact that we had to postpone with this the 6 invitational and we recently decided to postpone the remake of Prince of Persia and Writers Republic as well as taking into account also that we had decided to move the post launch program of White Rock Legion from Q3 to the second half of Q4. In terms of digital distribution, we see that we have a good momentum on the digital progression in terms of share of our overall net booking. At the end of December, it's 59%. It was 54% 2 years ago. So we continue increasing the digital share. Of course, when we look at the evolution over the last 2 years, this year was a bit specific because we had more neurodisease, 3 of them being launched in the strong period of retail and Thanksgiving and Christmas. We also have a higher share of the switch that usually carries a higher part of physical sales, but even that platform increases in digital. And we also, of course, this year had the specific impact of players purchasing physical software games on top of their Purchase of the new console. The trend here is actually going in the direction of more digital for better gross margin. Yes, absolutely. In terms of free to play, we said that our free to play games will be launched in fiscal 2022. And we made a specific comment that the first game developed with Tencent will be soft launch in the Q4 of fiscal but it's we have on one side the free to play and on the other side the mobile game, which is fiscal which is Q4 fiscal 2nd. Okay. Thanks. Just going back to the guidance question, you mentioned that In Q4, you were supposed to leave a Watchdogs Legion extension. Is that was that correct? I missed that. And is that now being postponed until fiscal 2022? No, no, no. What I said is that we had decided a while ago to postpone in the post launch program from Q3 fiscal to the 2nd part of the Q4 of this fiscal. Okay. Sorry, I missed that. Okay. No, thank you very much. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes our question and answer session for today. I'd like to hand you back to your speakers for any additional or closing remarks. So thank you very much for your questions and have a nice evening. All day. Thank you, gentlemen. Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes today's conference call. We thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.