Yesterday’s announcement of the new strategy had a negative impact on CD Projekt shares. Analysts believe that it lacks specifics. Serkan Toto, CEO of the consulting firm Kantan Games, was one of the first to draw attention to the fall.
He noted that the drop in shares before the presentation was 9.09%. After the announcement, they fell by another 13.81%.
At the time of writing the news, the shares are trading at a price of 190.5 Polish zloty ($48.2). This is 24% less than they cost yesterday morning. The last time the company had similar indicators on the Warsaw Stock Exchange was in the spring of 2019.
“Investors didn’t like the management ideas of [CD Projekt],” Toto sums up.
According to former Kotaku editor-in-chief Stephen Totilo, analysts
want more clarity from the company on the development of online and the development of the next games.
Polish website Bankier.pl I also interviewed several experts shortly after the CD Projekt presentation. For example, analyst Maciej Kietliński from Noble Securities believes that the company took a step back and deliberately did not make loud promises. At the same time, he notes that investors still do not know how the developers intend to monetize the Cyberpunk 2077 multiplayer (and whether it will be at all).
Now we only know that from 2022 CD Projekt will simultaneously develop several AAA titles at once. Analyst Michael Wojciechowski suggests that the next game in The Witcher universe will be released in 2026. In his opinion, the company may also release another title in 2024 or 2025.
A representative of the investment company Rockbridge TFI claims that none of the points of the new strategy will force investors to change their attitude to CD Projekt — at least until the release of Cyberpunk 2077 for a new generation of consoles.
Judging by the material Bankier.pl Investors also don’t like CD Projekt’s silence about the sales of its latest project. At the end of December, the company announced that Cyberpunk 2077 had sold over 13 million copies in the first 10 days, but since then the developers have not provided new data.
Analysts fear that the Polish company simply has nothing to boast about. “This is especially important in the context of the latest M Science report that only 0.5 million copies of Cyberpunk 2077 were sold in March,” notes Pawel Sugalski from Rockbridge TFI.
Yesterday CD Projekt bought the Canadian studio Digital Scapes and announced a global change of strategy. The company aims to transform the development processes inside CD Projekt RED, develop online and turn its brands into cross-media franchises.