CD Projekt Stock Dips Due to Delayed Witcher and Sales Ban in Russia
The latest stock market quotations are not favourable for CD Projekt. Despite higher profits than expected, the company's result fails to gain trust of analysts and investors.
- CD Projekt's stock price saw a significant drop after the company announced its financial results for 2021;
- According to analysts, in 2022 the developer of The Witcher could generate 36% less revenue than expected.
The first stock market opening after the Easter break did not turn out favorable for CD Projekt. In the morning the company faced a big dip of more than 8%. (PLN 153.42 at 12:26 - via Bankier.pl [in Polish]).
The last time the shares of The Witcher trilogy devs dipped was on the day of the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine and later at the beginning of March. The falling share price is most likely related to negative market recommendation of analysts from Credit Suisse.
Witcher delays, Cyberpunk and war
Following CD Projekt's recently published results for 2021 it would seem that the drop in the stock exchange price should not be so significant. The company generated more revenue than expected - PLN 273.1 million ($63,4 million) instead of the expected PLN 247.4 million ($57,3 million) - and the net profit also exceeded expectations.
- Nevertheless, analysts from Swiss financial firm Credit Suisse were not optimistic in their forecasts for CD Projekt, lowering the Polish company's expected revenues for 2022 by as much as 36%.
- As the reasons for such recommendation the Swiss analysts cited, among others, the plan to release the Cyberpunk 2077 expansion in 2023 and lower than expected sales of this game.
- Also the news about the delayed release of the next-gen edition of The Witcher 3 didn't help.
- The predictions were also affected by the ban on game sales in Russia, related to the war in Ukraine.
It is hard to predict whether the analysts' reaction will have a long-lasting effect on CD Projekt's stock market performance. Hopefully, the announced release plan will remain unchanged and the Polish company will deliver what was announced without further problems.
