CD Projekt has already left the crisis of 2020-2022 behind, when the unsuccessful premiere of Cyberpunk 2077 brought a number of problems to the Polish gaming giant (as a result of which investors began to sell the company's shares en masse, and its price on the Warsaw Stock Exchange collapsed).
CD Projekt publishes results. And what results!
The rescue program implemented by the company, ambitious publishing plans for the coming years, as well as the expansion to Cyberpunk 2077, which premiered in September last year, which was very well received by players and reviewers, made investors start to regain trust in the Warsaw studio.
Presented on Wednesday CD Projekt's financial results for the second quarter of 2024 are a continuation of this positive trend. During this time, the Warsaw-based company generated 1PLN 98 million in consolidated revenueswhat does it mean increase by 31.6 percent compared to the same period in 2023. Net profit closed at the level of PLN 69.9 million and he was higher by as much as 223.8 percent year-on-year. Importantly, both revenue and profit were better than market consensus.
In the entire first half of 2024, the company's consolidated net profit amounted to PLN 170 million and was approximately 90 percent higher than a year ago.
Such results were of course influenced by the great sales of Cyberpunk 2077 and the aforementioned add-on Phantom of Liberty. A large share of CDR's profits is also contributed by sales of The Witcher 3 (last year the game received an improved version for PS5 and Xbox Series X/S consoles), which premiered almost a decade ago.
The market reacted quite cautiously to the latest financial results. On Thursday, at the opening of the Warsaw Stock Exchange, the shares were down by about 1 percent. Currently, the shares are valued at PLN 178. This year's rate of return on CD Projekt shares is still over 56 percent and is the highest among all companies in the WIG20 index.
It is also worth noting that With a market capitalization of PLN 18 billion, CD Projekt is worth more than all other companies listed on the WSE and NewConnect combined. Of course, it is still a long way from the records from the end of 2020, when shares soared to over PLN 460, making CD Projekt the most expensive company on the Warsaw Stock Exchange. However, the trend today seems to be upward.
CD Projekt's superpower plans: The company is preparing seven new games
There is one more number that stands out in the company's financial report. It concerns the CDRs collected cash resources (cash and liquid financial assets), the total value of which is already PLN 1.365 billion, and in the first half of 2024 it increased by 55.8 million. Why does the company need so much cash?
CD Projekt needs these funds to finance its extremely ambitious publishing plan, which has been outlined at the end of 2022. Let us recall that as part of it, the company announced as many as seven new games, including five that will take place in the Witcher universe.
The first of the projects announced by CDR is Polaris (all of which refer to constellations). This name is a new Witcher trilogy. Work on the first installment of the series is already underway, and the next parts of the trilogy are to be released in 6-year cycles. 410 developers have been assigned to the project.
How does CD Projekt intend to maintain such an ambitious release cycle? During the presentation of the new strategy in 2022, the company explained that since the second and third parts of the Witcher trilogy will be built on the foundations laid during the production of Polaris, the development process will be significantly streamlined.
Work on Polaris is progressing – the team responsible for the game's development is getting closer to achieving an important milestone that will end the pre-production stage
– Michał Nowakowski, Joint CEO of CD Projekt, announced on Wednesday.
The second project Redzi is currently working on is Orion, the successor to Cyberpunk 2077. The game is being developed by the new studio CD Projekt North America. It is currently still in the research phase, and work on it is being carried out by a team of 60 developers.
The first half of the year was also an intense period for our studio in Boston, where we are laying the foundations for Orion, the next game in the Cyberpunk universe.
– explained Michał Nowakowski during the presentation of the results.
In addition to the new Witcher trilogy, CD Projekt has also announced two other games set in Andrzej Sapkowski's universe, but work on them has been outsourced to external studios. The Syriusz project is being developed by The Molasses Flood studio, which was acquired by CD Projekt in 2021.
The game will take place in the Witcher universe, but it will be different from our previous productions due to the fact that it is aimed at a much wider group of recipients. Syriusz will offer players both single-player and multiplayer gameplay
– Adam Kiciński, the former president of CD Projekt, explained in 2022. The latest information shows that in terms of gameplay, the title is to refer to the popular Monster Hunter series. There are currently 42 developers working on the Syriusz project.
Another Witcher project is called Canis Majoris. It is a full-fledged remake of the first Witcher game. The title is to run on Unreal Engine 5, and CDR has entrusted work on it to another Polish studio, Fool's Theory, which has a decent RPG The Thaumaturge under its belt. Canis Majoris, like Orion, is still in the research phase.
There is also Hadar. A completely new project that is to be independent of The Witcher and Cyberpunk 2077. What's more, it will be an original project. Conceptual work on the game began at the end of 2021. At the moment, it is being carried out by a small team of 20 people. It is therefore possible that we will wait a few more years for the game, or maybe even a decade. It is worth recalling that the first trailer for Cyberpunk 2077 was presented in 2012, and the game premiered 8 years later.