Shares in Fantasy worlds games developer and publisher Frontier Developments (FDEV:AIM) forged 8% higher on Friday to a new all-time high of £22.50 after the company upgraded its full-year revenue guidance to the top half of market expectations.
Given Frontier is only three-months into its 2021 financial year, this underscores the strength of current business momentum and continues the ‘strong close to 2020’.
For the time being the consensus of analyst expectations is bang in the middle of the £83 million to £95 million range, so today’s announcement will no doubt encourage some upgrades.
Broker Peel Hunt was quick out of the blocks, increasing its 2021 revenue forecast by 7% to £92.1 million and earnings per share forecast by 14% to 38.6p while increasng its price target to £24.66.
A BUSY SCHEDULE
The successful Jurassic World Evolution: Complete Edition will become available on Nintendo Switch on 3 November. According to Peel Hunt this is a ‘big deal’ given this is the first time one of the company’s big franchises has been put on the Switch platform and reports from Nintendo of strong device sales of 55.8 million.
Frontier Foundry, the company’s new games label for third party publishing revealed its first two games - the time-twisting turn-based combat strategy shooter Lemnis Gate, and physics-based co-op platformer Struggling. The latter is already available on Steam and Switch with the former arriving early next year.
Frontier expects Foundry to make a ‘material’ contribution to the overall business over the next few years.
Looking further ahead the company has guided for the release of three new games for the 2022 fiscal year and five or six per year from 2023.
