Keywords Studios PLC (AIM:KWS, OTC:KYYWF) was kept as a 'buy' by Shore Capital after what it said was a well-attended capital markets day for the video game services group on Wednesday.
Shares rose 2% to 2,458p today and although no new information was released at the event the broker remains keen on the investment story after KWS explained its longer-term strategy.
“We view the group as the picks & shovel to the gold miner, with the potential to scale further whilst maintaining, in our view, good underlying financial metrics,” Shore said.
“We upgraded our numbers slightly post the full-year results in March and following the acquisition of Forgotten Empires, which was announced yesterday, we plan to upgrade our revenue forecast for FY22 by about 1%,” said the broker.
In a summary of the day, Shore Capital noted that KWS is the market leader by over 3 times versus its closest peer, in a growing US$35bn industry of content spend with US$11bn outsourced.
However, it only makes up 5% of the market and therefore sees further scale and opportunities for growth.
Demand for content remains high, and KWS is a strategic, and almost essential, partner to its global industry-leading client base with a high level of repeat business throughout the group, fuelling organic growth and cross-selling opportunities.
ShoreCap expects further M&A activity, in particular within marketing and game development while there is a natural opportunity to expand into adjacent markets including; live operations, media and entertainment as well as the “metaverse”.
Going forward, Shore reported that KWS expects over 10% organic revenue growth, stable adjusted pre-tax profit margins at 15%, high cash conversion and continued M&A spend over the medium-term growth model, underpinning a company target for €1bn revenue.