Keystone Studios stays on a winner as game rivals lose

KEYWORDS Studios defied a day of pain for the gaming sector to provide an upbeat update to investors.

The AIM-listed company, which has worked on titles including Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, said that it expects to report revenues up 23% to around €238 million (£203 million) for the six months to July.

Underlying pre-tax profit is expected to be around €40 million (£34 million) — up more than 80% on last year.

The group, which has been searching for a new CEO since June, said it is seeing “robust” demand despite lockdowns lifting and is focused on creating new content to keep pandemic-era gamers glued to their screens.

Senior managers Jon Hauck and Sonia Sedler are acting as joint interim CEOs.

Hargreaves Lansdown’s Sophie LundYates said the new CEO search is “a quandary that shareholders will be hoping is solved soon”.

The update came the day after shares in Chinese game-making and social media giant Tencent fell by as much as 11%, wiping almost $60 billion from its market cap, after Chinese state media condemned video games as “spiritual opium”. Shares in European and US gaming firms also took a hit.

Tencent, which gets 30% of its total revenues from gaming, will curb access to gaming time for the under-12s.