Liberum hits Codemasters with 'buy' rating

Liberum said Codemaster's new F1 2020 game, which had been officially released earlier during the same session, had been met with "extremely favourable reviews" - with particular praise given to new game content.

With exposure to the F1 franchise boosted through the replacement e-sports series, which ran from March to June, Liberum expects spiking player trends to translate into strong initial sales for Codemaster, a corporate client of the broker.

Liberum forecasts roughly £40m of revenues to be derived from the F1 franchise in the 2021 trading year, contributing to an "increasingly busy pipeline" of releases in the year.

"The shares continue to do well, however they remain at a 24% discount to the UK gaming sector at 20.4x CY21 EPS," said the analysts, who have a 390.0p target price on the group's shares.