Elon Musk's Cyberpunk Approval Helps Boost Video Games Maker CD Projekt Further

Video games fan Elon Musk gave shares in Polish games producer CD Projekt a further boost on Thursday after the company's update of its flagship game prompted short sellers to close positions earlier in the week.

Shares in CD Projekt which is valued at almost 37 billion zlotys ($9.87 billion), jumped as much as 19% on Thursday, bringing the total gain so far this week to more than 50%.

CD Projekt's shares were hit at the end of 2020 following gamers' disappointment with the company's Cyberpunk 2077. Since then the firm has been working on improvements.

Musk tweeted: "The esthetics of Cyberpunk are incredible btw...," to his 43 million followers on Thursday.

Earlier this week Melvin Capital was said to be driving the gains in CD Projekt by closing out its short positions following losses betting against GameStop and others.

With Cyberpunk, even the hotfixes literally have hotfixes, but … great game

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 28, 2021

"This is about squeezing out funds from their short positions. Musk's tweet has added to that," said Kacper Kopron, analyst at Trigon DM.

Some analysts and sources said the rising share price had also led to rumours that the company could be a takeover target.

CD Projekt declined to comment.

Separately, U.S.-listed shares of Canadian e-commerce platform Shopify Inc rose as much as 3.5% in after-hours trading on Thursday shortly after Musk tweeted that the company "is great".

January 29, 2021