The Aristocrat Leisure Limited (ASX: ALL) share price just hit another 52-week high reaching $43.09 during Wednesday trading.
The jump represented a 5% gain on yesterday's price. Aristocrat shares are currently trading at $42.29 apiece, still up 3.05%.
The gambling company's shares have done incredibly well this year, rising by close to 40%.
On the ASX, Aristocrat describes itself as designing, developing, manufacturing, and marketing a range of products and services including electronic gaming machines, casino management systems, and digital social games.
The company is best known for — and makes a lot of its profit from — its poker machines in the US where they have a 30% market share.
New growth avenue
According to reporting by The Australian, the company's NFL game is supposedly attracting a new, male audience.
The installation of Aristocrat's new NFL slot machine game in US casinos began last week – in line with the NFL season – and it's already seeing success. That sounds promising for Aristocrat shares. The Aristocrat Leisure CEO Trevor Croker said:
It's bringing in a new player to the slot floor. It's a new younger male player to the slots business …who was already at the casino.
The company is hoping to attract and keep the interest of players who hadn't been interested in slot machines before. Aristocrat is hopeful it will lead to longer-term engagement, rather than just a short blip of interest after its release.
So how can it keep players interested? The Australian reported the company will continuously update the product during the season and "incorporate game plays to keep it current".
Broker Citi likes this move and said, according to The Australian:
NFL offers an interesting upside to our forecasts, if it can grow the market and become a hit title.
While it is still early days, if NFL proves successful we believe the concepts outlined could be extended to other sports licences down the track.
Is it too late to invest in Aristocrat Leisure shares?
Most shares are traded every day, so there's always an opportunity to invest. However, the question is whether the Aristocrat Leisure share price is good value.
According to the Factset collation of analyst ratings, Aristocrat currently has six buy ratings, one hold rating, and no sell ratings. In other words, despite its impressive run, analysts are still keen on the company's growth outlook at this price.
Using the profit projections on Commsec, the Aristocrat Leisure share price is valued at 21x FY23's estimated earnings and 19x FY24's estimated earnings. I'm not sure how far the Aristocrat share price will be able to rise this year, but it is still down more than 10% from its peak in November 2021.
