Nintendo Co. raised its fiscal-year earnings guidance as strong sales buoyed by stay-home trends amid the coronavirus pandemic continued through the latest holiday shopping season.
The Japanese videogame company said Monday that it raised its revenue and net-profit forecasts for the fiscal year ending March 31. It expects revenue to increase 22% to Y1.600 trillion ($15.28 billion), compared with the previous forecast of a 7.0% rise, while it expects net profit to rise 55% to Y400.00 billion, compared with the previous view of a 16% increase.
Nintendo said it expects to sell 26.5 million Switch consoles this fiscal year, up from the previous view of 24.0 million units. For the nine-month period ended Dec. 31, the company already sold 24.1 million units. That compared with 17.7 million Switch consoles sales a year earlier and 12.5 million units in its fiscal first half.
The Covid-19 pandemic forced more people to stay home and play videogames, leading to a surge in console and software sales for months even before the year-end shopping season.
Nintendo said it sold 19.4 million copies of 'Animal Crossing: New Horizons' in the nine-month period, compared with 14.3 million copies sold in its first half.
The Japanese videogame company said net profit rose to Y376.67 billion for the nine-month period from Y196.39 billion a year earlier.
Third-quarter net profit was Y163.54 billion, given a net profit of Y213.12 billion in its first half, according to a Wall Street Journal calculation. That beat the estimate of Y135.57 billion from a FactSet poll of analysts.
People are stuck at home, people buy video games to entertain them.
Most of these purchase (for example, Animal Crossing) happened early in their fiscal year, before the scamdemic dragged on for months and depleted everyone's cash reserves. They sold so many Switches mid last year that they were sold out for months.
the more money Nintendo gets, the more good games they’ll be able to make