Nintendo Reports Strong Earnings in 1Q
Source: Yahoo/Reuters/AP
Link: Yahoo
TOKYO - Nintendo Co., the Japanese company that makes Super Mario and other video games, said Tuesday it earned 11.5 billion yen ($95 million) in its first fiscal quarter on strong sales of its GameBoy handheld machine.
This is the first time Nintendo, based in Kyoto, has reported first quarter earnings, and it did not disclose comparable earnings numbers for the April-June period last year.
Sales were up 5 percent at 83.8 billion yen ($695 million) from a year ago, company spokesman Yasuhiro Minagawa said.
He said profits were up "by a wide margin" from the previous year, but declined to give details.
The GameBoy Advance SP, a slicker-looking portable machine aimed at adults, sold well. Also software for the machine, "Pocket Monster Ruby/Sapphire," was popular in both Japan and the United States, the company said in a statement.
"The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker," a new game played by linking the GameBoy Advance with GameCube sold well in Europe, it said.
GameCube is Nintendo's offering to rival Sony Corp.'s PlayStation 2, but PlayStation 2 leads in global sales with 53.85 million shipped so far. In another possible blow to Nintendo, Sony plans to start selling a portable game machine next year.
Nintendo has sold 9.6 million GameCube consoles so far, while selling 37 million GameBoy Advance machines around the world. Microsoft Corp. has shipped 9.4 million Xbox machines worldwide.
During the quarter, Nintendo sold 80,000* GameCubes and 3.24 million GameBoy Advance machines.
Analysts said Nintendo's growing GameCube inventory could be a problem.
"Unless the company takes some drastic measures such as price cuts, reaching sales of 6 million units, or even meeting last year's 5.75 million unit level, will be difficult," said Shunji Yamashina, analyst at Morgan Stanley.
Nintendo has targeted sales of six million GameCubes and 20 million GameBoy Advance machines during fiscal 2003, ending March 31, 2004.
Nintendo says it is too early to tell if it can meet the targets because sales of game machines tend to be low in the first fiscal quarter but shoot up over the summer and Christmas season.
For 2002, Nintendo reported a 67.3 billion yen ($558 million) profit, down 37 percent from the previous year, as sales dipped 9 percent to 504 billion yen ($4 billion).
Nintendo left its profit forecast for fiscal 2003 unchanged at 65 billion yen ($539 million) on 550 billion yen ($4.6 billion) sales.
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*The actual numbers are 800,000. This is confirmed in another article by Yahoo
- Eagle Zephyr
Link: Yahoo
TOKYO - Nintendo Co., the Japanese company that makes Super Mario and other video games, said Tuesday it earned 11.5 billion yen ($95 million) in its first fiscal quarter on strong sales of its GameBoy handheld machine.
This is the first time Nintendo, based in Kyoto, has reported first quarter earnings, and it did not disclose comparable earnings numbers for the April-June period last year.
Sales were up 5 percent at 83.8 billion yen ($695 million) from a year ago, company spokesman Yasuhiro Minagawa said.
He said profits were up "by a wide margin" from the previous year, but declined to give details.
The GameBoy Advance SP, a slicker-looking portable machine aimed at adults, sold well. Also software for the machine, "Pocket Monster Ruby/Sapphire," was popular in both Japan and the United States, the company said in a statement.
"The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker," a new game played by linking the GameBoy Advance with GameCube sold well in Europe, it said.
GameCube is Nintendo's offering to rival Sony Corp.'s PlayStation 2, but PlayStation 2 leads in global sales with 53.85 million shipped so far. In another possible blow to Nintendo, Sony plans to start selling a portable game machine next year.
Nintendo has sold 9.6 million GameCube consoles so far, while selling 37 million GameBoy Advance machines around the world. Microsoft Corp. has shipped 9.4 million Xbox machines worldwide.
During the quarter, Nintendo sold 80,000* GameCubes and 3.24 million GameBoy Advance machines.
Analysts said Nintendo's growing GameCube inventory could be a problem.
"Unless the company takes some drastic measures such as price cuts, reaching sales of 6 million units, or even meeting last year's 5.75 million unit level, will be difficult," said Shunji Yamashina, analyst at Morgan Stanley.
Nintendo has targeted sales of six million GameCubes and 20 million GameBoy Advance machines during fiscal 2003, ending March 31, 2004.
Nintendo says it is too early to tell if it can meet the targets because sales of game machines tend to be low in the first fiscal quarter but shoot up over the summer and Christmas season.
For 2002, Nintendo reported a 67.3 billion yen ($558 million) profit, down 37 percent from the previous year, as sales dipped 9 percent to 504 billion yen ($4 billion).
Nintendo left its profit forecast for fiscal 2003 unchanged at 65 billion yen ($539 million) on 550 billion yen ($4.6 billion) sales.
------
*The actual numbers are 800,000. This is confirmed in another article by Yahoo
- Eagle Zephyr