Namco Bandai Profits Jump Thanks To DBZ, Tekken

Officials from Japanese publisher Namco Bandai have announced details of the company's third quarter financial results, for the period ended December 31st, during which profits were seen to jump by 12.3 percent as revenues fell. For the three month period, net sales were ¥330.52 billion ($2.77bn), down 4.3 percent on the same period in 2005. Net income rose by 12.3 percent to ¥19.89 billion ($166.6m). The newly merged company's home video games business saw sales rise by 4.9 percent to ¥43.22 billion ($359.6m). Operating profit (net profit data was not revealed per division) rose by 46.8 percent to ¥7.73 billion ($64.3m). Overall, the company's home games business published eighty-eight titles during the three month period and sold 16.6 million units of software in total. The best selling game was Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi 2 on the PlayStation 2 with 1.03 million units sold, followed by Tekken: Dark Resurrection on PSP with 0.84 million units sold, Tamagotchi Connection: Corner Shop 2 (Nintendo DS) on 0.79 million, Naruto: Ultimate Ninja (PlayStation 2) on 0.53 million and Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Destiny II Plus (PlayStation 2) on 0.51 million. With the exception of Tekken: Dark Resurrection, all of the company's best selling titles during the period were those that previously would have been published by Bandai, despite Namco traditionally being regarded as the dominant games publisher from the pair. Elsewhere in the results, Bandai's toys and hobby division provided the greatest single contribution in revenue, with ¥49.62 billion in sales ($413.0m) and a ¥6.57 billion ($54.7m) operating profit. The other most significant contributor was Namco's arcade business with its various amusement parks and coin-op machines generating ¥21.76 billion ($181.1m) in revenues and ¥ 439 million ($3.7m) in operating profit. The company also announced that it expects full fiscal year results, ending March 31st, to result in net profits of ¥23.5 billion ($196.8m) on revenues of ¥460 billion ($3.85bn). [UPDATED: 02.20.07 10:00am PST] Updated with Q3 specific financial information versus cumulative Q1-Q3, and corrected year over year sales percentages.