Nintendo Again Breaks Sales Records

Officials from Nintendo have announced that the company has raised its fiscal year sales and profit forecasts for a fourth time, following continued strong demand for the Nintendo DS and Wii consoles. Sales for the year ended March 31st were put at ¥966 billion ($8.1bn), up from the previous forecast of ¥900 billion ($7.5bn). The estimate also beat a consensus figure of ¥929 billion ($7.8bn), polled from seventeen separate analysts by Reuters. No specific figures were given for profits but these were also said to have exceeded previous estimates of an operating profit of ¥185 billion ($1.6bn) and a net profit of ¥120 billion ($1.0bn), both of which were already record numbers for the company. Nintendo’s final annual earnings report is due to be released on April 26th. The company had previously forecast Nintendo DS hardware sales of 23 million units for the business year and software sales of 100 million units, but these also are expected to have been exceeded. Target sales for the Wii of six million units by the end of March are also expected to have been achieved, with supply, rather than demand, being the only limiting factor. Estimates for Wii software sales were not given. "Merchandise does not move in the January-March quarter - that is the norm in this industry," said Nintendo spokesman Yasuhiro Minagawa said. "But ours somehow did." As well as profits from its core games business, Nintendo, which has significant foreign currency and property investments, expects a ¥20 billion ($168.3m) foreign exchange related profit – instead of the previously predicted ¥10 billion ($84.2m) loss. In what has unquestionably been a good year for the company, Nintendo stock has almost doubled in the last twelve months, rising by 2.1 percent following these latest forecasts.