Group expects fewer switch sales – share split announced
Kyoto Nintendo is preparing for fewer sales of its Switch games console. For the financial year running until the end of March 2023, the video games specialist expects 21 million devices to be sold.
The company also announced a stock split. This is to take effect on October 1st at a ratio of 10:1 Nintendo communicated. Shares are up 5 percent year-to-date.
Last fiscal year, Nintendo was held back by chip shortages and just managed to meet its twice-lowered forecast of 23 million consoles.
The consoles are the basis of the Nintendo business: the traditional Japanese company continues to only make its popular game characters such as Super Mario available to a very limited extent apart from its own devices, for example on smartphones. The Switch, which customers can use both on TV and on the go, was the much-needed hit for Nintendo after the flop of its predecessor, the Wii U.
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Since the console was launched five years ago, 107.6 million devices have been sold. At the end of the fiscal year, Nintendo had 102 million active players, up from 87 million twelve months earlier.
Nintendo comes through crisis better than Sony
At the same time, there is a downward sales curve for the Switch, even if the chip problems played a significant role in this last year. After 28.8 million switch consoles sold in the fiscal year up to the end of March 2021, it should initially be 25.5 million last year.
But then the forecast was first reduced to 24 million and later to 23 million. Nintendo is still getting through the crisis better than its competitor Sonywho was only able to sell 11.5 million units of his new Playstation 5 console in the past fiscal year – with a forecast of 14.8 million.
Sales fell in the past fiscal year by 3.6 percent to almost 1.7 trillion yen (about 12.3 billion euros), as Nintendo announced on Tuesday. Profit remained stable at 477.6 billion yen. For the current financial year, Nintendo expects sales to drop to 1.6 trillion yen and significantly less profit at 340 billion yen.
More: Sony achieves operating profit of one trillion yen for the first time
