Nintendo expects its Switch console to be a massive hit
Shares of Nintendo stock are down 0.56% today to ¥27,465 ($247) despite reporting an eye-popping outlook for the current fiscal year.
Nintendo reported earnings today in Japan and issued guidance for ¥750 billion ($6.7 billion) in sales and operating profit of ¥65 billion ($5.8 billion) by March 31, 2018, the end of Nintendo's fiscal year.
If the company's guidance on profits comes to fruition, it would represent a 121% increase from the previous year and a seven-year high, when Nintendo was in the middle of the successful run of the original Wii and the Nintendo 3DS.
The company said 10 million of its red-hot Switch consoles would be sold in its first year on the market. Since its March 3 release, 2.74 million units have been sold along with 5.46 million units of games and software.
To put those numbers in perspective, Nintendo's last console, the Wii U, sold a total of 13.6 million units in its four-year lifetime.
Analysts at Morgan Stanley only expected guidance of 8.7 million Switch units for the first fiscal year.
The first flagship game released for the console, "The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild," has been so popular that more units of the game have been sold than the total number of actual consoles sold.
Nintendo reported net sales of ¥489.1 billion, beating the company's own guidance, and net profit of ¥102.6 billion, representing a 10.7% year-over-year drop, but beating analysts' estimates of ¥93.6 billion. Profits were helped by a weaker Yen.
Although shares of Nintendo are down today, the stock has risen 68% in the last year.
(The over the counter shares that can be bought in US Dollars are represented by ticker symbol NTDOY)
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