Nintendo Co. raised its fiscal-year earnings guidance as strong sales buoyed by stay-home trends amid the coronavirus pandemic continued through the latest holiday shopping season.
The Japanese videogame company said Monday that it raised its revenue and net-profit forecasts for the fiscal year ending March 31. It expects revenue to increase 22% to Y1.600 trillion ($15.28 billion), compared with the previous forecast of a 7.0% rise, while it expects net profit to rise 55% to Y400.00 billion, compared with the previous view of a 16% increase.
Nintendo said it expects to sell 26.5 million Switch consoles this fiscal year, up from the previous view of 24.0 million units. For the nine-month period ended Dec. 31, the company already sold 24.1 million units. That compared with 17.7 million Switch consoles sales a year earlier and 12.5 million units in its fiscal first half.
The Covid-19 pandemic forced more people to stay home and play videogames, leading to a surge in console and software sales for months even before the year-end shopping season.
Nintendo said it sold 19.4 million copies of ‘Animal Crossing: New Horizons’ in the nine-month period, compared with 14.3 million copies sold in its first half.
The Japanese videogame company said net profit rose to Y376.67 billion for the nine-month period from Y196.39 billion a year earlier.
Third-quarter net profit was Y163.54 billion, given a net profit of Y213.12 billion in its first half, according to a Wall Street Journal calculation. That beat the estimate of Y135.57 billion from a FactSet poll of analysts.
Nine-month revenue increased 37% from a year earlier to Y1.404 trillion.
Write to Kosaku Narioka at kosaku.narioka@wsj.com
