Nintendo financial expectations for Fiscal Year
by Kit

Friday, May 28 2004

High-demand for DS may push Nintendo higher.

Nintendo Co. expects net income in its current fiscal year, ending March 31, 2005, to double, anticipating both a weak yen and high demand for its portable system, the DS.

The company, which plans to roll out the double-screen handheld in Japan and the U.S. before the end of the calendar year, with a European launch in the first quarter of 2005, is targeting shipments of 3.5 million DS units in its current fiscal year, along with software allotments of some15.0 million units.

Nintendo expects full year profit to be 70.0 billion yen (approximately $631.4 million U.S.), up from the previous fiscal year’s tally of 33.2 billion yen (approximately $299.5 million U.S.)

In its just-concluded fiscal year, Nintendo reported revenue of 514.8 billion yen (approximately $4.6 billion U.S.), which represented a 2.1 percent gain from the previous year’s total of 504.14 billion yen (approximately $4.55 billion U.S.).

Nintendo came up short in its bid to ship six million GameCube hardware units in its fiscal year, ending with a total of five million. It expects to sell 4.5 million units of its flagship console in this fiscal year.

The company also hinted that the successor to its GameCube could make an appearance at next year’s E3Expo.

--- Kit