As the latest console manufacturer and software maker to feel the impact of component supply shortages in consumer technology, Nintendo shared a mixed earnings report for the six months between April and September.
The good news is that, in the context of the last decade including five years of Switch sales, this second fiscal period was still a historically good quarter considering the environment. Plus the Japanese gaming company actually signaled optimism in certain areas by raising guidance for profit and software performance.
Lifetime Nintendo Switch hardware sales reached 92.87 million to date after moving 3.83 million more units in the three months ending September. It’s the seventh gaming console or device of all time to pass the 90 million threshold.
That brings the most recent six month total to 8.28 million Switch shipments, down 34% compared to the highs of last year.
Originally Nintendo was targeting 25.5 million for the full year. That’s been revised to 24 million, consistent with a recent report out of Nikkei claiming production would be exactly this amount for the fiscal year ending March. Which means the company has to ship 15.72 million in the back half. Unfortunately, this figure could even be higher if the part shortages and supply chain circumstances were better.
“We can’t produce enough to meet the demand we are expecting during the upcoming holiday season,” President Shuntaro Furukawa commented during a briefing after the release. “Currently there is no sign of improvement and the situation continues to be severe, so I can’t say how long it will continue.”
As I wrote a few months back, the lifetime figure for Switch hardware sell-thru to consumers was 85 million back in June. Now it’s upwards of 90 million which implies an even higher percentage of shipments hitting households. A clear indicator of end-user demand as Switch continues to sell at retail.
While Nintendo’s slate of new exclusive software releases has been quiet the last few months, it provided updates on them and evergreen titles. The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword HD has shipped 3.6 million units since launch in July. Going back historically, it’s selling at a faster rate than the original Wii version which sold-in 3.52 million between November 2011 and March 2012.
In its second quarter on sale, Mario Golf: Super Rush sold 600K units to reach 1.94 million. Signs point to it now being the best-selling game in the series, above the 1.47 million of Mario Golf on Nintendo 64. And the most curious result to me was New Pokémon Snap, which hit 2.19 million lifetime after.. 2.07 million in the quarter ending June? Granted these are only for outside of Japan since The Pokémon Company publishes it locally. Without knowing the full picture, it’s hard to compare it to the top-selling original at 3.63 million lifetime. All we know is that it lacks any sort of momentum outside of its home market.
On the financial side, Nintendo’s first half revenue reached $5.69 billion or a reduction of 19%. This implies July to September quarter revenue of $2.75 billion, representing a decline of 27%.
On the profit side, operating income dipped 25% to just over $2 billion during the six months ending September. The second quarter alone saw this metric reach $913 million, when it was $1.34 billion in the prior period.
Again when calculating the latest annual period, operating profit reached $5.18 billion. That’s actually above the $5.01 billion aggregated last year.
All of these results reveal a similar trend for Nintendo’s forecast going forward. The company reiterated its annual revenue guidance of $14.58 billion, which would be a decline from the record $16 billion or so. It then upped operating income target by 4% to $4.74 billion. While that’s still down from the all-time high of $5.8 billion in 2021, the upward move combined with an increased dividend payout as well shows more confidence in its expected profitability.
Time to recap the full report and make some predictions of my own.
Boiling this gallery down into a quick summary, Nintendo’s business is reverting towards the mean after historic highs due to supply constraints, a more sparse lineup plus a comparison to the commercial phenomenon that was Animal Crossing: New Horizons. It’s still doing very well.
Now I’ll move into the fun part.
Quick reminder that revenue during Q2 hit $2.75 billion. As displayed on the quarterly graph above, this is the second highest result for a second quarter since 2009 behind only the record-breaking sales around this time in fiscal 2021. For context, I’ve included an annualized chart as well. Expanding this sales metric to a trailing 12-month figure shows $14.7 billion in total. Compare that to $14.89 billion a year back and the trend is clearly normalizing. It’s still among the best in a decade, notably when looking at pre-pandemic times.
Accounting for expenses, operating profit hit that $913 million figure down from $1.34 billion in 2021 Q2. Similar to revenue, it’s the runner-up result when looking back more than a decade. Annualized operating income right now is $5.18 billion, even better than last year which shows strength in margins and a shift towards evergreen titles retaining players that want to continue spending.
Both of these are still highly positive, especially in comparison to the difficult years surrounding Wii U’s flop after its launch in 2012. Last year was more of an outlier, an extraordinary time with Animal Crossing: New Horizons release right before most of us began staying home.
Regional split exhibits a similar movement as last quarter, with The Americas making up 44% now versus 41% last year. Europe is up next at 24%, up from 25%. Japan was at 23% last year, it’s now slightly below at 22%. This means 78% of Nintendo’s sales right now are outside of its home market.
Digging into product categories is a bit more interesting. 43% of Nintendo’s business is from Switch hardware which is down from almost half at 49%. Retail software is 30%, compared to 25% previously. Digital software is actually down to 11% from 14%, while subscriptions and add-ons hit 12% this quarter while generating 8% in 2021 Q2. The small remainder is from mobile and IP licensing business. This reflects lower production of Switch and improved split for retail intriguingly enough. Existing owners are buying games, and non-owners are waiting on inventory.
Now that Nintendo and its peers Microsoft and Sony have all reported their respective quarters ending in September, we can look at how they stack up against one another. Because it’s always a competition, right? No, because all of them are doing very well overall and selling as many pieces of hardware their suppliers can muster. It’s still fun to run the numbers, at least for me.
Remember that Nintendo generated $2.75 billion. From my articles on Microsoft and Sony, quarterly revenue from gaming was $3.6 billion and $5.86 billion respectively. These were both all-time highs for that particular quarter, while Nintendo was in the business of breaking top-line records around a year ago. Microsoft doesn’t report operating profit unfortunately, so all we have to compare is Nintendo’s $913 million to Sony’s $750 million.
This tells the story of companies at different stages in their console life cycle, naturally. Nintendo’s hardware margins are better right now because Switch is five years old, while Xbox Series X|S and PlayStation 5 launched in November 2020. These higher priced boxes are generating substantial revenue though also cost more to manufacture. There’s also the subscription impact for Xbox Game Pass and PlayStation Plus, whereas Nintendo’s online is lower cost. (Well, before the recent Expansion Pass.)
Moving back to Nintendo itself, out of the 8.28 million Switch units shipped in the six months ending September, 6.45 million were Standard edition while 1.82 million were Switch Lite. Basically last year the standard model alone, shipping 8.36 million, outsold the combined total in Nintendo’s latest half year report. Switch Lite has taken the biggest hit lately, off 56%. I’ll note the Switch OLED launched right after this fiscal period, so it will be curious to see how Nintendo displays splits next quarter. The assumption is OLED will slowly replace the Standard option.
I’ll reiterate what we all are witnessing, these hardware trends show slowing momentum amidst part supply challenges and an abnormally high comparable last year. Even a decline of 34% for hardware units overall in the first half was still well above fiscal 2020 two years back when it was 6.93 million.
Software is faring better on a comparative basis, declining only 6% during the six months ending September to 93.89 million units. It was slightly above 100 million before. This brings Switch lifetime software to 681 million, up from 632.4 million a quarter ago. I don’t have much analysis on that other than to say that’s a lotta games!
Over this same time frame, Nintendo shared how there are 18 titles, 14 self-published then four by 3rd parties, that amassed at least a million copies sold in this time alone. This is down slightly from the 20 million-sellers last year, reflecting a bit lighter lineup this time around.
I mentioned sales for newer releases like The Legend of Zelda Skyward Sword HD and others earlier. Nintendo also provided updates on its more evergreen titles from past periods, so I’ll share the current list of top-sellers on Switch as of September. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe reached 38.74 million to become the biggest commercial success in the franchise passing Mario Kart Wii at 37.38 million. It jumped another 1.66 million somehow in the quarter and continued to show why sadly there won’t be another Mario Kart until next generation. Next up is Animal Crossing: New Horizons rising almost a million units to 34.85 million. Third is Super Smash Bros. Ultimate crossing the 25 million mark, landing at 25.71 million to be exact.
Elsewhere, stand-outs lower down the software list include Super Mario Party up 760K to almost 16.5 million, New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe shipping 1.04 million to lifetime 11.48 million then Super Mario 3D World + Bowser’s Fury from earlier this year gaining 770K in the last three months to its 7.45 million total. Momentum here is one of the reasons why its software split is widening, in addition to hardware constraints of course. I expect the upcoming holiday season to be similar.
I’ll note Nintendo didn’t share news on WarioWare: Get it Together!, which debuted in September. Which points to a sub 1 million seller. Then Metroid Dread launched in early October, so we’ll hear about that next time around. I’m anticipating a major success within the mainline Metroid franchise.
On a related topic, digital sales for Nintendo declined 16% in the last 6-months to $1.3 billion. So it made up around 23% of its overall revenue. From a software standpoint, digital units made up 45% of total dedicated platform game sales during this time frame. That’s down slightly from 47%. This trend parallels the decline in overall software sales, though looks to be more pronounced as brick-and-mortar makes a return.
Alongside these earnings results Nintendo provided a more broad corporate briefing update which covered a range of topics. I’ll focus on the more tangible numbers and comments from executives on Switch’s life cycle since 2017 and potential future of its various businesses.
Nintendo actually posted certain engagement statistics, the first called “annual playing users” which represents someone playing a Switch at least once in the past year. That’s at 79 million currently, down from 87 million which was of course the highest it’s been since launch, driven by the enormous growth last year. Nintendo Switch Online however is growing, with 32 million subscribers compared to the 26 million in September 2020.
Going forward, management is seeking another year of growth for Switch with its recent start of OLED model production. It hopes this will maintain engagement and contribute to ongoing software success.
“Nintendo Switch is shifting to a new stage where the foundation of software business growth is being strengthened in addition to the further expansion of the hardware business,” Furukawa said. “With the Nintendo Switch lineup and its new addition, Nintendo Switch OLED Model, we will aim for a sixth year of growth, something never before experienced with our dedicated video game platform business.”
This sentiment is reflected in its financial forecast and software guidance, even if hardware is expected to soften.
Nintendo opted to reiterate its dollar sales target for the full year ending in March, which it thinks will be roughly $14.58 billion. Other than last year, that would be the highest in a decade. Executives revised operating income forecast upwards 4% to $4.74 billion. While down from the record-breaking $5.84 billion of fiscal 2021, it’s still above every year than 2010. Not too shabby when putting it in context over time.
Alongside the reduction in annual hardware unit sales forecast from 25.5 million to 24 million, Nintendo actually raised its software unit guidance to 200 million. That’s 5% higher than it was before.
“Our [Switch] shipment forecast for the second half was reduced because of the change in our production plan due to the effects of the global semiconductor shortage,” said the team. “On the other hand, we revised the Nintendo Switch software forecast up by 10 million units to 200 million units based on the sales performance of the first half.”
My estimate for Switch hardware in the year ending March 2022 is now revised to 25 million from an upbeat 28 million. Supply conditions are not improving. There’s too much uncertainty. Upside for Nintendo is the OLED version comes in at a higher price, generating more revenue per unit sold. The company claimed this model is just as profitable as others, meaning the net result is bottom line growth potential.
And I can see the rationale for Nintendo bumping up its software target. I think Metroid Dread is going to be an overwhelming success. The type of break-out that Animal Crossing had last year, even if not nearly as much unit upside. There’s also two Pokémon launches in the next three months with Pokémon Brilliant Diamond/Shining Pearl in a couple weeks plus Pokémon Legends: Arceus scheduled for January. Pokémon is one of the most dependable brands in all of gaming. Lastly, this optimism could signal a potential January to March release that isn’t on the calendar just yet so I’d watch out for that. (I don’t know anything. Just reading into the numbers is all.)
The last tidbit of information came from a question and answer discussion after its briefing and is referenced in the above slide. Nintendo’s next gaming system is planned for this decade, of course. Furukawa indicated that internal research and technology building is ongoing for this next console. Or an “experience” as he describes it.
So, not even Nintendo itself knows what the successor to Switch will be or when it’s targeted to begin production. I’d bet it’s not too far off from the winning formula of the current hybrid device.
That wraps up the numbers and analysis for Nintendo’s second fiscal quarter report, an impressive one in context even if it can’t reach the high bar set 12 months ago. Switch boosting past 100 million unit sales is a foregone conclusion at this point, even as the company provides mixed forecasts for the year ending in March. Like all consumer technology manufacturers at this stage, it’s at the mercy of part availability and supply logistics which are challenging during a world that’s still undergoing a deadly pandemic. Luckily its software prowess and quality lineup are offsetting hardware limitations, as Nintendo is best-in-class at making compelling games.
For those interested, there’s a lot more from its corporate briefing including IP decisions, expansion into other media like movies, theme park strategy and other initiatives. I didn’t have the space to cover here because I focused on the financial results, and these are more nebulous topics. Certainly still worth a look!
Hope everyone is safe this busy earnings season. Check back later for more commentary and thanks for reading!
Note: Comparisons are year-over-year unless otherwise mentioned. Exchange rate is based on reported conversion: US $1 to ¥ 109.78.
Sources: Getty (Photo Credit), Nikkei, Nintendo, Video Games Chronicle.
-Dom