Nintendo Profit Falls, 2004/05 Recovery

[Alpha]

TOKYO (Reuters) - Nintendo Co Ltd said on Thursday its net profit fell by half in the past business year, hurt by disappointing sales of its GameCube console and currency losses, but predicted earnings would bounce back this year.

 

The Japanese maker of the handheld Game Boy Advance machine forecast a group net profit of 70 billion yen ($625 million) in the business year ending March 31. That beat expectations for 68 billion yen, according to the consensus forecast of 16 analysts polled by Reuters Estimates.

 

For the past business year, the video game maker said group net profit totaled 33.2 billion yen versus a profit of 67.3 billion yen in 2002/03. The result came as little surprise after Nintendo cut its net profit estimate in April.

 

The Kyoto-based company failed to reach its target to ship six million GameCube home consoles in 2003/04 in the United States because of competition from Sony Corp's PlayStation 2 and Microsoft Corp's Xbox.

 

Nintendo also suffered a one-off currency loss of nearly 70 billion yen after reassessing the value of its dollar-denominated assets.

 

In the year to date, shares in Nintendo have risen seven percent versus a five percent rise in the Nikkei 225 average.

 

Post your comments here.

[Gryph]

Haha!

[random guy]

Perhaps the market is a little too overstretched at the moment. On the other hand, I'm retaining my belief that as the ps2 and the gamecube (and the GBA, for that matter) have been on the market for a fair while longer than the x-box, so these and the other sales figures are just reflecting the fact that more people own ps2s, gcs and gbas than x-boxes.