Nintendo's First-Quarter Net Profit Rose on 'The Legend of Zelda' Game, Mario Film Successes

By Kosaku Narioka

Nintendo said Thursday that its first-quarter net profit rose 52% from a year earlier thanks to the success of the latest game from its popular "The Legend of Zelda" series and a Super Mario film.

The Japanese videogame maker said that net profit rose to 181.02 billion yen ($1.26 billion) for the quarter ended June 30. That beat the estimate of Y121.37 billion from a poll of analysts by Quick.

First-quarter revenue increased 50% from a year earlier to Y461.34 billion. Nintendo sold 3.91 million Switch consoles in its first quarter, up from 3.43 million a year earlier, and sold 52.2 million Switch software copies, up from 41.4 million a year earlier. It sold 18.5 million copies of "The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom" in its first quarter since its release in May.

Nintendo said global box-office revenue from "The Super Mario Bros. Movie" was $1.35 billion as of July 26 since its release in April.

The videogame maker maintained its forecasts for Switch consoles and software sales as well as earnings for the fiscal year ending March 2024. The company expects to sell 15.0 million Switch consoles and 180.0 million Switch software copies this fiscal year. It expects revenue to decrease 9.5% to Y1.450 trillion and net profit to drop 21% to Y340.00 billion.

Write to Kosaku Narioka at kosaku.narioka@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

August 03, 2023 03:29 ET (07:29 GMT)

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