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High hopes for the console has driven up Nintendo's stock price
around 60 percent since its March debut. The firm has said it
expects Switch to help more than double its annual operating
profit and end an eight-year sales decline that dogged its
previous offering Wii U.
The company swung to an operating profit of 16.21 billion yen
($144.95 million) for the three months through June, from a
year-ago loss of 5.13 billion yen.
That compared with an 11.55 billion yen Thomson Reuters Starmine
SmartEstimate, which gives greater weight to recent estimates by
the more consistently accurate analysts.
The Kyoto-based company reiterated its 65 billion yen operating
profit forecast for the year ending March, versus the 127.94
billion yen SmartEstimate of 21 analysts. It also kept its
Switch sales forecast for the year at 10 million units.
Nintendo sold 1.97 million Switch consoles in the three months
through June, bringing the cumulative total to 4.7 million
units. Demand has been so strong that Nintendo has found it
difficult to keep up as queues get longer outside stores.
Devices have even been allocated by lottery in some cases.
The company has apologized for the shortage of Switch in Japan
and pledged to raise production.
Nintendo is trying to make more use of its roster of popular
characters, moving into new areas for the company including
smartphone gaming and theme parks.
New mobile titles, such as Super Mario Run and Fire Emblem,
drove first-quarter revenue from mobile gaming and related
merchandise to 9 billion yen, from 1.6 billion yen a year ago.
Nintendo shares ended Wednesday 1.3 percent higher ahead of the
earnings release, compared with a 0.5 percent rise in the Nikkei
benchmark index.
(Reporting by Sam Nussey and Makiko Yamazaki; Editing by
Christopher Cushing and Himani Sarkar)
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