Capcom sales drop, but profit up 58.2%

Capcom's financial results for Q1, 2012 show a marked decrease in sales and operating income, but a massive leap in profits, with net income rising by 58.2 per cent to ¥338 million ($4.3m).

Overall sales dropped by 37.2 per cent to ¥11.95 billion ($152m) from ¥19.04 billion ($242m), with operating income shrinking by 22.9 per cent to ¥775 million ($9.8m) from ¥1.01 billion ($12.8m).

The figures are representative of the company's business from April 1 to June 30, 2011.

Key to the changes in the report was the poor performance of the core consumer games division, which suffered from a lack of major releases. Whilst the previous quarter's Monster Hunter Portable 3 continued to perform well, and Resident Evil: The Mercenaries 3D and Super Street Fighter IV Arcade Edition reached sales targets, there were no major new business drivers for the unit.

As a result, there was a 56.9 per cent drop in sales of console and handheld games, from ¥14.99 billion ($190m) to ¥6,462m ($82m) since the same quarter last year. That resulted in a year-on-year net income drop of 76.5 per cent for the consumer online games division to ¥419 million ($5.3m) from ¥1.78 billion ($22.7m).

Other departments fared considerably better, all improving performance since last year. Mobile was up by 79.8 per cent in sales and 362.2 per cent in operating income - making ¥451 million ($5.7m) in operating income. Arcade operations only increased sales by 7.7 percent, but saw operating income rise by 192.5 per cent.

Improved mobile performance is largely attributed to Beeline, the Capcom initiative which birthed Smurf Village and Zombie Cafe, both of which continued to perform extremely well.