Namco Bandai reports profits fall
But full year revenues and operating income still predicted to show slight growth
Namco Bandai has reported its financial results for the first fiscal quarter of 2009, with a fall in profit of around 63 per cent compared to the previous year.
The three months to the end of March saw profit just above the JPY 1 billion (USD 9.2 million) mark, compared to last year's Q1 figure of JPY 2.8 billion (USD 25.8 million).
Revenue and operating income were also both down year-on-year, by 6.4 per cent to JPY 90 billion (USD 830 million) and by 65 per cent to JPY 1.5 billion (USD 13.8 million) respectively.
However, the company is still predicting revenue and operating income to show slight growth by the end of March 2009, with full year targets of 470 billion (USD 4.3 billion) and 38 billion (USD 351 million) respectively - although profit is expected to fall in the same period by 31 per cent compared to full year 2008.
The videogames section of the business was actually the only segment to show sales growth in Q1 year-on-year, up 3.8 per cent to JPY 25.5 billion (USD 235 million).
Japan saw the majority of the company's unit sales, with 1.7 million titles sold, while Europe was responsible for 1.39 million, North America for 740,000 and the rest of Asia for 113,000.
Those numbers are set to jump following new releases to 13.4 million in Japan for the full year, 5.68 million in Europe, 5.46 million in North America and 300,000 in the rest of Asia.
In Q1 the most popular title was Dragon Ball Z Budokai Tenkaichi 3, selling 420,000 units in Europe, followed by Japanese duo Taiko Drum Master for DS 2 on 260,000 and Tales of Symphonia on 215,000.
The PlayStation 2 platform was the company's best-selling console for games with 1.15 million units sold for it, followed by the Nintendo DS on 985,000 and the PlayStation Portable on 769,000.