Today Bandai Namco announced its financial results for the first nine months of the fiscal year, related to the period between April and December 2024.
According to the press release, net sales for the whole company were 955,663 million yen, up 23.8% year-on-year. Operating profit was 179,233 million yen, up 129% year-on-year.
Looking at the Digital Business, which includes video games, sales were 357,023 million yen, up 35.7% year-on-year, while profit was 70,597 million yen, up a whopping 4,271.2% year-on-year.
To be fair, the crazy improvement is mostly due to the fact that in the same period of the previous fiscal year, Bandai Namco’s game segment made only 1,615 million yen in profit. That being said, it’s still quite impressive.
This is due to positive results for DLC including repeat sales for Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree, on top of the “massive” (according to Bandai Namco’s own words) success of Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero, which has sold over 5 million copies worldwide.
Repeat sales (of games released from previous fiscal years) were 22.54 million units, while the digital download ratio is 65%.
Due to all this success, the company has increased its forecast for the full fiscal year to 1,230 billion yen in net sales (it was 1,150 billion yen) and 180 billion yen in operating profit, up from 160.
Guidance for the Digital business is up as well, with 450,000 million yen in net sales (up from 410,000 million yen) and 67,000 million yen in profit (up from 55,000 million).
If you’re wondering, the Digital business isn’t the largest business for Bandai Namco, much unlike most of its competitors in Japan. The largest slice of the revenue and profit pie actually belongs to the Toys and Hobby business. Hard to beat Gunpla.
The company has also unveiled its new mid-term plan which will span the period between April 2025 and March 2028. It’ll continue with the theme “Connect With Fans” as you can see in the cool illustration below.
First of all, we learn the results of the mid-term plan that is ending, and they’re as follows.
- Growth in products and services of established IP
- Growth in existing business categories
- Expansion of global rollouts
- Reinforced collaboration between units and businesses
- Increase in awareness of the Bandai Namco Brand.
The business strategy for the gaming arm of the company for the next three years will be to “accelerate growth by bolstering business foundation” including promoting the game portfolio, strengthening the company’s development capabilities, and challenging and expanding the businesses part of the IP axis.
The company intends to invest approximately 1.5 times to achieve growth.
The target is to achieve in the fiscal year ending in March 2028 1,450 billion yen in net sales 200 billion yen in operating profit, and 50% of more sales localized outside of Japan.
Specifically, the expectation for the Digital Business is 510 billion yen in net sales and 68 billion yen in profit.
If you’re interested in comparing today’s results with historical data, you can check out our article about the previous quarter’s financial results, announced in November.
Other gaming companies have also already announced their financial results this quarter, including Electronic Arts, Nintendo, Marvelous Entertainment, Koei Tecmo, Capcom, Microsoft, and Konami.
