Today Bandai Namco announced its financial results for the first quarter of the fiscal year, related to the period between April 1 and June 30, 2022.
We learn that net sales grew 21.5% year-on-year while operating profit grew 64.3% year-on-year
The publisher also increased the forecast for the first half of the fiscal year from 400,000 to 430,000 million yen in net sales and from 46,000 to 72,000 million yen in operating profit.
All of the company’s businesses have performed well triggering higher-than-expected net sales, and profits grew significantly due to strong repeat sales of high-margin home video games. The weak yen also helped boost profits further.
Looking at the Digital Business, which includes games, net sales were up 34.1% year-on-year and segment profit was up 148.7% year-on-year.
While there were no major new games released in the quarter, repeat sales of games launched in previous quarters, including Elden Ring, were strong.
Bandai Namco’s performance is indeed quite interesting, considering that most Japanese publishers of similar size have been announcing rather mediocre results for the first quarter of the fiscal year (following a very successful period), but I suppose they did not have Elden Ring to do the heavy lifting.