McM2000
L13: Maniac
- Seit
- 3 Mai 2011
- Beiträge
- 4.273
Eine neue Kursrichtung muss eingeschlagen werden wenn Nintendo nicht die ganzen eingespielten Gewinne der Wii verpulvern möchte (und das will Nintendo bestimmt nicht). Hier noch ein interessanter Kommentar aus dem GAF:
Horrible numbers. Simply horrible. This misses everyone's most pessimistic expectations for operating income expectations by $400M+ USD and baseline estimates by over $650M+ USD. No one seriously thought they were going to hit $1 B USD in operating profits. Most people were seeing Nintendo hitting 30% of the target as a baseline. That they are expecting a loss for the year of $350M USD is mind-boggling.
Only four things can explain these losses IMHO:
1. Nintendo's gross margins on software must have shrunk dramatically. Meaning that they are barely making any money on their own software much less third party software which has all dramatically dried up on both of their platforms globally. This bodes very badly for Nintendo in general - even if they were able to go third-party and hypothetically sell 2-3X the number of games (which I very much doubt) - what this shows is that Nintendo has lost its pricing power at retail - people aren't ready and willing to pay the Nintendo premium.
2. Nintendo bled money at retail trying to push hardware - far more than anyone expected - they must be eating close to a $100+ loss per Wii U sold right now or more - not just because of manufacturing cost - but because they are literally having to compensate retailers to provide them with shelf space and having to eat the price drop at the same time. This is horrible - because even if they take that much of a loss - the low gross margins on their own first-party games isn't sufficient to help them break even.
3. Nintendo isn't going to get Mario Kart or Smash out by early April - otherwise they would have been able to book orders under the current fiscal year. It looks like both games are going to be delayed well into the summer or into the Fall now. I am almost 100% positive that if it were even possible to get the games out by April or May - Nintendo would have done everything in their power to do so. It looks like Nintendo still hasn't effectively transitioned to HD development - not because of capability - but because they want to preserve gross margin based on their lower expected revenue numbers - and it's compromising their ability to get projects out the door on-time.
4. Nintendo is playing shell games with their accounting - booking contractual payments to Intelligent Systems and their other closely related entities as operating losses for tax purposes but which are effectively asset purchases - it means that they are dramatically restructuring their teams and it's going to be far more expensive than we thought.
If these estimates hold up - Nintendo will have generated a $1 B+ operating loss over the past three years. Here's the kicker though: Nintendo is still sitting on over $1 B+ in inventory that they haven't impaired yet (the IR report makes no mention of it). There is a good chance that over 80% of that is Wii U hardware which means that it's going to continue to be a drag on earnings over the next twelve months.
In any case, I don't foresee any major changes for Q3 happening. Nintendo is still going to engage in a buyback of 5% - which is going to drain their cash by another $1 B USD.
That means in three years Nintendo's war chest will have been depleted close to $2.5 billion USD from inventory impairment, operating losses, and share repurchases. Another $500M USD is going to be gone for asset / real estate purchases and capital investments. Their next hardware projects are going to require about ~$1.5 B USD in capital reserves at a minimum that are going to be tied up in the next two years as they wind down their existing platforms, and I don't see third-party licensing revenue coming back in a big way to offset declining gross margins on their first-party software.
Basically that means Nintendo could burn through ~$4 B in cash throughout this entire cycle and in anticipation of the next, with a very high cost structure intact. Like Sony, they will have effectively wiped out cumulative years of profit.
If we assume that Nintendo keeps building up human resources this coming year to meet their hiring targets, they are probably going to break-even in terms of operating profit for the next fiscal year or make a slight profit - but I'm even second guessing my own ability to understand Nintendo's gross margins now - someone at NOA or NOE is effectively writing giant checks to retailers to keep the channel alive - and that's really not good at all - Apple was in this same position in the late 90s and had to create their own retail stores to stop bleeding money to major retailers. Nintendo isn't going to have the investor support to launch a giant retail project in the US and EU, particularly when they no longer have proven pricing power which would be the primary argument to go that route.
Difficult time to be a Nintendo shareholder.
Horrible numbers. Simply horrible. This misses everyone's most pessimistic expectations for operating income expectations by $400M+ USD and baseline estimates by over $650M+ USD. No one seriously thought they were going to hit $1 B USD in operating profits. Most people were seeing Nintendo hitting 30% of the target as a baseline. That they are expecting a loss for the year of $350M USD is mind-boggling.
Only four things can explain these losses IMHO:
1. Nintendo's gross margins on software must have shrunk dramatically. Meaning that they are barely making any money on their own software much less third party software which has all dramatically dried up on both of their platforms globally. This bodes very badly for Nintendo in general - even if they were able to go third-party and hypothetically sell 2-3X the number of games (which I very much doubt) - what this shows is that Nintendo has lost its pricing power at retail - people aren't ready and willing to pay the Nintendo premium.
2. Nintendo bled money at retail trying to push hardware - far more than anyone expected - they must be eating close to a $100+ loss per Wii U sold right now or more - not just because of manufacturing cost - but because they are literally having to compensate retailers to provide them with shelf space and having to eat the price drop at the same time. This is horrible - because even if they take that much of a loss - the low gross margins on their own first-party games isn't sufficient to help them break even.
3. Nintendo isn't going to get Mario Kart or Smash out by early April - otherwise they would have been able to book orders under the current fiscal year. It looks like both games are going to be delayed well into the summer or into the Fall now. I am almost 100% positive that if it were even possible to get the games out by April or May - Nintendo would have done everything in their power to do so. It looks like Nintendo still hasn't effectively transitioned to HD development - not because of capability - but because they want to preserve gross margin based on their lower expected revenue numbers - and it's compromising their ability to get projects out the door on-time.
4. Nintendo is playing shell games with their accounting - booking contractual payments to Intelligent Systems and their other closely related entities as operating losses for tax purposes but which are effectively asset purchases - it means that they are dramatically restructuring their teams and it's going to be far more expensive than we thought.
If these estimates hold up - Nintendo will have generated a $1 B+ operating loss over the past three years. Here's the kicker though: Nintendo is still sitting on over $1 B+ in inventory that they haven't impaired yet (the IR report makes no mention of it). There is a good chance that over 80% of that is Wii U hardware which means that it's going to continue to be a drag on earnings over the next twelve months.
In any case, I don't foresee any major changes for Q3 happening. Nintendo is still going to engage in a buyback of 5% - which is going to drain their cash by another $1 B USD.
That means in three years Nintendo's war chest will have been depleted close to $2.5 billion USD from inventory impairment, operating losses, and share repurchases. Another $500M USD is going to be gone for asset / real estate purchases and capital investments. Their next hardware projects are going to require about ~$1.5 B USD in capital reserves at a minimum that are going to be tied up in the next two years as they wind down their existing platforms, and I don't see third-party licensing revenue coming back in a big way to offset declining gross margins on their first-party software.
Basically that means Nintendo could burn through ~$4 B in cash throughout this entire cycle and in anticipation of the next, with a very high cost structure intact. Like Sony, they will have effectively wiped out cumulative years of profit.
If we assume that Nintendo keeps building up human resources this coming year to meet their hiring targets, they are probably going to break-even in terms of operating profit for the next fiscal year or make a slight profit - but I'm even second guessing my own ability to understand Nintendo's gross margins now - someone at NOA or NOE is effectively writing giant checks to retailers to keep the channel alive - and that's really not good at all - Apple was in this same position in the late 90s and had to create their own retail stores to stop bleeding money to major retailers. Nintendo isn't going to have the investor support to launch a giant retail project in the US and EU, particularly when they no longer have proven pricing power which would be the primary argument to go that route.
Difficult time to be a Nintendo shareholder.
Ein F-Zero etc. hätte man auch als HD Remake bringen können, ohne riesigen Aufwand. Da hat Nintendo einfach geschlafen. Aber jetzt bleibt halt nichts anderes übrig, als nach vorne zu sehen. 
