Today Koei Tecmo announced its financial results for the first 9 months of the fiscal year that will end on March 31, 2024, and they're a bit mixed.
On one side, the documents reveal that sales for the whole company grew considerably year-on-year, at 61,136 million yen, up 23.7%. On the other hand, operating profit declined by 11.7% year-on-year, at 20,316 million yen.
It's worth mentioning that Ordinary Profit and Net Profit were both up, but this was due to financial operations and not the pure performance of the company's products.
It's also worth mentioning that, while profit declined, the delta for both sales and profit compared to the previous year improved from the results of the first half of the year, meaning that the latest quarter showcased a positive trend.
Looking at the Entertainment business, which focuses on video games, sales were 57,393 million yen, up from 46,298 million yen last year. Operating profit was 20,077 million yen, down from 22,456 million yen last year.
The outlook for the full fiscal year remains unchanged, with 95,000 million yen expected in sales, which would be up 21.1% year-on-year, and 37,500 million yen in operating profit, down 4.2% year-on-year.
The company will release Rise of the Ronin on March 22, just before the end of the fiscal year, so its performance will be relevant to the overall financial results. We'll see more about the game later this week at PlayStation's State of Play.
The new game by Team Ninja will have to go against its predecessor, Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty, which had more time on the shelves (having launched on March 3, 2023) and was multiplatform as opposed to PS5 exclusive, which is likely why Koei Tecmo is cautious with the comparative forecast.
The latest financial results were affected by the focus on repeat sales for catalog games released in previous quarters and a further increase of sales in the mobile field, brought by titles released in Q2 like Atelier Resleriana: Forgotten Alchemy and the Polar Night Liberator, which achieved over 3 million downloads.
