http://www.gamespot.com/news/6178798.html?...newstop;title;5Nintendo shares surge 5.6 percent
Mario Factory's stock rebounds after analyst raises target price to $870 per share, predicts one-year sales of 20 million Wiis.
By Tom Magrino, GameSpot
Posted Sep 14, 2007 12:25 pm PT
Nintendo has been riding a tsunami-sized wave of success since the launch of its "new-gen" console last November. Earlier this year, the Kyoto-based publisher/developer/hardware maker reported a first-quarter haul of nearly $3 billion, $667.4 million of which went straight to the Mario Factory's coffers as profit. Already the undisputed king of the portable market, Nintendo also just recently scored an emblematic victory, claiming the title of console-sales leader for the first time since the 16-bit console wars, according to the Financial Times.
Unfortunately, the stock market proved how fickle it can be in August, when Nintendo slid 5.4 percent in a single day on the Osaka Securities Exchange, falling to 51,000 yen (about $446.31). The hit occurred due to a fractional strengthening of the yen-to-dollar exchange rate. The effect caused some analysts to label Nintendo's stock as "overweight," despite the publisher's revised full-year earnings projection of $11.6 billion, a 40 percent rise from its initially anticipated $9.5 billion.
Today, the Bloomberg news service reports that the Mario Factory's share price has bounced back. Nintendo's stock rose 5.6 percent to 55,100 yen (about $478.58) today on the Osaka Exchange, the largest single-day gain in three weeks. Bloomberg attributed the cause for the climb to CLSA Asia-Pacific Markets raising Nintendo's stock-price target by 25 percent to a whopping 100,000 yen ($870).
As per Bloomberg's report, CLSA anticipates fiscal-year sales of the Wii to hit 20 million units, while the DS will move 30 million units. These numbers are significantly up from Nintendo's current projections, Bloomberg notes, which stand at 16.5 million Wiis and 26 million DSs for the fiscal year, which ends March 31.