The Pokémon Company’s net profit skyrockets, highest in years

Thanks to games like the crazy popular Pokémon Go, the Pokémon Company’s net profit soared to $143.3 million during this past fiscal year. That’s 26 times higher than the previous year’s.

We’ve heard enough about just how much Niantic has made thus far with Pokémon Go, but what about the Pokémon Company, the one who manages the marketing and the licensing of the Pokémon franchise? Well, it turns out, rather unsurprisingly, the renewed craze over Pokémon has helped the company’s net profit rise by a whopping 2,600 percent this past fiscal year compared to the one before.

According to Dr. Serkan Toto, Kantan Games CEO and analyst, the Pokémon Company posted information regarding its 19^th fiscal year just yesterday. And it looks like the 2016 fiscal year, which ended this past February, was a great year for the company. The Pokémon Company reported a net profit of a whopping $143.3 million, which is the highest in years. To put things into perspective, its net profit the year before was $5.6 million, and the number did not exceed $20 million during the past few years.

Dr. Toto explains that Niantic’s augmented reality game, which came out last summer, played a key role in the sharp rise and predicts that it will continue to contribute to the Pokémon Company’s total revenue:

It’s widely known that if a developer lands a big hit on mobile, the profitability is much higher than for other platforms… I think that thanks to Pokémon Go being a mobile title and Niantic getting better at live operations (at servicing, updating, tweaking the game), The Pokémon Company will continue to enjoy handsome profits over the next years.

Although Pokémon Go’s popularity has arguably died down a bit since its early days, its existing fanbase and games like Pokémon Sun and Moon could help the Pokémon Company into this fiscal year.

Do you still play Pokémon Go? Do you think the Pokémon craze is going away anytime soon? Let us know in the comments below!