Twelve days after Nintendo dropped mobile game sensation “Pokemon Go” last year, the Japanese company’s stock price hit a six-year high.
That was the Mario and Luigi firm’s biggest recent reveal until its recent Nintendo Switch debut, which we are now 12 days removed from. While share prices have grown, they can’t hold a candle to the “Pokemon” revival phenomenon.
On July 5, 2016, shares of Nintendo closed at $17.50 (USD) apiece. The next day, the stock price rose 13 cents. By July 18, it had reached $37.37. That means the Japanese company’s stock more than doubled in less than two weeks, soaring +113.5 percent, to be exact. Pretty good ROI for a free app.
New console Nintendo Switch launched on March 3. A day before that drop, shares closed at $25.07. Twelve days later — yesterday’s close — Nintendo stock finished its trading day at $27.40. That’s up a nice (but much more modest) 9.3 percent.
You probably noticed that’s about 10 bucks less than last year’s mid-summer heights — what an astute reader! Share prices for Nintendo fell back down to Earth over the last two July 2016 weeks. They tumbled further in September, and again in December.
In terms of sales, the Switch has been a success. Per gamesindustry.biz, Superdata says the company moved 1.5 million units worldwide in Week 1. Nintendo wanted to sell 2 million globally by the end of March, which feels like a pretty conservative target given its seven-day figures. Due to the nature of a pricey next-generation console launch versus a free, buzzy app that literally takes seconds to download, it would be reasonable to assume the Switch will have a longer-tail impact on Nintendo valuation.