Iwata’s complete comments on potential M&A deals
We recently heard that Nintendo would be open to the possibility of mergers and acquisitions. The company just put up its investor Q&A in English, so we now have Satoru Iwata’s complete comments on the matter. You can find them (plus more talk of character licensing) below.
First of all, concerning the utilization of character IP, there may be common ground with the business model of Sanrio, but there also may be differences. As I mentioned at the beginning of my presentation, Nintendo places great value in doing things different from others, so we do not conclude that since there is an ideal business model in another company, we should do the same thing. But if there is something that others are doing that we feel would leverage Nintendo’s strength, we will incorporate that into our business. Of course, incorporating a business model in the same way as other companies is not Nintendo’s usual way, so it would depend on the situation. For your information, depending on the offers we receive, we are planning to consider many options including the examples that you shared with us, but we have not prepared our specific plans to share with you today. Licensing Mario in digital areas would mean that there is a possibility that Mario will appear in stamps or wallpapers for smartphones, and I will not rule out this kind of business. This is because we believe that this would not be in direct competition with Nintendo’s business and would not threaten our video game platform business which integrates hardware and software. We will flexibly consider options including those that Nintendo has not done in the past. What we will permit will depend on the matter, client and conditions. Also, I will not deny the possibility of an M&A deal to implement this business. Yesterday, we announced our share buy-back plan. We only mentioned the upper-limit amount and possible period of the acquisition yesterday, so we will officially announce when and how we will acquire them as timely disclosure at a later date. However, we are considering acquiring shares at a considerable level, and this will considerably increase the ratio of our own shares (to the number of shares outstanding). When the treasury share ratio increases significantly, we might be questioned about whether we will retire the shares. Currently, our video game dedicated platform business is reaching a transition stage in several different meanings, and we would like to have the option of using our shares for M&A purposes. We will not cling to this option for a long time, and when the transition stage ends, retirement of shares would be one option. However, at the moment, there is nothing that we can share with you regarding M&A deals.
