What this is
The most that dividends from The Pokémon Company could make up of the founders’ retained profits: at most 7.1% for Creatures (March 2020) and 0.6% for Game Freak (March 2015).
How it’s built
- Add up what The Pokémon Company’s Tokyo company paid out before each date, worked out from year-to-year changes in its retained profits: about ¥3.07bn before 2020, ¥84m before 2015.
- Assume a founder could have received at most 68% of that, and compare with its retained profits.
- Also shown: Game Freak’s profit per employee for the year to March 2015, ¥20.2m (¥1.64bn over 81 staff).
What we assumed
- Neither founder can own more than 68% of The Pokémon Company.Nintendo holds the remaining 32%. If the two founders hold about 34% each, the Creatures share halves to 3.6%.
- Every payout The Pokémon Company made was a dividend shared in proportion to ownership.The research infers payouts from the accounts rather than reading dividend declarations, so this is a working assumption.
- Game Freak’s 81 employees (April 2015) are matched with its year to March 2015.The headcount comes from a third-party job-hunting site and is a month off the year-end; it is the closest figure available.
Sanity check
This only rules out dividends as the source of founder profits. It says nothing about royalties or development fees, which could still come from The Pokémon Company.
Where it comes from
Our calculation from other figures in the trainer’s notes:
Show the working
- Creatures max % at 68: 7.1
- Creatures % at 34: 3.6
- Game Freak max % at 68: 0.6
- Game Freak net profit per employee year to March 2015: ¥20.2m
- 2,086/29,275 = 7.1%
- 1,043/29,275 = 3.6%
- 57/9,974 = 0.6%
- 1,637.5/81 = 20.2