What this is
An upper limit on the royalty The Pokémon Company could pay its founders: about ¥16.4bn, or about 16.6% of sales, in the year to February 2020.
How it’s built
- Creatures, one founder, made ¥3,872m net profit in the year to March 2020. Grossed up for 30.7% tax, that is ¥5,587m before tax.
- If that were all its share of a royalty and it held 34%, the whole royalty would be at most ¥16,433m.
- The Pokémon Company's revenue that year is not published; at the next year's profit margin it was about ¥99bn, so the cap is 16.6% of sales.
What we assumed
- Creatures' other businesses at least broke even, so all its profit could be royalty.This makes it a ceiling. That year was a big game year, 3.3 times Creatures' lifetime average profit, so the true limit is probably lower.
- Royalties are split in line with shareholdings of about 32/34/34.One press article says Nintendo owns 32% with 'similar proportions' for the others, without citing a source. This is weak.
- A 30.7% tax rate.A standard proxy for Japan's corporate tax rate; the actual rate is not disclosed.
- Revenue that year is estimated from the following year's net margin.The filed notice gives profit but not revenue for that year; an earlier figure of 13.7% used the wrong year's sales and was withdrawn.
Sanity check
Game Freak's figures give a looser limit, so Creatures sets the bound. It is a ceiling only: it says a royalty cannot be bigger, not that one exists.
Where it comes from
Our calculation from other figures in the trainer’s notes:
- ReportedAverage yearly profit Creatures and Game Freak kept over their lives to their only visible accounts
- EstimateTPC owners: CLSA says Nintendo 32% voting; similar proportions Creatures/GameFreak (no source), 2015
Show the working
- Creatures 3,872/0.693/0.34 = 16,433 → any royalty ≤ ≈¥16.4bn in TPC FY2/20, ≤ 13.7-16.6% of sales
Where it’s used
Related figures
Built from this one