Our model of what Creatures might have earned in the year to March 2026 if half of its 2020 profit had moved with TPC's card business

What this is

Our model of what Creatures might have earned in the year to March 2026 if half of its 2020 profit had moved with TPC's card business: about ¥13.0–15.1bn if that half follows cards printed times their price, and about ¥8.8–10.0bn if it follows the number printed alone.

How it’s built

1. Start from Creatures' last visible profit, ¥3,872m in the year to March 2020.
2. Half of it grows with headcount (×1.758 to 2026 on the interpolated staff path); the other half grows with a card index: the 2026 print of 9.0–10.9 billion cards over 3.2 billion in 2020, and, on the second reading, also the change in yen per card from ¥19.52 to ¥31.0–37.6.
3. Profit = 3,872 × (0.5 × 1.758 + 0.5 × card index).

What we assumed

• Creatures' margin stays constant, so a fee-paid profit grows with its staff.A company paid fees for its work earns roughly in proportion to the people doing it.
• Half of the 2020 profit is linked to card volume.It is a test case, not a finding: no contract is public, and half sits midway between all fees and all royalty.
• The staff path from 2020 is the interpolated one (×1.758).Creatures' dated staff chart puts the 2020 base lower, which would raise the fee half by roughly a tenth to a third; the card-linked half is unchanged.

Sanity check

On the print-only index the half-and-half case lands close to the flat-fee path, so a profit near ¥9–10bn would not distinguish them; on print times price it lands about three and a half times the 2020 profit, which would.

Where it comes from

Our calculation from other figures in the trainer’s notes:

• EstimatePredicted Creatures profits for the years to March 2021–2026 under different assumptions about how much of its income tracks card sales — forecasts to test, not observed figures
• EstimatePokémon cards printed in the year to March 2026
• EstimatePrice mix yen per global card printed, year to March 2022-year to March 2026 (JTA 年度2021-2025e; TPC year to February 2022-year to February 2026)
• EstimateCard line index against year to March 2020, year to March 2020–year to March 2026