How Creatures’ profit for the year to March 2020 compares with dividends from The Pokémon Company and with what a hypothetical royalty on Pokémon card sales would pay

How it’s built

1. Dividends: a founder’s share of The Pokémon Company’s 2018 payout was about a quarter of Creatures’ 2020 profit; of the 2024 payout, about three quarters.
2. Card royalty: estimate the 2020 card business by scaling back today’s estimated card line (about ¥290bn) using card-print volumes, with and without price per card.
3. A 1% royalty on that 2020 figure would be only 14–24% of Creatures’ profit; explaining all of it from cards would need a 6–10% pre-tax rate.

What we assumed

• Creatures and Game Freak each own about 34% of The Pokémon Company (32% in a vendor alternative).The research has no filed shareholding for the founders; this is an assumption.
• The current card line is ¥223–370bn, taken from the site’s own card-revenue estimate.That estimate is itself a model, so its uncertainty carries through here.
• The 2020 card line can be back-cast from card-print volumes and yen per card.Price per card before 2022 is assumed equal to the first observed year; early print figures are themselves estimates.
• A 31% tax rate converts pre-tax royalty income to after-tax profit.A standard Japanese effective rate; the research gives no company-specific figure.

Sanity check

The conclusion that cards were not most of Creatures’ 2020 income holds unless the royalty rate was high. It stacks several estimates, so treat the percentages as rough ranges.

Where it comes from

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

• EstimatePayout trigger analysis year to February 2018 year to February 2024, year to February 2017-year to February 2026
• EstimateCard line index against year to March 2020, year to March 2020–year to March 2026

Where it’s used

• ProfileCreatures Inc.