For most of its life The Pokémon Company was a small firm. In its first eighteen years it never earned more than ¥2.04bn in a year, and the money from the first Pokémon craze went to its partners. In 2000 Hasbro sold $568m of Pokémon cards and the licensing agent 4Kids booked $84m of Pokémon revenue. When 4Kids sold its 3% of the company in 2005, the price valued the whole of The Pokémon Company at about $32m.
Profit stayed small for eighteen years
The company made ¥25m in its first year and lost money in three of the next seventeen, the years to February 2007, 2010 and 2012. Its best year was the year to February 2015. In the year Pokémon GO launched it earned ¥15.9bn, 7.8× that record (see The Pokémon GO year). No revenue was published before 2021. Working back from profit, we estimate sales of about ¥13bn in the year to February 2015, against ¥531bn eleven years later.
For 18 years The Pokémon Company never made much more than ¥2bn a year; in 2017 it made ¥16bn
Net profit of the Tokyo company, ¥ billion, years to February 1999–2021. Pale bars come from a transcription of its statutory notices.
- From a transcription of the gazette notices
- Read from the gazette notices
- Loss
Show the numbers
| Year to February | From a transcription of the gazette notices, ¥bn | Read from the gazette notices, ¥bn | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1999 | – | ||
| 2000 | – | ||
| 2001 | – | ||
| 2002 | – | ||
| 2003 | – | ||
| 2004 | – | ||
| 2005 | – | ||
| 2006 | – | ||
| 2007 | – | ||
| 2008 | – | ||
| 2009 | – | ||
| 2010 | – | ||
| 2011 | – | ||
| 2012 | – | ||
| 2013 | – | ||
| 2014 | – | ||
| 2015 | – | ||
| 2016 | – | ||
| 2017 | – | ||
| 2018 | – | ||
| 2019 | – | ||
| 2020 | – | ||
| 2021 | – |
From a transcription of the gazette notices. Years to February 1999–2015 come from a single blog transcription of the statutory notices. The 2002 figure is the blogger’s back-solved estimate. Losses in 2007, 2010 and 2012.
Read from the gazette notices. Parent company only. 2017 is 7.8 times the old 2015 peak; profit kept rising off this scale, to ¥120.1bn in 2026.
The partners booked the boom, and the bust
Outside Asia the cards belonged to Wizards of the Coast, a Hasbro company, and the licences were sold by 4Kids as “Nintendo's exclusive Merchandise Licensing Agent for Pokemon outside Asia”. Licensees paid an estimated $231–248m of Pokémon royalties through 4Kids in 2000, and the agent kept 26% of what it collected. The rest went to Nintendo of America, the licensor of record. The Tokyo company’s profit for the year to February 2001 was ¥171m.
The fall landed in the same places. 4Kids’ Pokémon revenue dropped 67% in 2001, to $27m. Hasbro’s filing for that year names no product line above a tenth of its revenue, which puts its Pokémon card sales below $286m, a fall of at least 48%. A trade-press estimate puts the 2001 figure at “just under $100 million”, a fall of four-fifths. The Tokyo company’s own profit rose that year, to an estimated ¥613m.
In 2001 Hasbro’s Pokémon card sales fell by at least 48% and 4Kids’ Pokémon revenue by 67%
Hasbro’s Pokémon card sales and 4Kids’ Pokémon revenue, US$ million, 2000 and 2001. Hasbro’s 2001 bar is the most its own filing allows.
- Hasbro’s Pokémon card sales
- 4Kids’ Pokémon revenue (licensing agent)
Show the numbers
| Year | Hasbro’s Pokémon card sales, $m | 4Kids’ Pokémon revenue (licensing agent), $m | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2000 | |||
| 2001 |
Hasbro’s Pokémon card sales. 2000: 15% of Hasbro’s net revenues. 2001: no product line above 10% of net revenues, so this is a ceiling, a fall of at least 48%.
4Kids’ Pokémon revenue (licensing agent). Agent commission, not card sales: down 67.2%.
It took the work in-house in three steps
The vehicle was Pokémon USA, set up in February 2001 and now called The Pokémon Company International. It took over the English card game in 2003, when “the last of Wizards' original contracts ran out on September 30”. It took over licensing outside Asia in January 2006, after 4Kids “agreed not to renew the Pokemon representation agreement”. In Japan, Media Factory “continued to distribute the cards until 2012”, a date that rests on a secondary source. The three profitable years from 2013 to 2015, the best run in Fig. 1, follow that last step.
The two Western jobs were ones a partner had already shown to be large. Toy manufacture stayed outside. The Western toy licence was held by TOMY International from 2012 to June 2018 and later by Jazwares.
The one price ever paid was close to book value
In October 2005, 4Kids sold its stake back to the other shareholders for $0.96m. No other sale of the company’s shares has a public price. It was close to book value, at 1.18–1.29× the Tokyo company’s net assets on an assumed exchange rate. Two months later 4Kids announced that its licensing agreement would end. The buyers had paid for a balance sheet.
That balance sheet was small because the profits were. Share capital has been ¥365m since 2001. By February 2016, eighteen years of profit had built retained earnings of ¥10.4bn, with about ¥83m paid out along the way. The later record of what was kept and paid is on The Pokémon Company.
Eighteen years of profit built about ¥10bn, nearly all of it kept
Retained earnings of the Tokyo company at the end of February, ¥ billion, 1999–2016.
Show the numbers
| End of February | Retained earnings of the Tokyo company, ¥bn | Source |
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Retained earnings of the Tokyo company. From a transcription of the company’s statutory notices; 2016 is read from the notice itself. 2002 was not transcribed and is drawn at the profit made to that date. Profit over the eighteen years was ¥10.48bn against ¥10.39bn kept, so about ¥0.08bn was paid out. 4Kids sold in October 2005, inside the year to February 2006.