Japanese game giant Nintendo Co Ltd said on Wednesday it expected the bankruptcy of U.S. retailer Kmart Corp (NYSE:KM - news) to have only a minor impact on its earnings for the current business year through March 31.
Nintendo's U.S. subsidiary, Nintendo of America Inc, is the 14th largest creditor, holding accounts receivable of $44.91 million.
"We are not sure how much of the credit our U.S. unit would lose, but we expect the impact will not affect our group profits that much,'' a spokesman for Nintendo said.
Even if the company did not recover any of the credit, it would not need to revise its earnings forecast -- a net profit of 80 billion yen ($598.1 million) -- as the current weak yen has helped push up profits, he said.
A softer yen lifts the value in yen of income earned abroad, a boon for major exporters such as Nintendo, which clocks more than 70 percent of its sales overseas.
Nintendo, which launched its new GameCube home videogame console in North America in November, has shipped 1.3 million units in that market, in addition to 1.3 million in Japan.
Separately, rival Sony Computer Entertainment (SCE), a game-making unit of electronics giant Sony Corp , said it had some outstanding accounts receivable from Kmart, but this would not affect its bottom line.
The world's largest home videogame machine maker did not disclose the exact amount of the credit but it is not among the top 50 creditors to the failed retailer.
News source: Yahoo
