Officials from Japanese-headquartered publisher Square Enix have announced that the company has raised its operating profit estimate for the fiscal first half of the year by seven percent – the company’s second upward revision in less than three weeks.
Group operating profits for the six months ending September 30th are now put at ¥9.1 billion ($77.1m), up from the previous estimate of ¥8.5 billion ($72.0m). The previous estimate was itself raised at the end of October by 60 percent, following strong sales of
Kingdom Hearts II in North America and Japan.
According to a Reuters report, the latest increase is attributed to overseas revenues from made-for-DVD movie
Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children, which were previously expected to appear only in the second half of the year’s results.
The company’s full year outlook is unchanged, with forecasts of an operating profit of ¥19 billion ($161.0m) for the year to March 31st, 2006, up 23 percent on the previous year. As a result of this positive news shares in the company rose in late afternoon trading yesterday, up 0.7 percent – above that of the Nikkei average.
