Yamauchi’s heirs to sell Nintendo shares

Due to poor sales of the WiiU, Nintendo CEO Saturo Iwata has planned a mass buyback of shares according to Businessweek. Nintendo has stated that it will “purchase as many as 9.5 million shares, or 7.4 percent of its outstanding stock, at 12,025 yen a piece from interested investors.”

The heirs of the late Hiroshi Yamauchi who ran Nintendo for the past 53 years are interested in selling their shares of Nintendo. Talk about jumping ship! Yamauchi owned 10 percent of the companies shares before his death last year. His heirs “desire to sell it” though a Nintendo spokesperson noted that they were not in a position to say how much they were willing to sell. Considering Nintendo only wants to buy back 7.4 percent and the Yamauchi family have 10 percent.

The buyback is meant to reduce the number of shares on the market and increase the price of the shares for current shareholders. The money to buy back the shares is coming from Nintendo’s 8.6 billion dollar cash reserves, of which 1.1 billion is being used to buy shares.

Nintendo has been worrying me as of late. I would hate for Nintendo to fall out of the console race or file for bankruptcy. If either were to happen, it would hurt the industry immeasurably. People would also lose jobs and that always sucks, because jobs are important damn it. They’re certainly not there yet, but in any case, I hope this buyback of shares helps out their position in the market.

Last Updated: February 4, 2014