The Pokémon Company group took in about ¥1.02–1.05tn in the year to February 2026, roughly twice what its Tokyo parent reports, and kept about a quarter of it as net profit. It was set up as a caretaker, to “manage and control all rights to Pokémon throughout the world” on behalf of the three companies that own the names. It has become a publisher. It makes its money where it sells for itself, above all in trading cards and TCG Pocket, and that one fact explains its margin, its risks and why it keeps almost all of its cash. Six months into the new year the business has not slowed: Nintendo’s share of its affiliates’ profit, nearly all of it TPC’s, was 37.7% higher in April–September 2026 than a year before (Nintendo has the figures).
From caretaker to publisher
TPC was founded in Tokyo in 1998 by Nintendo, which published the games, Game Freak, which designed them, and Creatures, which built the card game. The names stayed with them, and they still do (see Brand). The first craze made other people rich: in the West the cards were Wizards of the Coast’s and the licences were run by 4Kids, as “Nintendo's exclusive Merchandise Licensing Agent for Pokemon outside Asia”.
The history matters for one reason: TPC spent the next decade taking the selling back. Its American arm took over the English card game in 2003, once “the last of Wizards' original contracts ran out on September 30”. Western licensing came in-house at the start of 2006, and Japanese card distribution after 2012. (The full story is on The thin years.) So when the money came, TPC was the one selling. Pokémon GO, which it only licensed, multiplied the Tokyo company’s profit from ¥0.6bn to ¥15.9bn in a year. The cards it now printed itself boomed from 2020, and in 2024 it added TCG Pocket, an app sold in its own name.
Two steps up: Pokémon GO in 2017, then cards and Pocket from 2021
¥ billion, years to February. Bars: the Tokyo company’s own accounts. Grey line: the whole group’s profit as Nintendo’s filings imply it; the 2026 point includes a one-off gain.
- Tokyo company revenue
- Tokyo company net profit
- Whole group’s profit, from Nintendo’s filings
- Whole group’s revenue (printed twice)
- Estimate
The quiet years end with Pokémon GO. The second, larger step begins in 2021 as the cards boom and then Pocket arrives. The latest group point is flattered by a one-off gain of about a seventh.
Built from and .Show the numbers
| Year | Tokyo company revenue, ¥bn | Tokyo company net profit, ¥bn | Whole group’s profit, from Nintendo’s filings, ¥bn | Whole group’s revenue (printed twice), ¥bn | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2016 | – | – | |||
| 2017 | – | ||||
| 2018 | – | – | |||
| 2019 | – | – | |||
| 2020 | – | – | |||
| 2021 | – | ||||
| 2022 | – | ||||
| 2023 | – | ||||
| 2024 | – | ||||
| 2025 | – | ||||
| 2026 | (1,020–1,048) |
Tokyo company revenue. First published for the year to February 2021.
Whole group’s profit, from Nintendo’s filings. Nintendo’s share of affiliate profit divided by its stake. Includes a few small affiliates; the latest year includes a one-off gain.
Whole group’s revenue (printed twice). Nintendo printed its affiliates’ revenue only for these two years; the baseball club is taken out.
The bars are the only accounts TPC publishes, and they leave out half the business. Nintendo owns 32% of TPC and books that share of its profit, so dividing by the stake gives the group: the grey line. Nintendo’s figure also takes in the operator of the Seattle Mariners, but the club’s result is within about two per cent either way of the affiliates’ total. The rest of the revenue is booked by subsidiaries, chiefly TPC International in the West, which publishes nothing (see TPCi).
A publisher’s economics
Follow the money from each thing TPC does. The games’ sales are Nintendo’s, and TPC receives a share at a rate nobody publishes (see Video games). The anime’s money is mostly its partners’. Toys and clothes are made under licence, and TPC keeps a royalty of a few cents on the dollar (see Licensing). Cards and Pocket are different, because TPC sells them. A publisher keeps the wholesale price, so a yen a fan spends on a card is worth 4–14× as much to TPC as a yen spent on licensed merchandise, on our model. On our estimate, cards alone are a quarter to a third of group revenue (see Trading cards).
Cards are the largest line; a fifth of the group is still unexplained
Estimated revenue of the whole group by line of business, year to February 2026, ¥ billion. Central estimates with ranges; TPC publishes no split.
- Adds
- Unexplained remainder, not a business line
- Total
- Estimated range
Cards lead, then mobile, the shops and events, and licensing. The central estimates explain about four-fifths of the group. The rest sits mostly in TPC International, which publishes nothing; it is a gap, not a business line.
Built from .Show the numbers
| Line | Revenue, ¥bn a year | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Trading cards | (223–370) | |
| Mobile games | (123–205) | |
| Pokémon Center shops and events | (73–245) | |
| Licensing outside Asia | (99–131) | |
| Console games, paid by Nintendo | (20–62) | |
| Licensing in Japan and Asia | (15–50) | |
| Anime | (1.2–14) | |
| Unexplained, mostly in TPC International | ||
| Whole group | (1,020–1,048) |
Revenue. No line is published; each bar is our central estimate and its whisker the range, built in that line’s own section. Mobile counts Pocket and TPC’s other apps as revenue, and GO’s licence income as estimated from profit. Console games are Nintendo’s payments to TPC; a later estimate puts them at about ¥16–51bn. Shops and events is wide because neither publishes sales. “Unexplained” is the gap between the lines and the group total. Almost all of it sits in the subsidiaries, mainly TPC International, whose revenue is known only as the group minus Tokyo. Our working hypothesis: licensing outside Asia earns above the industry-average royalty assumed here (at toy-company rates the gap falls to about ¥50–110bn), Western card revenue sits toward the top of its range, and small lines we barely model (online shops outside Japan, Asia outside Korea, digital, printing for others) fill the rest. The research’s uncertainty range for the gap includes zero. The group total comes from Nintendo’s annual report, with the baseball club it also holds taken out.
TPC keeps a third of a card sale and a few yen of a toy
Revenue TPC books per ¥100 that fans spend, by line. Estimates.
- Revenue booked per ¥100 spent
- GO licence income, estimated from profit
On a licensed toy TPC books a few yen in every hundred. On a card it books a third or more, because it is the seller.
Built from .Show the numbers
| Line | Revenue booked per ¥100 spent, ¥ per ¥100 | GO licence income, estimated from profit, ¥ per ¥100 | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pokémon Pocket | (70–100) | – | |
| Trading cards | (35–59) | – | |
| Pokémon GO (licence, from profit) | – | (13–26) | |
| Licensed merchandise | (5.5–8.7) | – |
Revenue booked per ¥100 spent. Estimated ranges built from corner inputs, so they are wide and do not add up. Merchandise: royalty per yen of licensed merchandise sold, with cards taken out of License Global’s retail figure, itself a self-reported estimate. Cards: the company’s share of list price. Pocket: from net of 30% app-store fees to gross.
GO licence income, estimated from profit. Pokémon GO is licensed: per Nintendo’s 2016 filing, TPC receives a licence fee and a payment for helping develop and run the game. TPC does not disclose the amount, so this estimates it from the profit GO added to the Tokyo company in its first year, applied to about ¥100–111bn of app-store spending: ¥13.1–25.6bn. It is measured as profit, so it sits slightly differently from the revenue bars.
Selling has a cost. A publisher pays to print, ship and run its products, so it keeps less of each yen than a licensor. The Tokyo company’s operating margin was 27.1% last year and has stayed between 24.5% and 29.8% for five years, while Sanrio, a licensor, now keeps 40.1%. The trade-off runs the other way in a downturn. When a licensor’s sales fall its costs stay, and Sanrio lost 87% of each lost yen from profit; a publisher selling fewer cards stops paying to print them.
The risk is concentration. Cards and Pocket, both sold as random packs, are 31–51% of group revenue on our model. TPC has been buying the chain behind them: in 2022 Millennium Print Group, the “longtime printer of Pokemon TCG cards”, and in 2026 the Excell deal.
Growth with cycles on top
Is this a growth business or a card cycle at its peak? The record’s answer is both: growth, with cycles layered on it, and the floor under each cycle rises in the company’s books and in cards while apps reset. The one completed cycle since licensing came in-house passes the test. After the GO boom, the Tokyo company’s worst year, ¥8.8bn, was still 4.33× its best year before the boom, and profit has risen eight years running since. The 2021–2022 card boom never troughed at all: Nintendo’s share held at ¥26.6bn the year after. The Tokyo company’s revenue, Pocket included, grew 4.43× in five years, to ¥531.4bn.
The yen flatters the growth: the Tokyo company’s revenue grew 2.6 times in the four years to February 2026, and about 2.3 times at 2022 exchange rates if around two-fifths of it is billed in foreign currency, a share TPC does not publish.
Revenue grew 2.6 times, or about 2.3 without the weaker yen
Revenue of TPC’s Tokyo company, year to February 2026 against 2022, as a multiple. The second bar is our estimate at 2022 exchange rates, assuming about 40% of revenue is billed in foreign currency; at 15% to 60% it would be 2.5 to 2.2 times.
Most of the growth is real. On our estimate the weaker yen accounts for about a sixth of the increase.
Built from and .Pocket is the layer that resets. It brought the Tokyo company ¥150.0bn last year on a gross reading, but its monthly players fell from 51m to 23m in five quarters, and DeNA’s game revenue fell 33.2% in April–June 2026. The app also changed the cost line. Cost of sales had fallen to 49% of sales and rose to 57% in Pocket’s first year, likely because store fees and the developer’s share count as costs when TPC is the seller; TPC does not split costs by line, so the link is not proven.
Cost of sales jumped the year TCG Pocket launched
Sales and cost of sales of TPC’s Tokyo company, years to February, ¥ billion.
Before Pocket, cost of sales grew more slowly than sales. In the year Pocket launched it jumped.
Built from .The floor under cards is players, not prices. Western Regional entries kept rising while print dipped, which is why the trainer’s notes reads the card base as accumulating rather than cycling. Price did move: Japanese packs went from ¥180 to ¥200 from May 2026, a list step, not demand.
The money that stays
Very little of the profit leaves. Over the past decade the Tokyo parent paid its owners 2.9% of what it earned, in two irregular payments; that is the parent’s figure, the only one the accounts allow. Retained earnings stand at ¥414bn, nearly all built since the GO year.
Almost all of the Tokyo company’s wealth was built after 2016, and almost none was paid out
Net assets of TPC’s Tokyo parent and what it paid out, ten years, ¥ billion.
- Shareholders’ equity
- Valuation adjustments
- Paid out to owners
The box filled after Pokémon GO and has barely been opened.
Built from .Show the numbers
| End of February | Shareholders’ equity, ¥bn | Valuation adjustments, ¥bn | Paid out to owners, ¥bn | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2016 | – | |||
| 2017 | – | |||
| 2018 | ||||
| 2019 | – | |||
| 2020 | – | |||
| 2021 | – | |||
| 2022 | – | |||
| 2023 | – | |||
| 2024 | ||||
| 2025 | – | |||
| 2026 | – |
Shareholders’ equity. The Japanese parent company alone, balance sheet at the end of February, read from the gazette notices. Net assets are the two parts stacked.
Paid out to owners. Payouts are the retained-earnings roll-forward residual, shown in the year it falls (the dividend is declared after year end): ¥12.0bn in all over ten years.
Three things keep it there. Waiting is cheap: Nintendo already sets aside tax on its affiliates’ kept profit, and a payout would trigger part of that bill. Selling is hard: TPC holds a mandate, and a dispute panel found it is “not the trademark owner”. And no one can force it: Nintendo holds a third of the votes and no owner holds a majority. Meanwhile the owners are paid by working: Nintendo sells the games, Game Freak makes them and Creatures develops the cards, under contracts that are not public (see Nintendo, Game Freak, Creatures).
What it adds up to
TPC began as the caretaker of rights it does not own and became the publisher of Pokémon’s biggest products. Its revenue, margin and risk follow the cards and the app it sells for itself; its cash stays put because its owners are paid in other ways. The first half of its 30th year is the strongest on record, and most of the rise is not yet explained. The obvious place to look was the subsidiaries. Customs data now give a second, parent-side candidate: Japan-made cards shipped to Asia through outside distributors. Even if every extra card were Pokémon and sold by the parent, that would be worth at most about ¥8.8bn of Nintendo’s pickup for the seven Asian markets, or ¥16.8bn for all countries, against the ¥13–38bn the research cannot place, so the subsidiaries are now one of two places the step may sit (see Printing).