Nintendo announced today that it has paid $1.1 billion to buy 9.5 million shares back from the heirs of Hiroshi Yamauchi, the legendary former chief executive who turned the company into a video game giant.
The family has evidently sold about 67 percent of its stake in Nintendo. That’s a pretty big vote of no confidence for the current Nintendo chief executive, Satoru Iwata. It’s not clear what effect this will have on other shareholders.
[aditude-amp id="flyingcarpet" targeting='{"env":"staging","page_type":"article","post_id":890640,"post_type":"story","post_chan":"none","tags":null,"ai":false,"category":"none","all_categories":"games,","session":"C"}']Nintendo has been on the ropes because its Wii U video game console has sold only 5.86 million units over the past year. That is far less than expected, and Nintendo recently admitted that it would miss its Wii U console sales projections by a huge margin.
On the bright side, it isn’t clear how damaging the sale of the Yamauchi shares will be. The family has hung on to a third of its shares, and it’s not clear whether anyone in the family holds a lot of sway over other investors.
But it’s a large chunk — about 7.4 percent of the whole company — that Nintendo is buying back at 12,025 yen per share. Yamauchi served as CEO of Nintendo from 1949 until 2002.