Here's what I just posted on Era.
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Nintendo Shipments
Nintendo Sell-through Pixel Counting:
FY | Q | JP | NA | EUR | TOT |
18 | 1 | 560 | 730 | 510 | 1,800 |
18 | 2 | 630 | 800 | 640 | 2,070 |
18 | 3 | 1,690 | 3,610 | 2,580 | 7,880 |
18 | 4 | 970 | 1,200 | 750 | 2,920 |
19 | 1 | 510 | 890 | 670 | 2,070 |
19 | 2 | 1,010 | 1,030 | 810 | 2,850 |
19 | 3 | 1,990 | 4,080 | 2,860 | 8,930 |
19 | 4 | 1,500 | 1,680 | 1,050 | 4,230 |
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With the two sets of data above, the net inventory buffer (Q3 shipment - (tracked sales + Q2 net inventory buffer) = 8% across NA/JP/EUR. I plugged 10% for JP/Other and 5% for NA/EUR, yielding 6.6% overall with the numbers below. Last year Japan was much higher than that figure, as was Europe, but NA was approx 3%. I think these assumptions are conservative.
For Europe, I built a breakdown of 475/975/1410K for 2019 Oct/Nov/Dec then plugged known Oct/Nov 2020 shifts and kept Dec flat to get to a round 3,275K sell-through for the quarter. For JP I plugged ~120K for MyNintendo Store sales of plain HW, ACNH bundles, and RFA bundles. Honestly have no idea if that is too aggressive or not, this is the 2nd weakest assumption IMO.
For NA untracked sales, I used US NPD sell-through as 90% of total NA sell-through (last year was 92.3% - we know CA has been tracking relatively higher this year).
Other + Eur was 127% of Q1 US and 114% of Q2 US. Using my Europe shipment figure and an assumption of 110% for Q3, I get just under 2M shipped for "Other". This is the least sound assumption I'd argue, so we'll see how much it varies.
Here's what I get (everything at the end is rounded down to the nearest 10K.
All of that yields ~12.9M shipped. If Dec 2020 Europe is up at all, we hit 13M. If my assumption is too soft on the "Other" bucket, we hit 13M. If My Nintendo store sales are larger, we hit 13M. If all of the above, we target 13.5M.
If stock was more plentiful at the end of Q2 2020 vs Q2 2019, then my net buffer assumptions are too large and we trend closer to 12.5M (or maybe even lower). <12M seems difficult unless global net inv buffer is negative, ie more leftover stock at the end of Q2 instead of Q3. Based on really strong relative Oct in US/EUR, that's not impossible, but US December rebound from Nov (+23.5% weekly sales) goes against that (but not strongly) - similar story in JP (especially early Jan).
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