To take my mind off the supreme court absurdity (and it's
not only RvW), I looked at Nintendo's shareholder disclosures (
source) for clues to the next Switch model's production and release window. Below is the unconsolidated inventory data from the Switch era (FY03/18 to FY03/22), and I highlighted the outlying numbers for further discussion:
- The finished goods at the end of 03/2018 was high because of the 3DS stock.
- At the end of 03/2019, the raw materials and work in progress were both elevated, possibly to ramp up the early product of Lite and v2 Switch. As you may recall, the Lite backplate was leaked in 04/2019.
- Due to COVID factory shutdown, the finished goods and work in progress at the end of 03/2020 were both at the lowest levels.
- The strong demands stemmed from shelter-in-place resulted in a low finished goods (stock turning over quickly) and high work in progress (mass production to meet demands) at the end of 03/2021.
- Things are getting interesting this year. As one'd notice immediately, Nintendo is stockpiling raw materials for no apparent reason, while the finished goods and work in progress remain stable.
- The money tied up in the raw materials is about twice as much as in 03/2019, back when Nintendo was ramping up the Lite and v2 production. Are they preparing to start manufacturing a new model that would cost much more than the Lite and v2? (Yes, there's inflation going on, but that alone doesn't explain the 2x increase.)
- Note that the work in progress level is not elevated. It seems to indicate that at least at the end of 03/2022, the production of this new model had not been commenced.
Tl;dr, at the end of 03/2022, Nintendo's
raw material inventory was at the highest level since the Switch was introduced. The previous peak (03/2019) was for the Lite and v2 production. If this is a precursor of the next Switch model, the
work in progress inventory level suggests that the manufacturing of said model had not yet begun by March.
Disclaimer: I'm not a financial analyst. Vash and other experts probably can shed more light on this.