Universal Entertainment, a Japanese-based manufacturer of pachinko, slot and gaming machines, has announced its financial reports for Q1 2023.
For the period between 1 January 2023 and 31 March 2023, Universal Entertainment recorded revenue of JPY 35.5bn ($261.5m), a 28% increase year-on-year.
Gross profit also rose to JPY 21bn in 2023, when compared to JPY 15.6bn from last year; net income, however, dropped from JPY 8.4bn to JPY 2.9bn
The Integrated Resort Business arm of Universal Entertainment proved to be one of the most profitable areas, with JPY 24.11bn in revenue in Q1 ($177m), a 113% increase year-on-year.
Universal Entertainment explained that this was due to an increase in visitors, 1.4 million in total, with a notable amount visiting from the Phillippines.
Okada Manila, an integrated resort owned by Universal Entertainment, announced that business performance remained strong, with increasing amounts of Philippine customers visiting its Red Spice and Kappou Imamura restaurants.
This drove the adjusted EBITDA for the integrated resorts to JPY 7bn, which is up 226% year-on-year.
However, in the Amusement Equipments Business segment, there was a report of 12,836 fewer units being sold in this time when compared to this time last year, for a total of 24,903 units.
This led to a 31.4% drop in revenue, totalling JPY 11.1bn and an operating profit of JPY 3bn, a decrease of 41.3%.
Despite the number of pachinko machines sold growing by 9,774 units, this was offset by the number of Pachislot sales dropping from 35,647 to 13,037.
In the report, Universal Entertainment notes that the “4.8 million foreign tourists is well below the approximately 8.26 million foreign tourists who visited the Philipines in 2019.”
