Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund sells off part of its Nintendo ownership stake

Saudi organization is Nintendo’s largest outside investor.

With its headquarters in Kyoto and its roots in making traditional hanafuda playing cards, Nintendo can be described as a very Japanese company. At the same time, the company’s biggest external investor, in terms of stock purchased, is from Saudi Arabia.

In the spring of 2022, 5 percent of Nintendo’s stock was purchased by Public Investment Fund, an investment fund owned and operated by the government of Saudi Arabia. Nintendo isn’t the only video game company PIF has vested interest in, as the organization is also a shareholder in Capcom and Koei Tecmo, as well as in video game developers in other parts of the world. Given Nintendo’s long-standing image of independence within the game industry, though, PIF’s investment feels particularly significant, especially as Nintendo is enjoying a period of sustained financial success unlike anything it’s seen since the heydays of the Famicom/NES.

PIF was apparently quite pleased with the results of its investment in Nintendo, as it made no fewer than three more stock purchases within a year of its initial acquisition, raising its ownership stake to 8.26 percent, and then to 8.58 percent after that. It looked like that number was about to climb even higher when, on October 5, Japanese news organization Kyodo interviewed Faisal bin Bandar, the Saudi prince who serves as vice-chairman of PIF’S Savvy Games Group, reporting that PIF is aiming to expand its stock investments in Nintendo and other companies, quoting bin Bandar as saying “We want to grow together with companies that have the highest level of know-how.”

So it came as a surprise when, on October 8, it came to light that PIF has actually reduced its investment in Nintendo in recent months, selling off a number of its shares. In a report disclosing its current investment situation, PIF showed that between August 21 and October 1 of this year it reduced its rate of ownership of Nintendo from 8.58 percent to 7.54.

The decrease came in the form of small, incremental sales over the period, so this doesn’t appear to be a case of PIF pulling the plug on its Nintendo investment, nor is it necessarily a sign that PIF won’t still be increasing its investments in other Japanese game developers. It would seem to at least suggest, though, that PIF is unlikely to be making a significant Nintendo stock purchase in the near future, since they so recently felt it was in their best interest to scale back their stake.

Source: Yahoo! Japan News/Kyodo via Hachima Kiko, Bloomberg, Reuters
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