The company revises its earning estimates on mounting confidence in the DS and a weaker yen.

It is no secret that Nintendo has been practically rolling in money since sales of its DS portable took off this year. However, even bullish analysts were surprised when Nintendo readjusted its earnings estimates for the year to reflect a roughly 20 percent hike in profit. From Reuters:

The company forecast a group net profit of 100 billion yen ($850 million) in the year ending March 31, up from its earlier estimate of 83 billion yen. It reported a profit of 98.4 billion last year...Nintendo raised its sales estimate by 15.6 percent to 740 billion yen, and operating profit target by 16 percent to 145 billion yen. The company based the new earnings estimates on an exchange rate of 115 yen to the dollar, and 143 yen to the euro.

At the same time Nintendo also provided revised DS sales projections. Needless to say, the Big N is expecting another mammoth year. Again from Reuters:

Nintendo raised its sales forecast for its DS game device to 20 million units from 17 million for the current year, and said it expects sales of DS games to total 82 million units, up 9 percent from its previous target.

Nintendo also increased its estimate for sales of its Game Boy Advance game machine by 32 percent to 3.3 million units.

For the first half of the business year, the company almost doubled its net profit estimate to 50 billion yen, against previous forecast of 27 billion yen. That compares with a profit of 36.6 billion yen a year earlier.

Nintendo's first-half sales probably totaled 290 billion yen, compared with 176 billion yen a year ago, the company said.

Factor in the expected initial success of the Wii (which, unlike competitor's systems, will be profitable from Day One) compounded with the utter domination the DS has achieved in the Japanese market (where new shipments are promptly sold out every week) and you can see why the company is riding so high. There must be a lot of happy Nintendo investors out there right now.