Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

Successful may have been the wrong term, but Nintendo is (or was last year at least) Japan's richest company.

This is not a trivial thing

https://toyokeizai.net/articles/-/713322

> debt to equity ratio is all you care about?

All I care about? No, but you cannot so easily dismiss it either

Companies, even huge ones, that are highly leveraged are in a precarious spot. A competitor could simply buy them, a bad product launch could lead to investors pulling out and the company being parted out and sold... Many industries are littered with the remains of huge, "untouchable" companies that were vulnerable because of their debt load

Companies having savings and low debt load is good for the company and its employees actually

It is only bad if you are a hyper capitalist investor idiot who doesn't care about the long term success of the company and just want to extract as much wealth as you possibly can for yourself before leaving it to crumble



So toyota made more in net income last quarter alone than nintendo has in net cash, but they're less successful? Seems like a really weird metric.


They also have way more debt than Nintendo's net cash so?

Businesses may be comfortable operating in massive debt but it's clearly only sustainable for so long

Businesses operating under the kinds of debt loads they take on are what leads to irresponsible government bailouts to keep "key industries" from collapsing when they are unable to service their debt

Sure, Toyota is "successful" until it isn't, and then their debt comes due and they can't pay so it collapses

We should be encouraging more companies to be responsible like Nintendo




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: