Thursday 29 October 2015

Sony Returns Profit in Second Quarter as Revival Takes Hold





Sony Corp. returned to profitability in the fiscal second quarter driven by gains in PlayStation 4 games, image sensors and cameras.

Net income was 33.6 billion yen ($278 million) in the quarter ended September, versus a 136 billion yen net loss a year earlier, Sony said Thursday. The result also beat estimates.

The company’s fourth straight profit beat shows Chief Executive Officer Kazuo Hirai’s progress in reviving an electronics maker that has cut thousands of jobs to pivot away from phones and TVs. It maintained its outlook for annual operating income of 320 billion yen in the year ending March 2016, while raising its profit forecast for PlayStation console sales and game revenue.

Sony Mobile shipped 6.7 million Xperia units during the quarter, a year-on-year decline of 32 percent, but still in line with expectations. Thankfully, we also saw no further cuts to full-year forecasts – Sony still expects to ship 27 million units during the year with sales of 1,190 billion yen and an operating loss of 60 billion yen.

PlayStation 4 shipment 4 million, cumulative sell in at 29.3 million. Rising demand for PlayStation software drove a 10 percent gain in profit and a 17 percent rise in sales at its game and networked services business.

The performance of PS4 has clearly surprised even Sony, which has revised its sales forecast up - something it hasn't been doing a lot in recent years - from a predicted 16.5 million sales to 17.5 million by the end of the fiscal year (that's the end of March).

What makes the increasing success of the PS4 even more surprising is that all of this occurred well before the company announced its price cut for the console - and before the traditionally strong sales of the Christmas period.

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