SONY reported a 29-billion-yen (US$275 million) profit for the January-March quarter yesterday, marking a reversal from a year ago on losses trimmed from its struggling PlayStation 3 video game business.
Sony Corp, which also has a sprawling entertainment business, including a Hollywood studio, had racked up a 67.6-billion-yen loss during the same period the previous year.
The Tokyo-based manufacturer of the Walkman portable music player said yesterday that it expects profits in coming months to dwindle because of a strengthening yen, which batters the earnings of Japanese exporters such as Sony.
Sales were solid in liquid crystal display TVs, digital cameras and Vaio computers, Sony said. But sales of mobile phones, old-style picture tube TVs and PlayStation 2 machines declined during the fiscal fourth quarter, which ended on March 31.
Quarterly sales dropped 6.5 percent to 1.95 trillion yen, Sony said.
For its quarterly operating performance, which measures how a company did in its core operations, Sony reported a 4.7-billion-yen loss, although that was still an improvement from an operating loss of 113 billion yen in the year ago period.
Assets sale
Sony's latest results underline a steady recovery on the reduction of losses in its PlayStation 3 business and the sale of assets, including its former headquarters in Tokyo.
The PlayStation 3, which went on sale in late 2006, required enormous startup costs and has yet to post a profit as a business for Sony. It has also lagged behind rival Wii console from Nintendo Co.
Sony said it sold 9.24 million PlayStation 3 machines in the fiscal year to March 31, and expects to sell 10 million PS3 consoles in the fiscal year through March 2009.
Sony's bottom line for the fiscal year just ended was also helped by the absence of expenses for a massive battery recall that hit the previous year, when Sony recalled millions of lithium-ion laptop batteries suspected of defects that caused them to burst into flames in some cases.
For the fiscal year to March 31, Sony posted a better-than-expected profit of 369.4 billion yen, a record for Sony and nearly three times the 126-billion-yen profit earned in the previous fiscal year.
For the fiscal year through March 2009, Sony expects profit to slide 21.5 percent to 290 billion yen. It expects sales to edge up 1 percent to 9 trillion yen.
Unfavorable currency swings are expected to hurt Sony's earnings for the fiscal year, the company said. Sony said it is expecting the dollar to trade around 100 yen for the year.