Sony said yesterday its fiscal first-quarter net loss widened to ¥24.6 billion (US$313.6 million) while it cut its profit forecast for the year as the struggling Japanese firm overhauls its business.
The consumer electronics and entertainment giant’s latest loss dwarfed the ¥15.5 billion shortfall it reported in the same period a year ago.
Quarterly revenue rose 1.4 percent to ¥1.51 trillion, while the company said it squeezed out an operating profit of ¥6.28 billion.
Sony also said it now expected a ¥20 billion full-year profit, down from an earlier projection of ¥30 billion for the year through March next year.
“The operating environment for Sony in the first quarter ... continued to be severe due to factors including a slowing of the global economy and entrenchment of the appreciation of the yen exchange rate,” it said in a statement.
Sony said it lowered its full-year profit forecast “in anticipation of a severe operating environment from the second quarter onward, resulting from uncertain foreign exchange rates and trends in the global economy.”
In April, Sony said it would cut about 10,000 jobs and spend almost US$1 billion on an overhaul that its new CEO Kazuo Hirai described as “urgent.”
Sony has vowed a return to the black after losing ¥456.66 billion in the year to March, its fourth consecutive annual loss.
Sony said in June it would sell its chemical products division for about ¥58 billion, while teaming up with rival Japanese electronics giant Sharp on developing televisions with advanced technology.
Despite a long-standing rivalry, the firms said they would aim to establish mass-production technology for organic light-emitting diode (OLED) television panels next year, as they try to recover from multibillion-dollar losses.
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
MAJOR DROP: CEO Tim Cook, who is visiting Hanoi, pledged the firm was committed to Vietnam after its smartphone shipments declined 9.6% annually in the first quarter Apple Inc yesterday said it would increase spending on suppliers in Vietnam, a key production hub, as CEO Tim Cook arrived in the country for a two-day visit. The iPhone maker announced the news in a statement on its Web site, but gave no details of how much it would spend or where the money would go. Cook is expected to meet programmers, content creators and students during his visit, online newspaper VnExpress reported. The visit comes as US President Joe Biden’s administration seeks to ramp up Vietnam’s role in the global tech supply chain to reduce the US’ dependence on China. Images on
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group