Sony Corp yesterday cut its full-year loss forecast by more than a quarter to US$1.4 billion, thanks to a weaker yen and improving smartphone sales, but it also announced further job cuts as part of its sweeping corporate overhaul.
The firm said it now expects to lose ¥170 billion (US$1.4 billion) in the fiscal year to next month, down from an earlier estimate of ¥230 billion, as it also cited lower restructuring costs.
Sony has struggled in the consumer electronics business that built its global brand, including losing billions of US dollars in televisions over the past decade, as fierce competition from lower-cost rivals pummeled its TV unit.
Photo: AFP
Sony is going through a huge restructuring, including layoffs, unloading its laptop business and selling its Manhattan headquarters, is it tries to drag itself out of the red.
The company said that it would shed another 1,100 jobs in its mobile phone business — on top of a previously announced 1,000 layoffs — which will mean the division will have lost about one-third of its workforce.
However, the plunging yen has partly offset the bleeding at Sony as the currency inflates the value of Japanese exporters’ repatriated overseas income.
Sony said its improving results were primarily “due to the favorable impact of foreign exchange rates [and] a significant increase in mobile communication segment sales reflecting an increase in unit sales of smartphones,” among other reasons.
Sony’s positive results for the third-quarter last year saw net profit more than triple from a year earlier to an estimated ¥89 billion.
Quarterly operating profit doubled to ¥178.3 billion, as sales grew 6.1 percent to ¥2.55 trillion, the company estimated.
Sony published only estimates yesterday, after earlier saying that it would delay releasing finalized numbers until at least next month after a suspected cyberattack at its Hollywood film unit compromised “a large amount of data.”
However, the firm also said that the hack was unlikely to have a significant impact on its financial results.
Yesterday, it said that investigating the attack and fixing the problems at Sony Pictures cost about US$15 million in the third quarter.
The purported cyberattack damaged network systems at the movie unit and meant that it could not put together its financial statements on time, the firm said earlier.
Also yesterday, Sony said third-quarter revenue from image sensors and its PlayStation games business picked up, but sales were down in the movie and television production business.
Restructuring costs in the quarter were down by a third from a year ago, it said.
For the nine months to December last year, Sony estimated a net loss of ¥20.1 billion, reversing ¥9.9 billion profit a year earlier.
Sony shares closed 2.65 percent higher at ¥2,769.0 in Tokyo trading yesterday before the results were released.
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