Japan’s Sony Corp said yesterday its operating profit plunged 90 percent in the second quarter of the financial year, hit by a surging yen, a weak global economy and intense price competition.
Operating profit dropped to ¥11.0 billion (US$113 million) in the three months through last month, down from ¥111.6 billion in the same period of the previous year, a company statement said.
Net profit plunged 72 percent to ¥20.8 billion as revenue dropped 0.5 percent to ¥2.07 trillion.
PHOTO: AP
The figures were in line with preliminary results given by the group last week when it also slashed its full-year earnings forecasts.
The steep fall was partly because of a slump in the Japanese stock market, which hit Sony’s financial services business. The year-earlier figure was also inflated by the sale of a portion of the site of Sony’s former headquarters.
Sony chairman Howard Stringer said this week that the electronics giant was keeping up its long-term global ambitions despite taking a “very, very strong” hit in the global financial crisis.
Sony kept its forecast for a net profit of ¥150 billion for the full financial year to March, down 59 percent from the previous year. Revenue is expected to edge up 1.5 percent to ¥9.0 trillion.
Separately, Toshiba Corp, Japan’s largest chipmaker, reported a quarterly loss as a global economic slowdown worsened a glut in the market for chips used to store data in consumer electronics, helping drive down memory prices.
The net loss was ¥26.8 billion (US$278 million) in the three months ended Sept. 30, compared with a ¥25 billion profit a year earlier, the Tokyo-based company said in a statement yesterday. Sales fell 7 percent to ¥1.88 trillion.
The company joins Samsung Electronics Co among electronics makers reporting lower earnings this month as the credit crisis threatens to send the global economy into a recession. Toshiba, the second-largest producer in the US$15 billion NAND flash-memory market after Samsung, yesterday kept its forecast for the lowest profit in four years.
Toshiba gained 11 percent to close at ¥344 on the Tokyo Stock Exchange yesterday, before the company announced the earnings results, as the Nikkei 225 Stock Average jumped 7.7 percent. The stock has lost 59 percent this year.
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