Sony Corp returned to the black in the latest quarter and raised its earnings forecast thanks to brisk sales of its PlayStation 3 gaming consoles and personal computers.
The Tokyo-based electronics and entertainment company yesterday reported a profit of ￥31.1 billion (US$375 million) for the July-September quarter. It was a big rebound from the ￥26.3 billion loss it posted a year earlier.
Revenue climbed 4.3 percent to ￥1.73 trillion. Operating profit came to ￥68.7 billion compared with an operating loss of ￥32.6 billion last year.
Photo: AFP
Its “Networked Products & Services” division, which includes gaming and PCs, did particularly well, Sony said.
PC unit sales surged more than 60 percent to 2.3 million and it sold 3.5 million PlayStation 3 consoles, up 9 percent from the fiscal second quarter of last year.
Last month’s launch of the highly anticipated PlayStation Move motion-sensing game controller helped drive demand, the company said.
Last week, Sony said that it had shipped more than 1 million Move controllers in North America and Latin America in the first 30 days since they went on sale, a sign of strong demand that bodes well for the holiday season.
Offsetting some of the momentum was a stronger yen — which has hit multiple 15-year highs against the US dollar — lower sales of LCD TVs and video cameras, and higher marketing costs for films.
Sony’s music business also weakened, booking a sales decline and an operating loss. The company blamed lower demand for Michael Jackson music, which bolstered sales last year, and ongoing contraction of the physical music market.
Sony raised its earnings forecast for the full fiscal year through March 31. It now expects net profit of ￥70 billion, 17 percent more than its previous forecast of ￥60 billion.
It lowered its sales outlook slightly to ￥7.4 trillion due to the impact of the strong yen, which erodes income brought back to Japan from overseas sales.
Sony based its revisions on an average exchange rate of ￥83 to the US dollar and ￥110 to the euro for the second half. In previous forecast in July had assumed ￥90 to the US dollar.
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