Sony Corp yesterday posted a six-month net profit of almost US$1 billion, crediting its PlayStation videogame unit and a weak yen for a big improvement in its finances as the company moves past years of losses.
The Tokyo-based electronics giant said net profit came in at ￥116.0 billion (US$960 million) in the first half of its fiscal year, reversing a ￥109.2 billion loss a year earlier.
Sony also reversed a year-earlier operating loss, although sales ticked down 0.3 percent to ￥3.7 trillion.
Photo: Bloomberg
The company has been emerging from a painful corporate restructuring that has included layoffs and asset sales, with executives focusing on its upbeat videogame unit and turning around a long-struggling television division.
The upbeat earnings come a day after Sony said it would acquire Toshiba Corp’s image sensor business.
The deal could boost Sony’s position as a global leader in image sensors, which are key components in smartphones and other mobile devices.
Shares of Sony yesterday finished up 0.9 percent, compared with the benchmark Nikkei 225 index’s 0.17 percent rise.
However, videogame giant Nintendo Co saw its shares close 8.97 percent lower after announcing its first phone app game — Miitomo — would not come out until March, after initially aiming for the end of this year.
The firm’s new president, Tatsumi Kimishima, said it needed more time to “boost the quality” of the game, which is seen as crucial to its future as it battles Sony and Microsoft Corp for market share in the games market.
Mobile gaming company DeNA Corp, which Nintendo developed the game with, plummeted 14.93 percent.
Nintendo bought a stake in Tokyo-based DeNA as part of a deal to develop smartphone games based on its host of popular characters, possibly including Super Mario and Donkey Kong.
The delay in releasing Miitomo will add to uncertainty that has swirled around the company since its chief executive Satoru Iwata, a leading figure in the videogame industry, died of cancer at the age of 55 in the summer.
Yesterday’s announcement comes a day after Nintendo announced a 20 percent drop in net profit in April-September, largely owing a big year-earlier gain.
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