Posted Thu Apr 25, 2013 at 07:30 AM PDT by Brian Hoss
Ninth straight annual loss for TV side of the business.
Sony has managed $2 billion in profit from selling off several assets, including healthcare data provider M3 Inc., social game website operator DeNA Co., and offices in Tokyo and Manhattan. Sony's fiscal year was also buoyed by the weakening yen. As with so many Japanese manufacturers, the weakening of the record strong yen permits Japanese goods to priced more competitively in the global market.
That $2 billion profit from asset sales resulted in $403 million in net income, and those numbers illustrate how Sony still needs to get various parts of the company into the black.
Unfortunately, both Sony TVs and Sony Xperia phones top the list of products that need to become money-makers if Sony is to remain profitable. Ace Securities Co. analyst Hideki Yasuda, "Asset sales are one-time gains, and the challenge this year will be to generate as much profit from businesses."
Chief Executive Officer Kazuo Hirai has already bet heavily with upcoming PlayStation 4, while 4K UHD seems to be Sony's next step for attracting new sales of TVs amid slowing demand and competition from Samsung and others. Still, the new CEO has been in charge one year and turned a profit.
Sony is set to disclose a full earning report on May 9th, which will hopefully be accompanied by a firm plan to rescue some of Sony's less certain products.
Source: Bloomberg
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