Earnings: Sony's Games Unit In Profits; SonyBMG Sales Decline 6 Percent
This story was written by Rafat Ali.
Sony (NYSE: SNE) reported its Q208 earnings this morning, and the picture isn't that pretty: it posted a 39 percent fall in quarterly operating profits, hit by losses in its Sony Ericsson (NSDQ: ERIC) JV. Its profits fell to $327 million (34.98 billion yen)about half of last year. However, among the bright lights: profits in its Playstation division, unlike last year's losses...it had operating profits of $51 million for the games division. Sales increased 16.8 percent year-on-year primarily as a result of an increase in sales of PS3 and PSP. In the Sony Pictures segment, there was a 31.0 percent decrease in sales year-on-year primarily because no film performed as strongly as last year's Spider-Man 3, meaning it didn't have ablockbuster to bank on.
SonyBMG, which Sony is trying to buy back the 50 percent share it doesn't own, according to reports, recorded equity in net loss of $24 millio, reflecting the impact of the continued decline of the worldwide physical music market, higher restructuring costs and the non-recurrence of a prior year gain.
The full results are in the PDF file here.
By Rafat Ali