TOKYO — Sony expects to return to profit this year, aiming
to reduce by half the losses in its television business, which
pushed the Japanese consumer electronics giant to a record loss of
¥455 billion in its financial year that ended last March.
The net loss is the equivalent of $5.7
billion.
Sony shares slipped to a quarter-century
low this week, a sign of how the company that created the Walkman
and PlayStation has lost its innovative edge and fallen behind
Apple and Samsung Electronics. Since the start of the year, Sony
shares have dropped 12 percent, while the benchmark Nikkei 225
index has gained nearly 7 percent. The company’s market value is
now $15 billion, or just 3 percent of Apple’s.
Sony forecast a full-year net profit of
¥30 billion in its current financial year, which runs through next
March. It expects an operating profit of ¥180 billion. The figure
is slightly ahead of market estimates but would be a rebound from
an operating loss of ¥67.3 billion in the year just ended.
“The operating profit forecast isn’t far
off the level seen two years ago,” said Kenichi Hirano, operating
officer at Tachibana Securities in Tokyo. “This suggests we’re on a
recovery trend and last year was definitely the bottom. But I think
not everyone in the market is convinced of this, especially since
the company lacks a solid plan to turn around its TV business.”
Under its new chief, Kazuo Hirai, Sony is
cutting costs — 10,000 jobs will go, or 6 percent of the global
work force — in a bid to turn its struggling television unit
around. At a briefing last month, Mr. Hirai sketched a future
driven by mobile devices like the Xperia smartphone, games and
cameras, as well as medical devices and electric car batteries, along with big cost
cuts in the television business, which has lost more than $10
billion over eight years.
Mr. Hirai, now little more than a month
into his job as chief executive, has set a target for group sales
of ¥8.5 trillion in two years, with an operating margin of more
than 5 percent. “This is our only chance to change,” he said last
month. He has yet to spell out just how Sony will achieve its
goals.
“In handsets, without big innovations,
Sony will still be a second-tier smartphone market player,” said
S.R. Kwon, an industry analyst at Dongbu Securities in Seoul.
The company said Thursday it expected to
sell 33 million smartphones this year, up from 22.5 million last
year.
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