SONY NEARLY DOUBLES H1 NET PROFITS
T to hit a record high in the six months to September, it announced on Tuesday, as it upgraded its annual forecasts, with games such as Spider-Man and GodofWar leading the way.
The electronics and entertainment giant said its April 399.4 billion yen ($ 3.5 billion), up 88.7 percent from a year ago and marking its best performance for the period.
Operating profit and sales were both up, with video games driving the good news, including blockbuster software titles.
Sony’s quality sensors for smartphone cameras saw explosive demand, becoming a major
The movies and music segments also contributed to grow - bile phone business continued to struggle.
The robust six-month perfor 20.1 percent at 434.5 billion yen and sales rising 5.5 percent to 4.1 trillion yen, prompted Sony to upgrade outlook for the second half.
It now projects an annual which would mark a new alltime high, along with annual yen and sales of 8.7 trillion yen.
Sony had previously forecast a moderate slowdown for the rest of the year.
“Various areas including music as well as the game and net better than earlier thought, the
Observers said a string of third-party games this quarter would likely provide support, with newly released RedDead Redemption II getting star reviews, while Call of Duty: BlackOps set a new PlayStation according to Bloomberg News.
The massively popular free game Fortnite also lifted income owing to in- game item revenue, which is shared with Sony.
Among movies, television licensing revenues from Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle and Peter Rabbit added to its sales.
Foreign exchange rates and strong sales of Sony’s paid membership game service also contributed to the optimistic annual expectations, the company said.
However, for the mobile phone segment, Sony braced for further struggles particularly with smartphone sales falling in Europe and Japan.
Sony expected to see a loss from the segment despite at struggled to win market share against giants Samsung and Apple, and faces pressure from Chinese manufacturers, as well.
Analysts said the company results showed it was entering a growth phase after a remarkable recovery that followed several painful years of huge losses.
“Its game sector has continued spearheading its recovery. Strong titles offset slowing sales of PlayStation 4 consoles,” Hideki Yasuda, an analyst at Ace Research Institute in Tokyo, told Agence France-Presse ahead of the company’s announcement.
“Other than mobile businesses, I have not seen any major risks surrounding Sony,” he said.
Yasuo Imanaka, an analyst at Rakuten Securities in Tokyo, said: “Sony has already com and is now heading toward a new growth phase.”
“The only concern is its mobile phone business. Sony is required to revamp the sector drastically,” he told AFP before the announcement.