Sony Group Corp yesterday reported its best-ever sales in the financial year to March thanks to strong results in movies, electronics and music, although net profit dipped 14 percent from the previous year’s record.
A gaming boom amid COVID-19 lockdowns has slowed, but the Japanese giant has seen success in other entertainment sectors, with Spider-Man: No Way Home overtaking Avatar as North America’s third-highest-grossing film.
Demand for sensors used in smartphone cameras has continued to soar, and Sony Music also scored a winner with Adele’s latest album 30 and strong licence revenue in its popular anime business.
Photo: Kimimasa Mayama, EPA-EFE
It reported full-year sales for 2021-2022 of ¥9.9 trillion (US$76 billion) and net profit of ¥882 billion.
In 2020-2021, Sony logged a record net profit of more than ¥1 trillion, partly thanks to tax gains and the explosion in popularity of video games during lockdowns.
The 10 percent increase in sales from ¥8.99 trillion in 2020-2021 “was mainly due to significant increases in sales in the pictures, electronics products and solutions and music segments,” Sony said.
Hideki Yasuda, senior analyst at Toyo Securities Co, said that Sony would likely benefit from the fall of the yen, which has hit 20-year lows against the US dollar this year.
The conglomerate is now succeeding in a broader range of sectors with favorable business environments, such as music and movies, Yasuda said.
“Sony is really turning into a content company now, from its previous status as an electronics manufacturer,” he said.
For the current financial year to March next year, Sony predicted that sales would rise 15 percent to ¥11.4 trillion, while net profit is projected to slip 6 percent to ¥830 billion.
Sony has faced challenges rolling out its PlayStation 5 (PS5) console, which remains difficult to get hold of 18 months after its launch in November last year — in part due to supply chain disruption, including a global chip shortage.
The company “could have sold so many more PS5s if they were able to produce more,” said Serkan Toto, an analyst at Kantan Games Inc in Tokyo.
“I don’t see any kind of problem for Sony in the gaming world or in the gaming market, except for the supply chain issues,” Toto said. “It’s impossible to get a PlayStation 5. It’s ridiculous.”
Separately, Nintendo Co issued a cautious forecast for the current financial year as it reported a solid 2021-2022 net profit of ¥477.7 billion, down 0.6 percent year-on-year.
The gaming giant, which has benefited from a string of popular titles including the January release of Pokemon Legends: Arceus, expects net profit for 2022-2023 of ¥340 billion.
Demand for artificial intelligence (AI) chips should spur growth for the semiconductor industry over the next few years, the CEO of a major supplier to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) said, dismissing concerns that investors had misjudged the pace and extent of spending on AI. While the global chip market has grown about 8 percent annually over the past 20 years, AI semiconductors should grow at a much higher rate going forward, Scientech Corp (辛耘) chief executive officer Hsu Ming-chi (許明琪) told Bloomberg Television. “This booming of the AI industry has just begun,” Hsu said. “For the most prominent
Former Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) chairman Mark Liu (劉德音) yesterday warned against the tendency to label stakeholders as either “pro-China” or “pro-US,” calling such rigid thinking a “trap” that could impede policy discussions. Liu, an adviser to the Cabinet’s Economic Development Committee, made the comments in his keynote speech at the committee’s first advisers’ meeting. Speaking in front of Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰), National Development Council (NDC) Minister Paul Liu (劉鏡清) and other officials, Liu urged the public to be wary of falling into the “trap” of categorizing people involved in discussions into either the “pro-China” or “pro-US” camp. Liu,
Minister of Economic Affairs J.W. Kuo (郭智輝) yesterday said Taiwan’s government plans to set up a business service company in Kyushu, Japan, to help Taiwanese companies operating there. “The company will follow the one-stop service model similar to the science parks we have in Taiwan,” Kuo said. “As each prefecture is providing different conditions, we will establish a new company providing services and helping Taiwanese companies swiftly settle in Japan.” Kuo did not specify the exact location of the planned company but said it would not be in Kumamoto, the Kyushu prefecture in which Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC, 台積電) has a
China has threatened severe economic retaliation against Japan if Tokyo further restricts sales and servicing of chipmaking equipment to Chinese firms, complicating US-led efforts to cut the world’s second-largest economy off from advanced technology. Senior Chinese officials have repeatedly outlined that position in recent meetings with their Japanese counterparts, people familiar with the matter said. Toyota Motor Corp privately told officials in Tokyo that one specific fear in Japan is that Beijing could react to new semiconductor controls by cutting the country’s access to critical minerals essential for automotive production, the people said, declining to be named discussing private affairs. Toyota is among