The firm maintained its full-year profit forecast of 300 billion yen, a 2.0 percent rise over the previous year. But after being responsible for a $544 million loss in the last financial year, the unit posted a slender 400 million yen ($4 million) operating profit for the quarter.
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Revenues for the period were 1.6 trillion yen ($15.6 billion), reflecting a 10.8-percent decrease. That’s down on the ¥82.4 billion profit it carded this time a year ago, but in general the quarter was a mixed bag of positives and negatives following the impact of cost-cutting initiatives.
Sales and operating income for the year is now expected to be 7.4 trillion yen, lower than previous estimate of 7.8 trillion yen, and down 8.7 percent from last year.
The Japanese electronics, entertainment and financial conglomerate booked a net profit of ¥21.2 billion ($204 million) in the three months through June 30, despite market expectations of a loss ranging between ¥34 billion and ¥39 billion.
Sony has partially halted production of its cash-cow image sensors to assess damage from quakes that shook the southern city of Kumamoto, home to one of its five image sensor plants.
The PlayStation 4 continues to prove itself as one of the most important divisions for Sony, with the significant increase said to be due to higher software sales for the gaming console, including purchases made through the online PlayStation Network.
The image-sensor business will remain weak for the first half of the current fiscal year due to sluggish demand from “a major customer”, Sony said previously.
Sony’s business outlook for fiscal 2016 does not reflect the impact from Sony’s plan announced Thursday to sell part of its battery business to Murata Manufacturing Co.
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“That is partly down to the strong Yen, which has meant less earnings for the company when converted into dollars”, the report notes.
