When trying to solve a murder follow the money.
In this case, a lot of money will be going to the Sony Corporation.
In 2008 Sony was losing money, now well its making tons of money
off its prepackaged Michael Jackson recordings. Remember when we use to wonder why Sony kept putting out so many Michael Jackson catalogue CD's? "How convenient. "
Read this 2008 Article about Sony suffering big financial losses:
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2009/01/sony-slides-to-record-loss.ars
Sony slides to first annual loss in 14 years
Note:
¥=money in Yens
The company's preliminary results for its fiscal third quarter of 2008 show a record loss for the electronics giant, and it has revised its full-year forecast down. More changes and corporate restructuring are planned, but specifics won't be made public until later in the year.
By
John Timmer | Last updated January 22, 2009 12:24 PM CT
The last 24 hours have provided what might be called a "three bears" take on the impact on of the global economic problems. Apple, on the hot side, saw its sales growth come to a halt in several product categories, but managed to keep growing its profits. Microsoft was in the middle, with revenue staying steady as its profits slid slightly.
That leaves Sony's earnings, announced today in Tokyo, to occupy the cold end of the spectrum, with a 25 percent drop in year-over-year income and a loss of ¥18 billion (about $200 million), although the company squeaked out a small gain after restructuring charges were considered.
The results are considered preliminary, but Sony broke out some of the numbers during its conference call. A lot of the pain came from its financial services division, which came in ¥60 billion lower, and electronics, which took at ¥35 billion hit. The strengthening Yen caused about ¥40 billion worth of troubles for Sony's exports. Games were a bright spot, as the company specifically mentioned game sales as having offset some of the losses in other divisions.
More striking than the third quarter, however, is how much worse Sony expects things to get in its fourth. It last provided guidance for the full fiscal year in October, and it has been forced to make major revisions to those numbers. Back in October, it was expecting to see about ¥9 trillion in sales; that number has now dropped to ¥7.7 trillion, and the drop has taken the annual profit with it. Instead of a net income of ¥150 million, it's now expecting a loss of that value. In fact, just about the only figure to go up in the revised numbers is the restructuring charges Sony is expect to be dealing with.
By segments, electronics account for ¥340 billion of its problems. Forecast LCD TV sales have been revised downwards by 10 million (to 50 million) and Vaio PCs are now expected to be down by a million from the October estimate of 6.8 million. The PS3 remains on track to sell 10 million units during the year, but the growth of the PSP is slowing down, so gaming has not escaped unscathed.
Making matters even worse, its Sony Ericsson group announced poor results last week: its most recent quarter brought in a loss that took the entire year into the red, and represented a 500 million Euro drop from the same quarter year before.
The most serious financial problems for Sony appear to be the strengthening of the Yen and the fall of the Tokyo stock market. The former makes the cost of its products rise in most markets, while the latter has hammered the company's investments and financial services branch. The company is also caught up in the wider slowdown;
CEO Howard Stringer noted in the press conference accompanying this announcement that "some of our biggest retailers have been liquidated."
There's nothing much Sony can do about any of this, but it could possibly overcome it if it actually had compelling products and a clear plan for integrating them. Stringer claimed to have a plan that would involve a change of corporate culture—"we will execute more quickly, and move beyond our traditional impulse towards consensus," he claimed. That would allow it to bring products to market more quickly than it has in the past, and the focus of these products would be on providing a better experience in an increasingly networked home.
Unfortunately, Stringer has been talking about bringing change to Sony for a while now, and there's no obvious indication that its corporate culture is significantly different. Meanwhile, the actual details regarding the new product strategy won't be disclosed until sometime in the spring.
So far, the markets have been very skeptical that anything truly new is going to happen as a result of these announcements—Sony's stock has fallen by nearly 16 percent as of last check.
