Sony Posts $300 Million Loss for FY Q1, Overall Revenue Slightly Up
posted Saturday Aug 4, 2012 by Nicholas DiMeo
Sony's new CEO Kaz Hirai has said countless times that the company's revival plan will right the ship. Since that July 1st meeting and discussion to reassure investors, Sony has purchased Gaikai for $380 million and is readying its third generation of the PlayStation 3. We had to assume that all of this would cost Sony some money but at least would justify the job cuts in a way. At the very least, we'd hoped there wouldn't be another disastrous loss.
I don't know if "disastrous" would be used to cover their sales numbers they posted this week, but it certainly isn't good. Sony said that the economy was still tough and that "the trend toward appreciation of the yen (took) hold." The company also reconsidered its forecast on the fiscal year and estimated a "severe operating environment" for Q2. Unfortunately their gaming division was severely impacted by the losses and Sony had to lower its sales outlook for PlayStation consoles/handhelds that will be sold this year, which will end up making this division perform "significantly below" the original forecast.
So how bad did Sony do? We have the painful numbers after the break.
The PlayStation hardware, both PS2 and PS3, is usually separated out but was combined into one category for this quarter and together sold 2.8 million units, down 400,000 year-over-year. PSP and Vita units sold 1.4 million combined, which was also down 400,000 from the year prior. Games sales were also down as the company only sold 20.1 million PS2/3 games against 27.6 million a year ago. Their on-the-go Vita and PSP games also took a hit, sinking to 5.8 million from 6.6 million. Because of the downturn, Sony cut their forecast of 16 million PSP and Vita systems sold to just 12 million for this fiscal year.
Now let's talk numbers. The games division took a $300 million loss compared to last year, bringing in only $1.5 billion in revenue for the quarter but actually had less operating cost this year, with a red number of only $44.7 million against last year's $52.3 million. While the games sector looks pretty bad on paper, it's nothing compared to their mobile products and communications department. The smartphone and PC sales area had operating losses of over $350 million, when just a year ago they sat at a loss of only $20 million. It should be noted that a lot of that expenditure had to do with the Sony Ericsson buyout back in February.
Rounding out the report, Sony's overall revenue was $19.3 billion, up a mere 1.4 percent from last year's listing but still managed to post an overall loss of over $300 million, $100 million more than last year. Even bringing in more money couldn't get Sony on the right foot to start their fiscal year but they were optimistic that the losses wouldn't be so bad for the remainder of the year. Let's just hope they don't keep spending money on acquisitions and maybe, just maybe, everything will be okay for them and we will see them at next year's big tech and gaming conventions.
