Tokyo: Sony Corp., the world's number three television maker, raised its full-year earnings forecasts after sales of TVs and game consoles helped the company to an unexpected profit last quarter.
Net income will probably be 60 billion yen (Dh2.5 billion) in the year ending March 2011, compared with an earlier projection of 50 billion yen, the Tokyo-based company said in a statement yesterday.
Operating profit, or sales minus the cost of goods sold and administrative expenses, may be 180 billion yen, compared with the 160 billion yen forecast in May.
New focus
Chief Executive Officer Howard Stringer has started to focus on new products as the global economic recovery revives consumer demand.
The maker of Bravia TVs in May unveiled the prototype of a set that will deliver video and music over the internet in partnership with Google Inc. and started selling 3-D TVs in the US, Europe and Japan last month.
"Demand for TVs continued to be strong in China and Japan and Sony has sold its new models without cutting prices significantly," Yasuo Nakane, a Tokyo-based analyst at Deutsche Bank AG said before the results were announced. He has a "hold" rating on the stock.
Sony added 0.1 per cent to close at 2,611 yen in Tokyo trading before the announcement, narrowing its loss this year to 2.2 per cent.
The average of 22 analyst estimates compiled by Bloomberg was for net income of 67 billion yen and operating profit of 161 billion yen on 7.5 trillion yen of revenue.
Net income
First-quarter net income totalled 25.7 billion yen, compared with a 37.1 billion yen loss recorded a year earlier, Sony said.
The median estimate by six analysts in a Bloomberg News survey was for a shortfall of 18 billion yen.
Sony maintained its forecast for a 5 per cent increase in annual sales to 7.6 trillion yen. It kept unchanged its assumptions for the yen's exchange rate to the dollar at 90 yen and revised the rate to the euro to 110 yen from 125 yen for the nine months from July 1.
