Sony Group Corp said on Friday that sales of PlayStation 5 will rise by six million units this business year, but it forecast that weak financial services sales would be undercut by record levels of profit from gaming, music and movies.
The Japanese company said it expected operating profit to fall 3.2% to 1.17 trillion yen ($8.65 billion) by March 31, below analysts’ average estimate of 1.275 trillion yen profit, according to Refinitiv data.
However, the improved performance of its gaming unit came as a relief for the entertainment and electronics conglomerate after it struggled to make enough PlayStation 5 game consoles to meet demand during the COVID-19 pandemic due to semiconductor supply chain disruptions. Will come
“We can now deliver PlayStation 5 almost anywhere in the world without waiting for our customers,” Sony Group President Hiroaki Totoki said at a press briefing after the company announced its results.
Sony, which competes with Xbox maker Microsoft Corp and Switch provider Nintendo Co Ltd, said it expects to sell a record 25 million PlayStation 5 (PS5) consoles this business year, up from 19.1 million in the previous 12 months. And this number is more than double. It sold the year before that.
For this business year, the company forecasts profit at its gaming and network unit to rise 8% to 270 billion yen.
Toyo Securities analyst Hideki Yasuda said sluggish sales of videogame software, which is more profitable than on the console side, cast a shadow on the games unit.
In the latest March quarter, PlayStation 5 sales tripled from a year earlier to 6.3 million units, while software sales fell 3.5%.
“If you buy new hardware, you usually buy software as well. Software sales have grown in tandem with hardware,” Yasuda said.
Sony expects earnings in its music and pictures divisions to be slightly higher this year, with profit from financial services falling a fifth.
Sony also forecast that image sensor operating profit would drop 5.8% to 200 billion yen.
The firm said total operating profit fell 7.3% to 128.5 billion yen for the three months ended March 31, with full-year profit reaching a record 1.21 trillion yen.
($1 = 135.2600 yen)
, reuters
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