Sony is bleeding money - business strategy discussion

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2015-02-04-big-ps4-sales-help-sony-swing-to-profit
The gargantuan Japanese company saw an 89bn yen (£500m) profit for the third quarter ending 31st December 2014. That's up from a 26.4bn yen (£148m) profit during the same period last year.

...
...a "significant" increase in the Mobile Communications division, reflecting a somewhat surprising increase in sales of Sony's smartphones...

...But Sony as a whole expects an operating income of 20bn yen, or £112m, for the full financial year. And digging deeper, Sony expects to post a net loss of 170bn yen (£955m), on account of the poor performance of its smartphone and movie businesses.
 
is there a graph showing each divisions profit?

wanna really see how big PS division keeping Sony afloat. Although i think i will see their Hollywood division will looks like taking no profit while being filthy rich..
 
is there a graph showing each divisions profit?

wanna really see how big PS division keeping Sony afloat. Although i think i will see their Hollywood division will looks like taking no profit while being filthy rich..

stolen from gaf

sonylolg6usv.png
 
wow their smartphones burning billions of yen.. where;s the tv division? devices or home entertainment?
 
their image sensors for 13MP also have been widely used by chineese phone+tablet manufacturers. heck, they even advertise it as "awesome 13MP Sony IMX bblablabla camera".

EDIT:
since sony sold their VAIO PC to some japan corp... they have not released or announched any windows tablet, while MS' surface seems selling well, and other manufacturers also selling more and more windows tablets.
That would be weird. Sony ditched the division that made windows hardware (vaio), then they ditched windows gaming (SOE). I don't see why they would go back in bed with MS to make a windows tablet or phone. Unless it becomes a dominant OS.

Last I checked windows had something like 6% tablet market share and it's mostly their own Nokia. Not sure this qualifies as selling well, or anywhere near an interesting market to penetrate when the major competitor is controlling the OS.
 
This article is a mess. It talks about Sony making a profit this and last quarter whereas last quarter they made a whopping loss quarter becuase of the one-and-half billion US dollar loss incurred by the Mobile Communications division. They're referring to Sony when they mean G&NS; the Game and Network Services division which includes PlayStation and PSN operations.

That's a lesson on why gaming media websites should stick to writing about the things they understand, i.e. games (albeit barely half the time).
 
That's a lesson on why gaming media websites should stick to writing about the things they understand, i.e. games (albeit barely half the time).
This is why I prefer to read the statements myself. They contain all of the important information even if they are necessarily dry reading.

It's not a great sign when media are working from the slideshow accompaniment, rather than the actual report. :rolleyes: I knew it was going to be bad when I saw people quoting bright colourful graphs :runaway:
 
It's not a great sign when media are working from the slideshow accompaniment, rather than the actual report. :rolleyes: I knew it was going to be bad when I saw people quoting bright colourful graphs :runaway:
That irks me. Websites and reporting are supposed to digest the facts so those of us with only moment to spend on a story can be informed in that brief moment. I'd like to think that, though mistakes can happen, the basic details and meat of a story are accurate. I suppose we get this with PR reporting too, and true meanings/intentions being lost in translation from English to Journalism.
 
It's funny how everybody's forgetting that the only reason for the massive losses in the mobile division is due to a one time cost of the impairment of goodwill.

On a day by day basis Sony is pretty healthy right now.
Heck that was what I said in this thread waaay back in November.


From the financial Report

http://www.scribd.com/doc/245102858/Sony-FY-Q3-2014

Mobile Communications -172 billion yen 176 billion yen was lost due to impairment charge of goodwill. Take the impairment of goodwill out they actually have a profit.
Game & Network Services +21.8 billion yen
Imaging Products & Solutions +20.1 billion yen
Home Entertainment & Sales +8.0 billion yen
Devices +29.6 billion yen
Pictures -1.0 billion yen
Music +11.8 billion yen
Financial Services +47.7 billion yen
All other -18.2 bilion yen mainly due to the costs of exiting the PC market


Looks to be in good shape if anything.
 
That would be weird. Sony ditched the division that made windows hardware (vaio), then they ditched windows gaming (SOE). I don't see why they would go back in bed with MS to make a windows tablet or phone. Unless it becomes a dominant OS.

Last I checked windows had something like 6% tablet market share and it's mostly their own Nokia. Not sure this qualifies as selling well, or anywhere near an interesting market to penetrate when the major competitor is controlling the OS.
your thinking smart phone nokia has no tablet

The surface line is Microsoft proper
Its hard to find any break down in terms of the % of tablet sales windows is on but there are few options and even less in the under $200 market. Surface itself keeps increasing in sales year after year and model after model http://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-surface-sales-2015-1
if the rumors of a cherry trail surface pro starting at $300 is real then we should see even bigger sales with windows 10.

Anyway its good to see sony stabilize a bit , wonder what they will sell next quarter to keep afloat
 
It's funny how everybody's forgetting that the only reason for the massive losses in the mobile division is due to a one time cost of the impairment of goodwill.
Sony's Mobile Communications (MC) division has been carrying massive operational losses for an awful lot of successive quarters - it's not isolated to a single impairment at all. And just because they've sunk some money in the last quarter does not guarantee profitability in MC come next quarter, or those following.
 
Sony's Mobile Communications (MC) division has been carrying massive operational losses for an awful lot of successive quarters - it's not isolated to a single impairment at all. And just because they've sunk some money in the last quarter does not guarantee profitability in MC come next quarter, or those following.

If you didn't count the impairment they actually made money that quarter.
 
If you didn't count the impairment they actually made money that quarter.
Yeah sure, if you discount costs then profit is easy. Nobody is going to overlook the $1.6Bn impairment, the $93m write-downs for Vita and PSTV or the $111m cost for exiting the PC business. Because these are actual detracting costs from Sony's bottom line.

You may want to think of write-downs and goodwill impairment charges as mere "product oopsies" but unless Kaz Hirai has a genie in a lamp dispensing never-pay-back-interest-free loans then it doesn't matter how these are catagorised in public accounts, these are costing Sony. So again, they made a loss. Perhaps it'll be the last quarterly loss but I wouldn't put money on it. Until Sony have decided what they are doing with the Mobile Communications division, there is potential to lose more money, albeit less.

To put this in perspective, losses of a of a few hundred millions (each quarter) aren't that big a deal for Sony. Not when you consider Sony's entire assets are modestly valued at over $80Bn. It's why they are able to borrow money to cover the losses (debts are tax deductable), becuase not only are "they good for it" if they default, they are measurably turning around the buisness, quarter-by-quarter. It wasn't that long ago that Sony's stock had "junk" status but they're a pretty safe investment now and are recommended by many big brokers.
 
So again, they made a loss. Perhaps it'll be the last quarterly loss...
That's basically Strange's point. To understand the state of the division and its ability to turn a profit, you need to ignore one-off expenses and look at its ability to do business and turn a profit. Of course, one quarter doesn't show that, but it does show that the division is able, in theory, to be a going concern and not a loss maker. Longer term views may well show otherwise (three lossy quarters losing more money than one profitable quarter). But that's why Strange was filtering out the impairment as that won't be happening quarter after quarter and occludes the money made/lost by making and selling handsets.
 
This article is a mess. It talks about Sony making a profit this and last quarter whereas last quarter they made a whopping loss quarter becuase of the one-and-half billion US dollar loss incurred by the Mobile Communications division

No, Sony didn tmake that loss this year - that's goodwill impairment. To make it simple, Sony bought the mobile division paying it 'x' in 2012, and by law they need to take the correct value for accountancy after a while.
it turned out that the correct value is x-1,9bn$ or such.
So, this year they accounted the loss, but it soes not correspond to an actual loss - rather a 'delayed' loss they got in 2012 when they paid x and it was not worth it.

So, from technincal POV, they are right - Sony isnt bleeding money any more, mostly, but are on black. Yet, it has to be seen if that black is stable or not, and TBD the effect of hacking in sony pictures.
 
Stock jumped near $27, it was under $9 in late 2012.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/02/05/sony-results-idUSL4N0VF1LB20150205
Sony shares post biggest daily gain in 9 years after upgrading outlook
[..]
The results bolstered confidence in Sony's restructuring efforts led by CFO Kenichiro Yoshida, who took the job almost a year ago, said investors and analysts.

Investors have also cited expectations that Yoshida was prepared to sell off or shut down operations that fail to turn profitable through costs cuts. They will get an update on Sony's thinking when Hirai presents the company's business strategy on Feb. 18.

The jump seems to be speculative trading, expectations for what Hirai will say on Feb 18.
 
No, Sony didn tmake that loss this year - that's goodwill impairment. ... ... ... So, from technincal POV, they are right - Sony isnt bleeding money any more, mostly, but are on black. Yet, it has to be seen if that black is stable or not, and TBD the effect of hacking in sony pictures.

An impairment charge is indeed a revaluation what isn't in the report is how Sony counteracted the devaluation to prevent damage to it's stock rating by converting around ¥100 Bn of convertible bonds into stock, which cost them. These fall into securities rather than specific finances of the company which is why there is no reference to this in the Q3 2014 report, but it was covered by major credit rating agencies like R&I and JCR (among others) because the expectation was their stock ratings would drop given the sizeable impairment.

But you're right, this isn't a reportable "loss" per se, but there is a real cost to what Sony have done to prevent this particular impairment charge having an unwanted effects on their stock.

Also Sony are definitely not in the black, their outlook for this remainder of this financial year (ending 31 March 2015) is a net loss of ¥170 Bn (or $1.44Bn), this on page 9 of the report:

2015-02-04%20Sony%202014%20Q3%20Outlook.png


That's basically Strange's point. To understand the state of the division and its ability to turn a profit, you need to ignore one-off expenses and look at its ability to do business and turn a profit.

Impairments are not necessarily one-offs and the valuation re-adjustment they've just made, could result in a further impairment charge if the value of the Mobile Communications division drops further, i.e. it doesn't perform to the new modest expectations.
 
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Stock jumped near $27, it was under $9 in late 2012.

Yes, I mentioned the improved stock outlook in an earlier post. My broker suggested buying Sony stock a few weeks ago, which really caught me by surprise. It's not that I don't think Sony can turn it around - it's clearly just a matter of time - I just hadn't realised others were paying that much attention to them since the company are often attributed with losses, diminishing markets and downsizing.

I bought 200 shares and figure they'll probably double or triple in a couple of years as long as Ken Kutaragi isn't allowed back on the Board. Sony (and Apple) are two of the few big tech companies I am allowed to trade in; many of the others have Government or defence contracts so I have to avoid out of fear of insider trader allegations.
 
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