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Sony
said on Thursday its July-September operating profit came to 88
billion yen ($729 million), its best second-quarter operating
profit in eight years. The profit was also a touch above the
87.3 billion yen average estimate of nine analysts surveyed by
Thomson Reuters.
In the same quarter last year, it booked a loss of 85.6 billion
yen due to impairment charges for the mobile business.
The company said its game and networks business booked a 10
percent rise in operating profit thanks to strong PlayStation 4
software sales. It lifted the full-year profit outlook for the
games business to 80 billion yen from a previous 60 billion and
boosted the sales outlook for PlayStation 4 videogame consoles
to 17.5 million units from 16.5 million.
Camera sensors have also played a key role in the company's
recovery of the past year. The devices division, which includes
image sensors, reported an operating profit of 32.7 billion yen,
up 4.4 billion from a year earlier.
The upbeat results come a day after Sony agreed to acquire
Toshiba Corp's image sensor business for an estimated 20 billion
yen and take on about 1,100 workers from a company reeling from
a $1.3 billion accounting scandal.
"This business is crucial for Sony," Kenichiro Yoshida, Sony's
chief financial officer said at a press conference. "We are
facing a shortage of engineers in this field. We would welcome
Toshiba engineers."
Sony is hoping that its dominant position in the camera sensor
market would help the company offset weaker demand for its
mobile phones, TVs and other consumer electronics.
Sony's mobile phone business remained in the red, posting a 20.6
billion yen loss due to heavy competition with other Asian
makers. Sony left unchanged its full-year operating profit and
sales forecasts. It predicted an operating profit of 320 billion
yen, a near five-fold jump, on sales of 7.9 trillion yen, down
3.8 percent.
(Reporting by Makiko Yamazaki; Editing by Muralikumar
Anantharaman)
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