The Chief Executive Officer of Sony Corp (ADR) (NYSE:SNE), Kazuo Hirai, is optimistic about earnings outcome for the year 2015, with the confidence to deliver some better than expected results, after three years of underperformance bowed down the position of company.
Kazuo Hirai expects operating profit of as much as 320 billion yen for the current fiscal year, more than four times compared to previous year. Still it lagged 20 percent than the analysts’ estimates as Sony strives to avoid its years-long fame for unsatisfactory performance. Hirai is now drawing its attention more towards profitable businesses and also lowered down the operating expenses.
According to Sony, it expects to add 7.9 trillion in its sales account this year. And the bigger part of story is the comeback of Sony after three years of downfall, Sony is now expecting a net income of 140 billion yen for the year. But Sony’s expectations are below par than analysts’ projections of 8.2 trillion yen in revenue and 189.9 billion yen in profit.
Sony anticipates a gain of 17 percent in revenue from devices, image sensors manufacturing unit, and 16 percent from pictures division.
The earnings restoration is evident from Hirai bold steps, shedding Sony’s personal-computer business, trimmed its Smartphone lineup and primarily focused on TV manufacturing business by separating it from the rest of the business for steady growth of this segment. TV business marks one of the profitable segments of the company. To achieve its mark Sony already launched a PlayStation 4 console in China to get stronger in the world’s biggest game market.
Sony gained a profit of 8.3 billion yen in the year ended March from TV production business, the most in eleven years. Now Sony expects earnings of 5 billion yen from this unit in the current year.
The company expects operating profit of 40 billion-yen from Gaming unit this year. Demands for PS4 has twice as more as Microsoft Corp.’s Xbox One, VGChartz said, leading the latest generation consoles race.
Sony cut down its production of Xperia lineup for China as in the presence of competitors like Apple Inc., Samsung Electronics Co. and Chinese vendors it is difficult for company to maintain its position in this field. Sony suffered a loss of 180 billion-yen in last fiscal year from this division.
The company is expensing 150 billion yen in semiconductor domain in the current year to become more stable supplier in growing demand for sensors that power cameras in Apple and Samsung smartphones. For further stabilizing its position in this domain, Sony is transferring 220 employees from gaming segment to sensor unit and other operations.
Sony further elaborated that it will plans to increase the dividend to 10 yen per share in the first half of the year, as for the first time in September since rolling out in 1958, the company lowered dividend margin.
