electronics
Spider-Man boosts Sony profits – PS5 console bottleneck
Despite the problems with its Playstation 5, Sony has once again raised its profit forecast for the current financial year. Photo: Koji Sasahara/AP/dpa
© dpa-infocom GmbH
Even a year after the market launch, Sony’s Playstation 5 is difficult to obtain because of the global chip crisis. However, the group can rely on the help of Spider-Man and Apple’s new iPhone.
The new Spider-Man movie fills Sony’s box office as the games business continues to be held back by the Playstation 5 shortage.
The Japanese electronics giant once again raised its profit forecast for the fiscal year running until the end of March. Sony hasn’t been able to keep up with the production of the Playstation 5 console for more than a year due to the global chip shortage.
In the Christmas quarter, the group was only able to sell 3.9 million PS5 devices, despite the consistently high demand. In this situation, around 200,000 buyers still grabbed the aged Playstation 4. Sales in the games division – by far the most important Sony area – fell by eight percent year-on-year to 813.3 billion yen (6.3 billion euros), like Sony announced on Wednesday.
At the same time, the bottlenecks took some pressure off the operating result, because new consoles are traditionally initially sold at a loss. The division’s operating profit improved by 15 percent to 93 billion yen (around 720 million euros).
“Spider-Man” makes sales bubble
Sony’s third business quarter, which ended at the end of December, was primarily determined by the success of the film “Spider-Man: No Way Home”. Theatrical sales jumped to $955 million, up from a meager $20 million a year earlier when many movie theaters were closed. Sony’s TV production business grew from $720 million to $1.6 billion on the back of the streaming boom. The entire film and television division threw an operating profit of 149.4 billion yen (1.1 billion euros) from – seven and a half times more than a year earlier.
As a supplier of camera sensors, Sony also benefited from strong sales of Apple’s new iPhones. Sales of the components division rose by more than a fifth to around 325 billion yen (2.5 billion euros). Operating profit grew by more than 25 percent to almost 65 billion yen (500 million euros).
Sony now raised its profit forecast for the full financial year to 860 billion yen (around 6.6 billion euros). Most recently, it had already been increased from 700 to 730 billion yen.