Sony Lowers Loss by $83 Million, Down $115 Million for the Quarter

Those who’ve been following Sony’s road towards recovery will be happy to hear that Sony has once again improved its financial outcome for the October to December period. Despite posting a $115 million loss, the company was able to lower losses by $83 million which saw the company lose $193 for the previous quarter and $312 million for the quarter before that. Further goods comes from the company’s revenue, which saw a dramatic increase, up near $17 billion to $21 billion as the yen weakened. This comes despite lower sales of the companies HDTV and Blu-ray players.

In fact, Sony forecasts 130 billion yen ($1.4 billion) for its full-year. For the October to December quarter, Sony posted 46.4 billion yen in operating profit compared with a 91.7 billion yen loss a year ago. Chief Financial Officer Masaru Kato said:

If this weak yen rate persists it should provide us with a big upside

With Sony’s financials beginning to stabilize as the company is able to leverage the dollar against the yen, the battered electronic maker needs to focus its attention on selling more products if it wants long term viability. For the for full-year sales of TV sets, Sony has cut shipments by 1 million, now down to 13.5 million, and portable game players by 3 million to 16 million. More specifically, Sony has cut its estimate for PSP and PS Vita handheld devices to 7 million from a November estimate of 10 million. It’s widely expected that Sony will announce the PlayStation 4 on February 20th.

As smartphones continue their domination, traditional point-and-shoot camera sales continue to fall, much in the same way that tablet sales have cannibalized computer sales. Sony was no exception to this trend, seeing their compact cameras sales for the year drop 15 million from an earlier estimate of 16 million. A year earlier, Sony had managed to ship 21 million compact cameras.

With sales down in many divisions, the improved balance sheet for Sony continues to come mostly from cost cutting like the recent 10,000 job cuts and the sales of their NYC headquarters for $1.1 billion. Mitsuo Shimizu, a Tokyo-based analyst at Iwai Cosmo Holdings, Inc., said: