Sony has announced that it will be selling off all of its stakes in Gracenote, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Sony. While not an in-the-spotlight company/division, Gracenote provides information and cover art to music and films on many devices that include Sony’s own home theater devices — though their reach is not limited to Sony products. So how much is Gracenote worth?

According to reports, the buyer of Gracenote is the Tribune Company, who will pay Sony $170m (~£104m) for the shares, earning Sony around $60m (~£37m) of operating income. It remains unclear why Sony is offloading the company, though since they have a reliance on the cloud with services like Movie and Music Unlimited, Sony may see less of a reason to have such information provided to individual devices while the cloud can store all that information and more.

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Sale of Gracenote, Inc. by Sony Corporation of America

Sony Corporation of America – 12/23/2013

NEW YORK, Dec. 23, 2013 /PRNewswire/ — Sony Corporation of America, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Sony Corporation (“Sony”), today announced that it has entered into an agreement to sell all of the shares of Gracenote, Inc., which is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Sony Corporation of America, to Tribune Company for $170 millionsubject to standard adjustments.

Sony expects to record a gain within operating income of approximately $60 million at the completion of the sale, based on the above sale price, subject to standard adjustments.  Sony included an anticipated gain from this sale in the forecast for the fiscal year ending March 31, 2014, which was announced on October 31, 2013.

Sony expects this sale to close prior to March 31, 2014 subject to receipt of certain regulatory approvals.

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Discuss:

Is it in Sony’s best interest to offload a division like Gracenote or is this an attempt to inject more cash into Sony?