Japan’s Sony reports profit surge on strong film, game and music sales

TOKYO – Sony’s profit rose 34% last quarter due to strong sales of its video games, music and movies, the Japanese electronics and entertainment company said Tuesday.

Tokyo-based Sony Corp.’s quarterly profit totaled 189 billion yen ($1.2 billion), up from 141 billion yen a year earlier. Gaming machine maker PlayStation’s quarterly sales rose 14% to 3.48 trillion yen ($22 billion).

In the fiscal year through March, Sony reported a 3% decline in profit to 970 billion yen ($6.2 billion), compared with more than 1 trillion yen in the previous fiscal year. Its annual sales rose 19% to 13 trillion yen ($83 billion).

Sony’s operating profit was hurt by its financial services segment, which will be partially spun off next year. Sony Chief Financial Officer and President Hiroki Totoki said the company is revamping its strategy to focus on more profitable entertainment operations.

“We hope to improve our profitability and build our resilience to an ever-changing business environment,” he said in an online presentation.

Totoki declined to comment on media reports that Sony was interested in buying Paramount Global, but confirmed that the company’s strategy “in general” was to build “synergies” that leverage the intellectual property Sony owns in games, music and films.

In that report, first published in the Wall Street Journal, but also in the Associated Press, Sony Pictures and private equity firm Apollo Global Management expressed interest in buying Paramount Global for $26 billion.

Sony would be the majority shareholder and Apollo would have a minority stake, according to a person familiar with the deal, who requested anonymity because details of the offer have not been disclosed.

Sony’s film, music, video games and imaging solutions units performed well in the last fiscal year. Growth in paid subscriptions to Crunchyroll, a US video streaming service, contributed to Sony’s bottom line.

In music, the most successful releases last quarter included SZA’s “SOS” and Travis Scott’s “Utopia,” while Beyoncé’s “Cowboy Carter” recently reached No. 1 on Billboard and other nations.

In films, the biggest hits of the last fiscal year were “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse”, which grossed US$691 million in theatrical revenues worldwide, and “Napoleon”, with US$221 million.

Strikes in Hollywood last year hurt movie profits. But upcoming films like “Bad Boys: Ride or Die,” the latest in the popular series starring Will Smith and Martin Lawrence as police detectives, scheduled for release in June, should help with the turnaround.

In February, Sony announced it would cut about 900 jobs at its PlayStation gaming division, or about 8% of its global workforce, citing changes in the industry that required restructuring.

But Sony struck a positive tone and emphasized that online gaming was strong, as were console sales. PlayStation 5 sales totaled 20.8 million machines in the fiscal year through March. This year, Sony expects to sell 18 million PS5 consoles. Among recent hit game software for the PS5 was “Helldivers 2,” a shooter, according to Sony.

Like other Japanese companies, Sony has benefited from the weakening yen, which increases the value of Japanese exporters’ overseas earnings when converted into yen. The US dollar has been trading at around 156 yen recently.

Sony projected its profit this fiscal year will fall to 925 billion yen ($5.9 billion) as sales fall to 12.3 trillion yen ($79 billion).

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Yuri Kageyama is on X: