Sony Group on Friday said PlayStation 5 sales will jump by six million units this fiscal year, but forecast its profit will slip from a record high as weaker financial services sales offsets gains from gaming, music and movies.
The Japanese company said it expects operating profit in the year to 31 March to fall 3.2% to ¥1.17-trillion (R158-billion), lower than an analysts’ average estimate of a ¥1.28-trillion profit, according to Refinitiv data.
The improved performance of its gaming unit, however, will come as a relief to the entertainment and electronics conglomerate after it struggled to make enough PlayStation 5 game consoles to meet demand during the Covid-19 pandemic because of semiconductor supply-chain disruptions.
“We can now deliver PlayStation 5 to almost anywhere in the world without keeping our customers waiting,” Sony president Hiroki Totoki said at a press briefing after the company announced its results.
Sony, which competes with Xbox maker Microsoft and Switch provider Nintendo, said it expects to sell a record 25 million PlayStation 5 consoles this business year, up from 19.1 million in the previous 12 months and more than double the number it sold the year before that.
For this business year, the company forecast profit at its gaming and network unit to rise by 8% to ¥270-billion. It said it expects earnings at its music and pictures divisions to be slightly higher, with profits from financial services falling by a fifth.
Sony also predicted that image sensor operating profit will dip by 5.8% to ¥200-billion. — Kiyoshi Takenaka, (c) 2023 Reuters