Japan's Sony corporation said today that its annual net profit almost tripled to hit a record high as brisk sales of digital cameras and laptop computers offset continued losses from the PlayStation 3.
The electronics icon, which is recovering from a difficult past few years, said operating profits leapt more than five-fold and are expected to rise further this year, although its bottom line is set to worsen.
The games division narrowed its losses but remained stuck in the red as the PlayStation 3 video game console faced tough competition from Nintendo's Wii.
Net profits came to 369.44 billion yen ($3.53 billion) in the year to March, up from 126.33 billion yen the previous year, when it was hit by the cost of recalling millions of faulty computer batteries.
Sony's operating profit surged by over 421% to 374.48 billion yen, helped by property sales and the purchase of semiconductor operations by rival Toshiba. Revenue increased by 6.9% to an all-time high of 8.87 trillion yen.
Under its first foreign boss Howard Stringer, Sony is seeking to shed non-core assets and revive its mainstay electronics business.
For the current year to March, Sony forecast a 21.5% drop in net profit to 290 billion yen, partly due to a stronger yen and reduced gains from assets sales. But it expects operating profit to increase by 20.2% to 450 billion yen as revenue goes up 1.4% to 9 trillion yen.
Sony said its operating profit in the core electronics division was expected to decline this year due to a stronger yen, which is bad for export earnings.
But it added that the game division should return to profit thanks to a reduction in the cost of PS3 hardware and an increase in the number of software titles. Sony said it had sold 9.24 million PS3s in the year to March.
