Sony Corporation is back in the black for its fiscal fourth quarter, recording a 93.9 billion yen ($948m) profit, with big help from a weaker yen that boosts its overseas earnings.
The Japanese electronics and entertainment company also dragged itself back to profit for the fiscal year ended March 31, following four years of losses in a row.
It reported annual earnings of 43 billion yen ($434m), a reversal from a loss of 457 billion yen ($5.7 billion) the previous year - the worst in the company's nearly seven-decade history.
Tokyo-based Sony expects the recovery to continue, and projected a 50 billion yen ($505m) profit for the fiscal year to March 2014, up 16%.
A weak yen helps Japanese exporters, and the dollar has gained 20% against the yen in recent months. The favourable exchange rate is expected to continue in the coming months because of the policies of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who took office last year.
Sony had sunk to a 255.2 billion yen loss for the January-March period in 2012, slammed by its money-losing TV business and competition from rivals Apple and Samsung Electronics.
Sales for the three months from January to March rose 8% to 1.7 trillion yen ($17 billion), mainly due to the favourable currency rate.
In an effort to achieve a turnaround, Sony has been shedding jobs and selling assets and parts of businesses in recent years. The brand has lost much of its glamour as the maker of the Walkman portable music player, a pioneering product, as well as the PlayStation video-game console, once a must-have for Christmas presents.
Chief Financial Officer Masaru Kato said that despite the return to profitability, the company's electronics sector, including camcorders and digital cameras, was struggling compared to its entertainment projects.
"We must answer to the challenge of making our electronics business profitable, no matter what," he said.
The recent weaker yen, which will make Sony products cheaper abroad, was almost certain to work as a big plus, and Kato welcomed it.
The company reiterated that it will turn its TV business profitable by the fiscal year ending March 2014. That business has bled money for nine years in a row.
Sony said it is beefing up its TV lineup, including models with 4K liquid crystal displays, which deliver even better image quality than current LCD TVs. The company also said that games sales will be boosted significantly with the planned introduction of the PlayStation 4 this fiscal year.
Sony is also doing better in its mobile-phone business with its Xperia Z, which went on sale earlier this year. It had fallen far behind rivals like Samsung and Apple in smartphones.
In an effort to cut costs, Sony sold its US headquarters building on New York's Madison Avenue in January, as well as other buildings in Tokyo. It also sold stocks in Japanese game maker DeNA and ended its liquid-crystal display venture with rival Samsung, while inking a new capital alliance with Japanese electronics and camera maker Olympus to strengthen its medical equipment business.
For the fiscal year just ended, Sony has continued to lag in its device, digital camera and game sectors. But it scored better sales and income in Sony Pictures Entertainment, with the success of "Skyfall" and "The Amazing Spider-Man."
Sales and income were flat in its music business. Best-selling titles included One Direction's "Take Me Home" and Justin Timberlake's "The 20/20 Experience."
