Sony has reported that sales and operating revenue rose 9% in the last quarter, operating income was up 20% while electronic product sales spanning TV’s and audio products fell 1.4% sales of the Companies PlayStation saw sales surge 25.1%.
Also impacted by COVID-19 was the Companies sensor business which down 31% due to Samsung stripping share away from the Japanese Company who have dominated the smartphone camera sensor business in the past.
Also impacted was the Companies movie business with picture sales sliding 44%. Music sales surged 47.5%.
Reporting this evening in Tokyo Sony said its annual operating income rose by 34% after reporting stronger-than-expected holiday-quarter earnings.
Sony said its fiscal third quarter profit jumped 62%, positioning the Japanese entertainment and electronics giant for a record annual profit as its bottom line got a healthy boost from its mega-hit animation film “Demon Slayer.”
The Company reported a US$3.5 billion profit for the October-December period, up from 229.5 billion yen a year earlier.
Sony’s video-games sector thrived as people stuck at home for the coronavirus pandemic turned to such entertainment content.
Sony’s quarterly sales edged up 9% to $25.7 billion.
The business expects to make $8.9 billion in the fiscal year ending March 2021.
Sony launched its latest PlayStation 5 console in the period and sold 4.5 million units despite production challenges limiting its availability.
It also added 1.5 million PlayStation Plus subscribers, taking it to 47.4 million. The subscriber growth and software sales helped Sony beat all analyst estimates with 359.2 billion yen in operating profit for the quarter ended December.
Sony said that they are on track to meet its goal of surpassing the preceding PlayStation 4’s 7.6 million sales by the end of March, said Morningstar Research analyst Kazunori Ito. “In addition to boosting hardware supply, Sony should make a bunch of PlayStation 5 games ready in the next fiscal year to push PS4 owners to move over to the new system.”
Bloomberg Intelligence said, “Digital downloads accounted for about half of full-game sales in 2019 and 55-60% in 2020 and may continue to gain until it approaches the 90%+ of PC games, though the pace of gains may slow from the five points per year shift experienced pre-COVID-19.”