Sony FY 2008 Q2 Results – Analysis – SONY BLEEDING – LOOKING BAD

[NJ5]

celine said:

bumidan said:
I'm being optimistic and say that even with the current exchange rates, they would break even or make some profit - because it is a holiday quarter.

Maybe they reduce costs on the PS3 even further...

A more telling story to me is if they can post an annual profit ( operating income ) in the current fiscal year because the long term expectation ( I remember Sony's CFO quote from 2006 ) was to start to be in the black with the fiscal year ending march 2009 ( I'm talking about SCE ).

We can start to see if the plan has change its course or not.

I believe they already downplayed those expectations in the latest financial report due to the currency exchange problem. That, by the way, was before the dollar/euro really weakened and the recession fully hit.

I just found the quote I mentioned (see the bolded parts if you don't want to read all of it).

Ishino from Mitsubishi UFJ. Two questions. One, in the – you revise downward, but the yen keeps appreciating the euro. If you assume 120 yen per euro, what sort of downside risk or downward revision risk including segment information? That’s what I’d like to know. Second point, TV and Game business, especially TV, what sort of impact will it have on profit and loss of TV business because of the change in exchange rate, Game as well?

Nobuyuki Oneda

The 120 yen, well, at today’s exchange rate, 125 yen and 97/98 yen, then operating income will be about 90 – further 90 billion yen. This will be an impact on operating income. That said, we hedge our positions. So it will be offset by 30 billion yen. But this offset will be in the non-operating, but before tax income our impact will be about 60 billion because 30 billion goes to non-operating income. Now, TV, 140 yen and 100 yen are the assumptions. But several tens of billions yen of impact if 120 yen instead of 140 yen or 90-something instead of 100 yen. And impact by segment, we would like to refrain from disclosing this. As far as Game is concerned, while euro has a major impact on Game business, I would say 30 billion yen impact because of the exchange rate change, because we are assuming 140 yen per euro – so given present level. I think – and that is incorporated in this estimate. If that is the case, 90 billion yen impact on operating income, excluding hedging, then 70 billion, 80 billion red ink for TV and 50 billion for gain, well, yes, if we take just the impact of exchange rate movement, that might be possible.

By the way, there's a very interesting piece of info there, when we mentions the benefit of hedging as being one third of revenue. That means my estimates aren't too far from reality.