Wonder if Sting would have done things differently.

My pessimism? Huh, that's a funny way of saying flawless accuracy.

Sure they were looking for a profit. They were wrong, there was too much of a crunch and too many negative factors like restructuring and R&D along with the stock price. I even said the only thing that could pull them out was the yen hitting 90, and the yen, as confirmed, was used at a rate of like 82 instead of 80. There were too many purchases and the downgrade had a significant negative impact on rates and stock price.

My point is that they won't need to sell anymore buildings. They are in a strong position, definitely going to profit every quarter this year depending on acquisitions. I haven't come up with a figure yet, but it will be significantly better than this FY profit of 200m. They were downgraded and now lo and behold two quarters later they are going to profit, despite the fact that a downgrade is based on the prediction that they cannot return to profit. What an amazing prediction by Moody's. (And I'm not talking about this quarter, I'm talking about upcoming Q1)

Why is it, that despite us both disagreeing with analysts about a company we follow, we are apples and oranges. If anything, you're being a prickly pear about all this.

Roxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxanne.

running a business is not only to increase short-term earnings. It is not about showing profit no matter what, there are a lot more important things and tasks. One quarterly profit / loss does not mean anything. Sony now cleans up the mess and go straight. Yes, it cost a lot of cash, it hurts, but pain is temporary, but it will return a lot in future. There is no great comeback in this situaction, only litte steps to go ahead and fix whole company.

I'm not trying to jump in on the argument betwen you and kowen (in fact i agree that restructuring is costly and the effects of it are only seen later on) but buying anything (gaikai, emi, sony- ericson, whatever) has no effect on earnings whatsoever. It's a simple excange of assets and doesn't touch the earning report, so it doesn't affect loss or profit.

I see a lot of people on here makeing that mistake so i thought i'd try to clear that up.

Oh God,
When you buy something, you have to pay for it. Money does not come from nowhere. This is not a simple exchange of assets but investing.

 Sony bought Gaikai for $ 300 million, but that does not mean that Gaikai is worth exactly $ 300 million. This does not mean that Sony is swapped with Gaikai 300 million dollars. This means that Sony has paid the owner Gaikai  - but instead gained ownership of Gaikai. Ownership of Gaikai is worth, for Sony, 300 million dollars. This is the basis of investment - in order to win, you have to put money first.

I wasn't saying that it negatively impacted earnings, I'm saying they had to sell buildings to pay for the purchases. That is where the exchange occurs. It wasn't that they sold buildings to be profitable, it was them selling buildings topay for other thing since they ccouldn't get a loan after being downgraded. (A preferable loan, that is)

Never heard of accounting have you?

Yes they do have to pay for it. What do they pay with? Money. Money in the balancesheet is under assets. If the transaction takes place they swap money for the ownership of gaikai or whatever and where does that show up? under assets as well. 

No touching the earningreport and so haveing no influence on profit or loss since that is calculated in the earning report.

KingofTrolls indeed.

Okay, so I'm too lazy and too short on time to go looking up the details, but isn't the revenue from Sony selling buildings $2 billion, which would make the actual profit from them significantly less. Which would also mean the $1.5 billion dollar loss is way off as well?