Price hikes: A man walks past Sony’s headquarters in Tokyo. The Japanese entertainment and electronics giant says it sees a US$700mil impact from US tariffs in the year to March, wiping out expectations for an increase in operating profit. — AFP
TOKYO: Sony Group Corp offers an underwhelming forecast for the year ahead, with the burden of US tariffs wiping out expectations for an increase in operating profit.
The entertainment-focused group said yesterday that it sees a 100 billion yen (US$700mil) impact from US levies in the year to March and expects an operating profit of 1.28 trillion yen.
Even without the tariffs, Sony’s projection falls shy of the average analyst estimate of 1.5 trillion yen and is essentially flat compared to the year concluded in March 2025.
The new outlook came alongside the announcement of a 250 billion yen share buyback and the timeline for a partial spinoff of Sony’s financial unit.
Sony said it plans to list the financial operation on Sept 29 and will start to treat it as a discontinued business in its accounting from the current quarter.
Over the first three months of this year, Sony reported better-than-expected operating income of 203.7 billion yen.
The entertainment and electronics giant sold 18.5 million PlayStation 5 consoles in the year to March, following 20.8 million in the year earlier.
Sony’s new chief executive officer Hiroki Totoki’s first task is to navigate the entertainment group though a new era of a tariffs-wielding United States.
The United States comprises the bulk of PlayStation 5 sales, which is mostly produced in China.
Sony raised the console’s price in Europe, Australia and New Zealand last month, leaving questions about possible price hikes in the United States should tariffs become a constant.
Higher prices would slow momentum of the five-year-old hardware, especially as it vies with rival Nintendo Co’s Switch 2, which launches in June.
The postponement of Rockstar Games Inc’s much-awaited Grand Theft Auto (GTA) VI is also weighing on PlayStation sales in the current financial year.
“The delay in GTA VI is a real blow to the PS5,” said David Cole, chief executive officer of US-based digital entertainment research firm DFC Intelligence.
“This was supposed to be the product that got many consumers to get off the PS4 and on to a PS5.”
Sony’s other operations are also under siege. The outlook for image sensors, used in smartphones by everyone from Apple Inc to Xiaomi Corp, is murky, with tariffs hitting handsets in the United States.
And President Donald Trump has suggested tariffs may also be placed on movies made outside the United States, just as Sony is promoting Japanese animated films such as the Demon Slayer series overseas. — Bloomberg
