SONY REPORTED a record 457 billion yen full-year net loss – its fifth deficit in as many years – but said it expected restructuring efforts to return it to profit this year.

The Japanese electronics and entertainment group, which is preparing to cut 10,000 jobs, or 6 per cent of its global workforce, and scale back its television-manufacturing business, yesterday forecast a narrow net profit of Y30 billion for the current year.

It said it expected profits from its core operations, before taxes and restructuring charges, to rebound to Y180 billion, against a Y67 billion loss last year.

Kazuo Hirai, Sony’s new chief executive, has promised to make “unavoidable, painful choices” to fix or dispose of poorly performing divisions.

Previous revival efforts had been hampered by external shocks – from the financial crisis in 2008 to the steady rise in the value of the yen – and internal disputes over strategy.

Sony has been trying to turn itself round for the better part of a decade, and has declared several times that a return to sustainable profit was imminent. It began its last fiscal year with a forecast net profit of Y60 billion, before downgrading its guidance three times.

Executives blamed the supply-disrupting effects of Japan’s earthquake and floods in Thailand, and the cost of restructuring the company’s lossmaking television business – problems that have driven other Japanese electronics companies, such as Panasonic and Sharp, into the red as well.

Sony’s net loss was amplified by a tax-related accounting charge in the US, where it was forced to give up billions of dollars of tax credits that it had previously counted as earnings. Still, it was smaller than Sonys latest guidance had suggested: a month ago it warned the loss would likely be Y520 billion.

The value of the tax credits, which are known as deferred tax assets, had depended on Sonys ability to earn taxable profits in the future, but its accountants judged that its extended run of losses had undermined the case that it could do so.

Sony’s share price touched a 25-year low of Y1,203 on Thursday before closing at Y1,213, down 1.2 per cent, ahead of the earnings announcement. – Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2012