Electronics maker Sony said on today its quarterly operating profit rose 52 per cent as a big pension gain outweighed losses in its movie and TV operations, but it said it still expected a full-year loss.
Sony said it was enjoying strong sales of new LCD TVs and camcorders and that the one-off pension gain, amounting to a hefty Yen 73.5 billion in the quarter, was about 20 per cent larger than anticipated due to stronger Japanese share prices.
But the company stuck by its forecast of an operating loss of Yen 20 billion for the year to March, underscoring a lack of confidence in its core electronics division, which would have lost Yen 47 billion in the quarter without the pension gain.
"We still don't know what kind of products and at what prices our competitors are going to bring to market in the year-end shopping season. So we are taking a cautious stance," chief financial officer Nobuyuki Oneda told news conference.
Sony, the world's second-largest consumer electronics maker after Japan's Matsushita said group operating profit came to Yen 65.92 billion ($568.8 million) in the second quarter ended September, against a Yen 43.4 billion profit a year earlier.
Sales were virtually flat at Yen 1.703 trillion. The profit was above the market consensus of Yen 40.8 billion, according to a poll of five analysts by Reuters Estimates.
Sony's movie unit swung into a loss due to the absence of a hit film like "Spider-Man 2", but the game division returned to profit thanks to strong sales of the new PlayStation Portable (PSP) handheld game device and the PlayStation 2 console.
Sony's core earnings remain weak amid deteriorating demand for traditional cathode-ray tube TVs, and fierce price competition in markets for liquid crystal display (LCD) TVs and image sensor chips used in digital cameras and mobile phones.