Sony first quarter net profit down on one-off factors

TOKYO: Japanese entertainment giant Sony said Tuesday net profit for the three months to June dropped more than 30 percent from a year earlier on one-off factors, with operating profit rising.

The PlayStation manufacturer said its bottomline profit dropped 32.8 percent to 152.1 billion yen ($1.4 billion) for the April-June quarter on sales of 1.93 trillion yen, down 1.4 percent.

But its operating profit rose 18.4 percent to 230.9 billion yen.

The plunge in net profit reflects in part the firm’s exceptional first quarter results last year, fuelled in part by the sale of a share of its stake in Spotify.

Sony revised its sales forecast down for the fiscal year to March 2020 to 8.6 trillion yen from an earlier estimate of 8.8 trillion yen.

But it left its full-year net profit forecast unchanged at 500 billion yen, down 45 percent from the previous fiscal year.

Annual operating profit forecast was also unchanged.