Business Week: Sony Bounces Back  

This will be a very good year for Sony. Much to the chagrin of the rampant haters.

The thing I find the most funny is HD DVD is backed by MS one of the other most despised companies in the world. This whole battle is like choosing which politician you are going to back in an election.

quote:-
might be able to nudge a 5% profit by 2008

sony has to release their figures by late jan2007
this is going to be bad which ever way petra trys to spin it

i guess we will see.

Oh Dear God. The hating for BD and all things Sony will be.. We'll see.

Weird, today's news doesn't say it's ao rosy at Sony:
"PlayStation 3 Likely Missed Sales Target"
http://news.moneycentral.msn.com/tic...&Symbol=US:SNE

Wow, to think that Sony could be set to do well next year in spite of PS3... Mark0, are you as suspicious as I am right now?

I wonder if things like this have anything to do with it:

Typical Sony spin on things. They're the only ones who claim they hit projected sales figures.
My guess is they reduced their "projected" figures from millions to thousands on December 31st at 11:59pm.

???? What is that post in reference to?

Is it this?

Pump and dump? When does Sony announce Q numbers?

There ya go, that's gotta be it Plazman. Thank you thank you for shedding light on the situation - NPD, those hooligans!

Quarter numbers should be out before the end of Jan.

Apparently you are not very business oriented. They have to set goals in advance and could not alter them just because they want to. Publicly traded companies have strict guidelines to follow. To hit projected goals is a promising thing for any company.

Short sellers pushing the PS/3 isn't selling angle? It suddenly appears after a big pop in stock price?

Neither side of a trade should be underestimated. Both sides are sleezy as all heck. But shorties make you HD DVD fanboys look like saints. At least none of you are gleefully trying to ruin peoples' finances, and constantly question the validity of the capital system.

Gary

Hmm, they can't revise their projections? If that's the case maybe you might want to explain the rules to Phony.

I think I'm seeing a trend today...

sure they can, usualyl requires another form 6-k with the updated projection

Ha ha, anther elegant and well-reasoned retort...

Plazman knows enough about economics to realize that while you can alter your projections, you have to announce such things. Market analysts also play a role in market projections; you can't just change your numbers because you hope your stock holders won't notice. Sony is simply better off financially then some onhere would like to think (though not in anywhere as good as shape as MS, which has a crazy-insane market cap).

MS also has the cash on hand, Sony doesn't. If AT&T starts handing out 360's to all of its IPTV customers in the next few years the PS3 will be dead in the US. AT&T reaches 90 million customers btw.

The PS3 isn't selling from all accounts. Sony may have SHIPPED their target, but they sure arent selling them.

I hear MS isn't selling 360's either... everywhere I go I see tons of them laying around - sometimes hundreds! But Wii's are sold out. Basically, no one wants 360, and everyone wants Wii.

(This thread isn't about the PS3 people.)

Did Bill Gates eat your babies?

Basically, everyone wants 360, supply is just good. Your logic is retarded. PS2 blows everything away in sales, yet there are stacks of HUNDREDS of them at every retailer. I see stacks of beer at every store I go to. I guess no one wants it.

So stacks of all those, sales are good. Stacks of PS3's, it's collecting dust. Okay then.

At the risk of getting this thread back on topic...

I think that all signs point to a great fiscal '08 for Sony. When you consider they plan to be profitable this year in spite of the battery recall and an estimated ~$2 billion loss in the gaming division, what that really highlights is how well the other parts of the company are starting to perform.

Consider these key passages from the article:



As the losses from the console division will be much lower in fiscal '08, pending disasters such as battery recalls are nowhere in sight, HDTV differentiation continues in their favor via xvYCC, and '07 with the potential to be another stellar movie year for them, I wouldn't be surprised if they announce one of their strongest years in a decade come the end of April '08.

PS - Has anyone seen that OLED TV Sony was demo'ing at CES? That thing is awesome, and it's great to see Sony putting the R&D dollars where they belong.

Sony pictures had a great year and will contribute to their top and bottom lines. As for LCD, I saw a chart while in Asia that showed Sony lost market share in 2006 to both Samsung and LG and their margins on TV were falling, not rising.

However, stock movement is based to a great expect on actual performance v. expected. Stock prices tend to over adjust when there is bad news (oversold) as there was all through Q4 and Q3 last year. So I'd say some of that recovery is correction of that. Sony's wild card is their movie business that did a super job in 2006!

It's way to early to tell the impact of PS3 on their outlook. It's a subsidized product and unless they show insane attachment rates for games that meet expectations it'll put downward pressure on their stock...

...and MS is one of the most ethical companies out there...

The only reason they supported HD DVD is to prolong the war so they can sell you HD content over the web before there is a clear cut winner.

HD DVD folks knew when they bought their hardware that they had little support in the CE industry and even smaller support from content providers. The only advantage they had was price into the market.

Blu-ray is not just Sony, but a whole consortium of CE makers and content providers.

If you are going to be an early adopter then you have to be willing to accept the horse you back may lose. That's one reason why I went with a PS3 because it still is gaming console/media center if Blu-ray fails. I almost went HD DVD on several occasions but I could never make the leap because of the limited commitment of content providers.

Hi Chris,

I don't think it's PC to call people stupid. Perhaps you should have said that it's just really gross when you have to hear people reguritating Sony's BS.

You're focusing on the share price Plazman, and I'm not sure that's where the emphasis should be.

Fiscal '08 should be a multi-billion profit year for them, whatever the case with SCE, etc etc... and when group profits rise sharply, the share price will follow. Whether in anticipation or after the fact is immaterial to the heart of the matter, which is fiscal health.

Don't forget Sony is not living and dying on PS3 alone. They still are generating a sizable revenue stream from PS2. Only until Wii and Xbox360 surpass the installed base of PS2 consoles is Sony going to have to worry in long term about its PS2 revenue stream.

Well, that expected loss includes the profits made from PS2 and PSP... so really I'm just trying to illustrate that even in the worst case scenario for the gaming division, the Sony group is still profitable. That would not always have been the case some years ago. It's simply a bonus that whether or not this generation even ends up being profitable on the whole for PS3, the losses will almost certainly be mitigated, and a lot of the R&D that went into this generation will actually roll forward to make the next generation much less painful to ramp up.