Sony Shares Soar Following a Profit Hike Forecast

The Japanese entertainment and electronics conglomerate, Sony Group Corp, rose 8.26% on Wednesday, boosting its net-profit forecast after a newly found strength in its music and movie industries.

After the market closed on Tuesday, Sony announced that their net profit soared 24% compared to 263.96 billion ($1.78 billion) from the previous year.

As Sony’s sales in music-streaming services and cellphone image sensors swelled, its second-quarter profits grew 16% to 2.752 trillion yen. Because of this, the Japanese corporation raised its outlook for its movies and image sensor market.

In the same quarter, Sony released more than 6.5 million PlayStation 5 (PS5) units. This value indicates that Sony’s games inventory soared to 412.5 billion yen compared to a mere 146.2 billion yen three months earlier.

According to Sony’s Chief Financial Officer Hiroki Totoki, the company intends to sell more than “18 million PS5 units by the end of March 2023.”

This announcement from Sony sparks some speculation that the supply chain issue, which hindered most of the games business, is finally easing.

PS5 Production Increases as PlayStation Plus Subscribers Drop

According to Sony’s latest earnings report, the PlayStation Plus subscribers have dropped by nearly 2 million after its revamp launch in June. Their subscription fell from 47.3 million in June to 45.4 million by the end of September.

In response to the subscription issue, Sony began to increase its PS5 production, stating that most leftover subscribers are using PS5.

By expanding the PS5 sales, Sony hopes to recover some of its lost subscribers from the last quarter.

Sony’s earnings also showed that it had sold 25 million PS5 consoles since its launch in November 2020, with 5.7 million coming from the first half of this fiscal year.

However, this data indicates that Sony has to sell another 12.3 million units before the end of March 2023 if they are to meet their 18 million sales goal.