On May 14, 2025, the logo of Japanese entertainment and electronics giant Sony will be unveiled at its headquarters in Tokyo.
Kazuhiro Nogi | AFP | Getty Images
sony on Thursday reported a better-than-expected increase in operating profit, helped by favorable exchange rates despite higher costs for memory chips.
Below are Sony’s December quarter results compared to LSEG SmartEstimates, which emphasize more consistently accurate analyst forecasts.
Sales: 3.71 trillion yen ($23.68 billion) vs. 3.69 trillion yen Operating profit: 515 billion yen vs. 468.9 billion yen
Operating profit increased 22% year-on-year, recovering from the year-over-year decline in the previous quarter. Revenue rose just 1% in the same period.
The Japanese technology and entertainment giant has raised its full-year outlook, predicting operating profit of 1.54 trillion yen, an increase of 110 billion yen, or 8%, from its previous forecast.
Sony also increased its annual sales forecast by 300 billion yen to 12.3 trillion yen (3%), while leaving its estimated loss from US tariffs unchanged at 50 billion yen.
Meanwhile, the board of directors approved increasing the size of the company’s share buyback program from 100 billion yen to 150 billion yen until May 2026.
Sales of the game and network services division, which includes the popular PlayStation brand of home game consoles and is Sony’s largest source of revenue, decreased by 68.7 billion yen from the same period last year to 1.613 trillion yen.
The division has benefited in recent quarters from the shift to digital game purchases and growth in the PlayStation Plus subscription service, but hardware shipment growth remains slow.
Sony’s hardware business is expected to face headwinds this year from rising component costs.
PlayStation consoles rely on a type of dynamic random access memory (DRAM) chip, which is in short supply as demand from artificial intelligence and data center operators increases.
As a result, contract prices for conventional DRAM chips are expected to rise 90% to 95% this quarter compared to the previous three months, according to a Monday report from market research firm TrendForce.
On Thursday’s earnings call, Sony executives said the company aims to cushion the impact of rising memory costs by focusing on monetizing its current installed base and further growing software and network services revenue.
Some of the pressure on the games business was offset by strong performance in the music and video segments.
Revenue for Sony’s music business rose 12.6% year-on-year in the December quarter, supported by growth in live events, merchandise sales and streaming services.
Meanwhile, revenue in the Imaging and Sensing Solutions business increased by more than 20%. This division specializes in the development and manufacturing of semiconductor-based imaging and sensing technologies, including components used in smartphones.
Sony said that while the ongoing memory shortage is expected to impact the smartphone industry, the company’s image sensors are primarily aimed at high-end markets, so it expects the impact to be small.
Sony stock reversed its gains after the earnings release and ended the trading day flat on Thursday.
