Q3 Revenue in Sony’s CE Sector Jumped 22% Despite Flat Unit-Sales TV Growth

Sales in Sony’s core Home Entertainment & Sound sector jumped 22 percent in Q3 ended Dec. 31 to $3.9 billion ($1 = 109 yen), Sony reported Friday, the day it announced the promotion of Chief Financial Officer Kenichiro Yoshida to replace Kazuo Hirai as president-CEO, effective April 1 (see this issue's personals section of this publication). Operating profit in the sector climbed 78 percent to $423.9 million, prompting Sony to raise its fiscal-year operating income forecast for the sector by 4 percent from its October projection. If the new forecast holds, Sony will have recorded a 37 percent rise in its Home Entertainment & Sound operating profit from last fiscal year, the company said. Sony credited “improvement in the product mix of televisions reflecting a shift to high value-added models, primarily 4K televisions,” for the significantly higher revenue and profit performance in the sector, all when Sony’s TV unit sales are showing no remarkable increases. Sony shipped 4.2 million TVs in the holiday quarter, a slight uptick from the 4.1 million sets it shipped in the same quarter a year earlier, the company said. It left unchanged the October forecast in which it said it expects to ship 12.5 million TVs this fiscal year, which would be only a 3 percent increase from the 12.1 million sets it shipped a year earlier.