FILE - People walk past the headquarters of Sony Corp. in Tokyo, on May 10, 2022. Sony’s April-June profit slipped 17% from a year earlier, as worries grew about revenue damage from a strike in the movies sector, the Japanese electronics and entertainment company said Wednesday, Aug. 9, 2023. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko, File)
FILE - People walk past the headquarters of Sony Corp. in Tokyo, on May 10, 2022. Sony’s April-June profit slipped 17% from a year earlier, as worries grew about revenue damage from a strike in the movies sector, the Japanese electronics and entertainment company said Wednesday, Aug. 9, 2023. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko, File)
TOKYO (AP) — Sony’s April-June profit slipped 17% from a year earlier, as worries grew about revenue damage from a strike in the movie sector, the Japanese electronics and entertainment company said Wednesday.
Tokyo-based Sony Corp.’s fiscal first quarter profit totaled 217 billion yen ($1.5 billion), down from 261 billion yen a year ago.
Quarterly sales rose 33% to 2.96 trillion yen ($21 billion), as sales for the period grew in games and network services, the music business, financial services and imaging solutions.
Sony said its results got a boost from a favorable exchange rate. The yen has been declining lately, trading at about 143 yen to the dollar, and a weak yen is a plus for Japanese exporters like Sony.
Sony’s revenue in the movies segment was expected to suffer because of the , or WGA, and Screen Actors Guild - American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, or SAG-AFTRA.
Release dates of movies, as well as deliveries of TV series, were being delayed, according to Sony.
Sony said it shipped 3.3 million of its PlayStation 5 video game consoles during the quarter through June. Sony estimates 108 million people are active users on its Sony online gaming network, up by 5 million users from a year ago.
Among Sony’s recent top-earning music releases were the “SOS†album by SZA, Miley Cyrus’ “Endless Summer Vacation†and “Harry’s House†from Harry Styles.
Sony raised its full year profit forecast to 860 billion yen ($6 billion) from an earlier projection for an 840 billion yen ($5.8) profit. That’s lower than the profit it recorded the previous year at 1 trillion yen.