Sony sinks into quarterly loss, racks up hefty annual profit

Japanese entertainment and electronics company Sony Corp. posted a loss in the January-March, quarter, dragged lower by its flagging mobile operations and unfavorable currency rates.

Sony reported Friday a fiscal fourth quarter loss of 16.8 billion yen ($154 million), a reversal from the 27.7 billion yen profit posted a year earlier.

Quarterly sales rose 3 percent to 1.66 trillion yen ($15 billion).

Sony expects its profit for the fiscal year through March 2019 to stay flat at 480 billion yen ($4.4 billion). It logged a 490.8 billion yen ($4.5 billion) profit for the fiscal year through March 2018.

That marked a six-fold surge from 73.3 billion yen the year before, when the company absorbed big costs from its movie business and from an earthquake in southwestern Japan.

Sony said that sales and profit remained solid for its PlayStation 4 video game operations, especially in its software sales through the network and subscriber increases.

Its music division did well from digital streaming revenue, according to Sony, with best-selling hits such as P!nk's "Beautiful Trauma" and DJ Khaled's "Grateful."

Its movie business also did well. Strong theatrical releases included "Spider-Man: Homecoming" and "Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle," it said.

Sales in its imaging products, home entertainment systems and semiconductors also did well. But its mobile communications business suffered, hit by unfavorable foreign exchange fluctuations and rising component costs, said Sony.

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