Sony sees 100 billion yen tariff hit in underwhelming outlook
[NEW YORK] Sony Group offered an underwhelming forecast for the year ahead, with the burden of US tariffs wiping out expectations for an increase in operating profit.
The entertainment-focused group said on Wednesday (May 14) that it sees a 100 billion yen (S$885 million) impact from US levies in the year to March and expects an operating profit of 1.28 trillion yen. Even without the tariffs, Sony's projection falls shy of the average analyst estimate of 1.5 trillion yen and is essentially flat compared to the year concluded in March 2025.
The new outlook came alongside the announcement of a 250 billion yen share buyback and the timeline for a partial spinoff of Sony's financial unit. Sony said it plans to list the financial operation on Sep 29 and will start to treat it as a discontinued business in its accounting from the current quarter.
Over the first three months of this year, Sony reported a better-than-expected operating income of 203.7 billion yen. The company sold 18.5 million PlayStation 5 consoles in the year to March, following 20.8 million in the year earlier.
Sony's new chief executive officer Hiroki Totoki's first task is to navigate the entertainment group through a new era of a tariffs-wielding US. The US comprises the bulk of PlayStation 5 sales, which is mostly produced in China. Sony raised the console's price in Europe, Australia and New Zealand last month, leaving questions about possible price hikes in the US should tariffs become a constant.
Higher prices would slow the momentum of the five-year-old hardware, especially as it vies with rival Nintendo's Switch 2, which launches in June. The postponement of Rockstar Games' much-awaited Grand Theft Auto VI is also weighing on PlayStation sales in the current fiscal year.
'The delay in GTA VI is a real blow to the PS5,' said David Cole, chief executive officer of US-based digital entertainment research firm DFC Intelligence. 'This was supposed to be the product that got many consumers to get off the PS4 and on to a PS5.'
Sony's other operations are also under siege. The outlook for image sensors, used in smartphones by everyone from Apple to Xiaomi, is murky, with tariffs hitting handsets in the US. And US President Donald Trump has suggested tariffs may also be placed on movies made outside the US, just as Sony is promoting Japanese animated films such as the Demon Slayer series overseas. BLOOMBERG
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