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Sony (NYSE:SONY) cut the full year sales outlook for its core gaming division and separately said that it expects to list its financial unit in October 2025.
The Japanese company reduced the forecast for sales in the Game & Network Services Segment by about 5% to 4.360T yen.
The company said the downward revision of 210B yen is due to the decrease in sales of hardware resulting from lower unit sales, impact of foreign exchange rates, increase in sales of non-first-party titles including add-on content.
Sony reduced its PS5 sales outlook for the fiscal full year 2023 ending March 31, to 21 million units, versus 25 million units previously, Bloomberg News reported.
Sales of the flagship PlayStation 5 came in about a million units lower than expected in the third quarter, at 8.2 million consoles. In the third quarter of 2022 the company sold 7.1 million units.
“Looking ahead, PS5 will enter the latter stage of its life cycle,” said Naomi Matsuoka, senior vice president, according to the report. “As such, we will put more emphasis on the balance between profitability and sales. For this reason, we expect the annual sales pace of PS5 hardware will start falling from the next fiscal year.”
Sony now expects full year revenue to be 12.3T yen, compared to 12.4T yen previously.
Third Quarter Metrics:
Sales grew about 22% year-over-year to 3.748T yen.
Revenue from Game & Network Services unit rose about 16% to 1.444T yen.
Number of Monthly Active Users on PlayStation Network increased to 123M in the third quarter versus 112M in the prior year period.
Music segment sales also grew around 16% to 422.1B yen.
Pictures unit sales climbed about 10% to 331.5B yen, while revenue from Imaging & Sensing Solutions unit soared 21% to 505.2B yen.
Sales from Entertainment, Technology & Services unit fell about 2% to 735.7B yen.
Revenue from Financial Services business surged to 311.7B yen, compared to 24.4B yen in the prior year period.
Spin-off of Sony Financial Group:
Sony said that on Wednesday it received approval from the Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry of Japan regarding its corporate restructuring plan for the spin-off.
Sony intends to hold slightly less than 20% of the spinned off company.
Sony plans to distribute slightly more than 80% of its shares of the unit to Sony’s shareholders through dividends in kind as a result of the Spin-off, and to hold less than 20% of shares.
A resolution of Sony’s board for the execution of the spin-off is scheduled for May 2025.
Sony expects execution of the spin-off (effective date of the dividends in kind), listing of shares of the Financial unit to happen in October 2025.
SONY +3.29% to $99.01 premarket Feb. 14