Japan's Sony more than doubles net loss

Japanese entertainment giant Sony more than doubled its full-year net loss forecast to $2.9 billion, a day after announcing that its president and CEO Howard Stringer would step aside. The firm on Thursday said it was expecting a net loss of 220 billion yen ($2.9 billion) for the year to March, up from 90 billion yen previously, in what will be its fourth consecutive year of losses. Last year the Tokyo-based maker of PlayStation consoles and Bravia televisions lost 259.6 billion yen. Sony also announced a net loss of 201.45 billion yen for the nine months to December, having made a profit of 129.22 billion yen in the corresponding period in 2010. Sony blamed difficult trading conditions and the high yen, among other factors, for a third-quarter net loss of 159.00 billion yen, which reversed a net profit of 72.3 billion yen in the previous year. "Consolidated sales decreased significantly year-on-year primarily due to the impact of the floods in Thailand, deterioration in market conditions in developed countries, and unfavourable foreign exchange rates," it said. Sales in its key consumer products and services division slumped 24.4 percent year-on-year in the third quarter, it said. "This was primarily due to a decrease in LCD television sales reflecting price declines, mainly resulting from deterioration in market conditions in Japan, Europe and North America, the impact from the floods, and unfavourable exchange rates," it said. It pointed out that Japanese LCD television sales in the same quarter in 2010 benefited from a government subsidy that ended in March 2011. Sony also booked a 108.8 billion yen accounting loss from its subsidiaries, which it said was primarily due to losses on its shares in S-LCD, its joint liquid crystal display venture with Korean firm Samsung, and tax asset writedowns at Sony Ericsson. Sony reached an agreement with Samsung in December to extricate itself from the LCD joint venture. On Wednesday the firm announced that Stringer, its Welsh-born American president and CEO and the first foreigner to lead it, would be replaced by a games and music veteran Kazuo Hirai in April. During Stringer's tenure Sony has been assailed on multiple fronts, with mobile phones challenging its key games division -- the scene of an embarrassing hacking scandal -- huge losses in televisions, and piracy threatening its music and film assets. For the nine-month period, at the operating level Sony made a loss of 65.86 billion yen against a previous profit of 273.2 billion yen, and saw sales decline 12.6 percent to 4.89 trillion yen. It forecast a full-year operating loss of 95 billion yen, having earlier projected a profit of 20 billion yen, on forecasted sales of 6.4 trillion yen, down from 6.5 trillion yen.