Sony: Gaming Revenues too Difficult to Compare
Breakdown of the new division to complex to talk about.
Sony's recent call for overseas investors saw the company's management pressed hard on its recent first quarter figures. One line of inquisition came from Ben Williams - an Investment Manager at investment advisory firm GAM's Pacific/Japan's team.
Williams asked for a breakdown of the new Network Products and Services Division headed by Kaz Hirai, which now holds the fortunes of the old Game Division.
"Last year you reported 4.6 billion of profit and looking at the old standard Games (division) generated 5.4billion (yen). So, by definition PCs and Walkmans must have lost about a billion yen. We've got about a 40billion or 45billion deterioration for this year. Could give you a breakdown of the deterioration and how it splits between Vaio, PCs and the Game business?"
There follows much confusion in which the Sony team pulls "some stats".
Williams then asks straight-out, "I'm trying to work out how much came from PCs and how much came from the game division."
Finally, after much paper shuffling, Williams is given an answer, "Unfortunately the simple back of the envelope math looking at last year's figures just won't work because there's different allocation of internal pricing on exchange rates. Whereas last year all of it was in a segment, this year we've got multiple segments which have been re-ordered.
"So, it would probably be easier for us to have this conversation with you offline than to try and do it over the conference call."
Apparently the analyst and the management have a meeting 'in the next few weeks'. We look forward to the figures being clarified.
Listen to the call yourself, right here.
Williams asked for a breakdown of the new Network Products and Services Division headed by Kaz Hirai, which now holds the fortunes of the old Game Division.
"Last year you reported 4.6 billion of profit and looking at the old standard Games (division) generated 5.4billion (yen). So, by definition PCs and Walkmans must have lost about a billion yen. We've got about a 40billion or 45billion deterioration for this year. Could give you a breakdown of the deterioration and how it splits between Vaio, PCs and the Game business?"
There follows much confusion in which the Sony team pulls "some stats".
Williams then asks straight-out, "I'm trying to work out how much came from PCs and how much came from the game division."
Finally, after much paper shuffling, Williams is given an answer, "Unfortunately the simple back of the envelope math looking at last year's figures just won't work because there's different allocation of internal pricing on exchange rates. Whereas last year all of it was in a segment, this year we've got multiple segments which have been re-ordered.
"So, it would probably be easier for us to have this conversation with you offline than to try and do it over the conference call."
Apparently the analyst and the management have a meeting 'in the next few weeks'. We look forward to the figures being clarified.
Listen to the call yourself, right here.
Companies:
Sony
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