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Sony can’t seem to catch a break. Its stock on the Tokyo exchange today fell below 1,000 yen, the first time that has happened since 1980, when the Walkman reigned. The 1.7% drop to 996 yen — equal to $12.75 — was largely due to investor concerns about the strength of the Japanese currency vs the euro and the dollar. Last week the euro bought 95.6 yen, the strongest performance for the currency since 2000, while each dollar bought 77.66 yen, the highest exchange rate for Japan since February, Bloomberg reports. But the changes take a toll on Sony. Its sales decline by 10B yen for each 1 yen drop against the euro, and by 50B yen for each 1 yen drop vs the dollar. That just compounds the problems faced by Sony’s new CEO Kazuo Hirai. Following four years of losses, last month he cut the company’s current fiscal-year profit forecast in half as Sony struggles to boost sales of its TV sets and PlayStation 3 game consoles.
Related: Sony Registers Record Loss, But Expects Return To Profit
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When Spider-Man opens below expectations it’ll go even lower.
Sony’s full of bozos. I’ve worked at Sony Pictures Home Entertainment and I was shocked to see folks from the electronic arm lifted to exec positions without the slightest clue about the industry. There’s an endless list of people you could fire on the spot, particularly in the European territories. I’ve taken out some put options on Sony and I’m already in the black. The company’s dead. It has no strategy, lots of infighting, and suffers from cronyism more than any other shop I know. It’s hardware has been overpriced crap for years, lacking innovation and design (Sony remote’s still beat any other control panel in terms of buttons). And don’t get me started on the movie business…
Echo that, Anonymous. I was recently asked by a fairly major European distributor of theatrical and home entertainment to help broker the purchase of a film package from Sony after the company’s efforts, as in offering Sony a large sum of money for basically no work, went round and round in circles getting nowhere. Guess what? No result again! Sony is going bust and still not interested in free money! No sympathy, no sorrow is due.
This feels like it has moved from being an interesting stock market talking point to gathering storm clouds that could effect the landscape of the modern studio system.
With every passing day (and dollar falling off the stock price) SPE is looking more and more like a way for Sony to get some quick cash by selling it off to the highest bidder.
I’ve always had a soft spot for the ‘torch lady’ and Columbia Pictures’ iconic sting and I’d hate to see her/the studio bought up and then relegated to being nothing more than a ‘label’ within another set up.
I hope that someone with deep pockets comes in and buys up the SPE set-up with an eye to keeping it going and not just asset stripping it and then moving on.
We need more buyers in this town…, not less.
Howard Stringer should have been fired long ago. He was not the man for the job.
It’s insane to think that the electronics side can turn itself around.
As for the studio/SPE assets, there is some real value in there (Jeopardy alone is probably good for 200m/year) but there simply isn’t a buyer on the scene who would be willing to pay more than fire-sale prices for any of that stuff.