Sony braces for earnings slump

Bloomberg Business Wire today timidly reported on the likelihood that Sony, scheduled to report its June quarter finances on Thursday, will show a loss for the quarter. If so, the wire service said the loss would be the first time Sony reported consecutive quarter losses in four years.

Analysts polled by Bloomberg see the consumer electronics giant "probably" reporting a 19.4 billion yen ($174 million) loss for the April-June quarter, its second fiscal quarter. Reportedly, the shortfall was driven by higher-than-expected development costs associated with the PlayStation Portable (PSP) and paltry sales of the company's Wega TVs.

In the previous quarter (January-March), the company saw a 56.5 billion yen ($532 million) loss.

Daiwa Asset Management's Yoshinori Nagano told Bloomberg the red ink this quarter would likely be temporary, saying he expected a "recovery in [Sony's] second half," but he declined to say how much of a recovery he expected.

Analysts polled by Bloomberg agreed that Howard Stringer, Sony's new CEO, would need to use the forum of Thursday's earnings call to rally investors and analysts around some of Sony's upcoming breakthroughs, including the PlayStation 3 game console, due before the end of the current fiscal year. Stringer is also expected to weigh in on the current level of industry acceptance behind the Sony-developed Blu-ray DVD format.

At last week's Sony Computer Entertainment's PlayStation Meeting in Tokyo, company president Ken Kutaragi presented an update of the PS3 strategy. As well, Sony gets another chance to strut its business agenda at September's Tokyo Game Show.

Today on the Tokyo exchange, Sony shares traded down slightly.