Sony Pictures saw its fiscal fourth-quarter bottom line swing to a profit of $84 million (11 billion yen), a healthy uptick from the $2.7 million loss (300 million yen) it reported during the same period in 2021.
Revenue in the Japanese conglomerate’s pictures division, meanwhile, soared 27.5 percent to $3.4 billion.
Sony Corp. reported its latest financial results on Wednesday from its headquarters in central Tokyo. The report included January-to-April results as well as fiscal full-year earnings for 2021. Full-year profit soared 172 percent to $1.67 billion (217.4 billion yen), as theatrical revenue and licensing of film titles to streaming services both made strong gains. Sony Pictures’ media networks division also saw revenue tick upwards due to the close of Sony’s $1.18 billion acquisition of specialty anime streamer Crunchyroll.
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The international success of Marvel tentpoles Venom: Let There Be Carnage ($506 million) and Spider-Man: No Way Home ($1.9 billion) provided a big lift for yearly profit in pictures, while the blockbuster $500 million licensing of Seinfeld to Netflix also boosted revenues at Sony Pictures Television.
Sony Pictures is currently forecasting a $900 million (117.4 billion yen) fall in profit for the fiscal year of 2022, due to expected declines in motion pictures sales — with no potential hit of Spider-Man‘s scale on the horizon.
On the group level, Sony Corp’s operating profit fell short of analyst estimates, clocking in at 138.6 billion yen in the fourth fiscal quarter, compared to consensus estimates of 148.5 billion yen. The conglomerate also forecast operating income of 1.16 trillion for the current fiscal year, below Wall Street expectations of 1.2 trillion yen.
Sony’s marquee PlayStation 5 gaming console saw sales suffer in the quarter due to supply chain constraints. But Sony said pent-up demand for the device should get sales back on track to make the PS5 its fastest-selling games console to date.
The company added Tuesday that it would buy back as much as 200 billion yen ($1.5 billion) of its own shares.
