Sony sticks with profit outlook despite TV squeeze

Sony Corp stuck with its full-year profit forecast after slashing its outlook for TV sales, confident that other units will perform better than earlier anticipated to offset additional losses in the unit.

The maker of Bravia TVs and PlayStation game consoles left its full-year operating profit outlook unchanged at 200 billion yen, flat on the previous year, even though it cut its annual forecast for LCD TVs to 22 million sets from 27 million.

That profit target is below an average forecast of 224.5 billion yen among 22 analysts polled by Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

Sony trails South Korean rivals Samsung Electronics and LG Electronics in the high-profile flat-screen TV market and was aiming to slash its losses in TVs to less than half of last year's 75 billion yen.

The company kept its unit sales estimate for PlayStation 3 games consoles at 15 million and digital camera sales at 24 million units after reporting a 59 percent drop in quarterly operating profit, as it struggled with production woes following the devastating March earthquake in Japan.

April-June profit fell to 27.5 billion yen from 67.0 billion yen a year earlier. The result compared with market estimates of 15.2 billion yen, based on the average of forecasts by five analysts polled by Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.More...