‘Angry Birds’ Box Office Can’t Offset $103 Million Sony Pictures Loss

Japanese corporation sees overall profit sink 70-plus percent

angry birds feat

“Angry Birds” fared well at the box office, but studio Sony Pictures’ marketing costs from the first quarter of 2016 handed the unit a $103 million operating loss anyway.

The big-screen unit’s sales grew 20 percent (in U.S. dollars) compared to the same period in 2015. Unfavorable exchange rates into Yen means the film arm’s operating revenue rose just 6.9 percent on a local currency basis.

All told, Sony Corp. profit clocked in at $205 million, down about 74 percent from Q1 2015. The umbrella company’s top-line slipped to $15.7 billion. Yet Sony Corp. beat analysts’ expectations, driving the stock up Friday morning.

The main culprits in the company’s slip from last year were lower mobile sales, hits to financial services, and earthquakes in the Kumamoto region that hurt the company’s Semiconductors and Imaging Products & Solutions segment.

PlayStation 4 software sales helped ease the negatives. Music revenue grew as well, but that group’s operating income was essentially half what it was in 2015’s same three-month period.

Below is a snapshot of the five-day SNE trend, to best illustrate this morning’s immediate jump.

SNE

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