Sony posted a 23% increase in its first-quarter net profit thanks largely to its gaming division and Sony Pictures’ television business.
Net income for the period clocked in at 259 billion yen (about $1.8 billion), while sales rose 2% to 2.62 trillion yen (about $17.8 billion). Both of those figures were record-high first-quarter results for the Japanese conglomerate.
Sony Pictures’ net income for the division was up 65%, hitting 18.7 billion yen (about $127 million). Sales fell 3%, hitting 327 billion yen (about $2.2 billion), thanks to lower revenues from theatrical releases and lower licensing revenues. But its higher profits came from an increase in series deliveries from the TV Production team as well as a higher contributions from the motion picture catalog.
The company highlighted “The Last of Us,” “28 Years Later” and the Netflix mega-hit “KPop Demon Hunters” as standouts in its Pictures division. There is no change in forecast for the division.
PlayStation ended up being the big driver for the quarter. Sales for the gaming division increased by 8% to hit 937 billion yen ($6.37 billion), primarily because of the sale of non-first-party game software titles. Operating income hit a quarterly high of 148 billion yen ($1 billion), a 127% year-over-year increase. This was also due to the sale of non-first-party games as well as network services revenue, with many of the top-selling games, including “Indiana Jones and the Great Circle” and “The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion: Remastered” coming from rival Microsoft.
Monthly active users across all of PlayStation in June increased 6%, hitting 123 million accounts. Total playtime for the quarter also increased by 6%. Because of this strong user engagement, Sony increased its 2025 sales forecast by 4% with the new forecast coming in at 500 billion yen ($3.4 billion).
Here is a look at the key results:
Revenue: 2.62 trillion yen ($17.8 billion), up 2% year-over-year. Sony’s quarterly sales matched the $2.6 trillion that analysts projected, according to estimates from Yahoo Finance.
Net income: 259 billion yen, or about $1.8 billion, which was up 23% compared to the same quarter last year.
Total operating income: 340 billion yen, or about $2.3 billion, up 36% year over year.
Sony also gave an update about the impact U.S. tariffs will have on the Japanese company. The company expects that tariffs will have a 70 billion yen ($475 million) impact on Sony’s fiscal year 2025, a decrease of 30 billion yen ($204 million) from what was previously projected. This estimation is based on the tariff rates that were announced in August.
“We intend to continue to monitor the situation and take action to minimize the impact,” Sony CEO Hiroki Totoki said during the Thursday earnings call.
Looking ahead, Sony plans to execute a partial spin-off of Sony Financial Group Inc., which will include the Financial Services business. This spin-off will take place in October of this year, and once it’s executed, Sony plans to record profit or loss from SFGI shares using the equity method. It will appear as operating income or loss in continuing operations.
As for Sony’s larger overall forecast, sales remains unchanged, but the company has increased both its operating income forecast and its net income forecast by 4%. The forecast for operating cash flow has also been bumped up by 2%.
