Sony reminds that content remains king
Even though we’ve consolidated our investing themes a few months back, which meant folding Content is King, Connected Society, and Cashless Consumption to form Digital Lifestyle, companies like Sony continue to ride those underlying tailwinds. While most recall Sony the company that pioneered the personal electronics industry, it has quietly remade itself into one that is benefitting from the consumer’s desire for content.
The thing is, most other companies ranging from Netflix and Amazon to Facebook, Google and before too long Apple are focused on streaming video content. Sony, on the other hand, has successfully tapped into the tailwind of consumer demand for gaming. That not only makes for a different business model than in the past at Sony, but it is also one that is driving growth.
For those on the fence with this, Nintendo also delivered a robust quarter and guided its outlook higher as we head into the holiday shopping season also due to gaming.
Japan’s Sony Corp boosted its annual profit outlook by 30 percent to a record level after a strong second-quarter, propelled by popular game titles like “Marvel’s Spider-Man” as well as growing demand for its online gaming services.
The results are a vindication of a strategic shift by the entertainment and electronics firm to build up more content-oriented businesses like gaming, which generate recurring revenue and are less susceptible to the earnings ups and downs seen in consumer electronics.
“Sony has become, more than most people realize, a company that generates profit through content. Until just a few years ago, the worry was always that it was going to revise down on hardware woes but now it has transformed to generate stable earnings,” said Hideki Yasuda, an analyst at Ace Securities.
… domestic gaming peer Nintendo Co Ltd said sales of Switch consoles and games pushed operating profit up 30 percent in the July-September period to reach the firm’s highest quarterly result in eight years.
Source: Sony forecasts big jump to record annual profit on winning gaming strategy | Reuters
