Sony Group Corp. will buy back up to ¥200 billion ( $1.8 billion) of its shares after it posted a quarterly operating profit of ¥66.5 billion, below the ¥74 billion expected by analysts.
Sony sold 3.3 million PlayStation 5 consoles in the period, tallying 7.8 million for the fiscal year.
The company aims to sell over 14.8 million units in the current year, but a production bottleneck affecting the device will is expected to persist, according to Chief Financial Officer Hiroki Totoki.
Hideki Yasuda, an analyst at Ace Research Institute, noted that Sony's revenue from PlayStation and the music segment’s smartphone games missed expectations of analysts who thought the stay-at-home setup would have increased demand for these businesses.
Sony's image-sensor division got a lift from the launch of Apple Inc.’s latest iPhone despite the loss of Huawei Technologies as another high-volume client.
