Sony's market value declined sharply after the publication of the quarterly report for October-December 2023, CNBC writes. The report was released on February 14, and by the evening of February 16, the company was estimated to be $10 billion cheaper.
God of War: Ragnarök
It is reported that one of the main reasons for the drop was the new forecast for console sales. As part of the report, Sony said that it plans to sell not 25 million PlayStation 5 consoles for the entire fiscal year, but only 21 million. The company also sold one million fewer PlayStation 5 consoles in the last quarter than expected. Their sales amounted to 8.2 million devices. However, even so, this is a record number.
Another factor could be the very low operating margin of the gaming division. According to analyst Atul Goyal from Jefferies Group, it was 6%. At the same time, in his opinion, Sony had every chance to raise the margin to 20%.
"Its revenue from digital sales of games and other content is higher than ever… And yet the operating margin is at a ten-year low. This is simply unacceptable," Goyal said in a CNBC comment.
Analyst Serkan Toto from Kantan Games believes that margins could have grown due to Sony spending more on game development.
Officially, the company's spending on games is not disclosed. However, from the recent leak of internal documents of the Insomniac Games studio, the possible budget of a number of projects became known. For example, it is assumed that the development of Marvel's Spider-Man 2 cost $315 million.
Note that Sony continues to get cheaper. The morning of February 19 began for her with a 3.4% drop in the share price. At the time of writing, one share of the company can be purchased for $88.84. According to Google Finance, at this stock price, Sony's market value is $113.37 billion.