Note: The official currency of this financial report is Japanese yen, and the conversion data to US dollars may vary due to exchange rate fluctuations.
On May 14, Sony Group Corporation (hereinafter referred to as Sony) announced its full-year financial results for fiscal year 2023 (April 1, 2023 - March 31, 2024).
According to the financial report, Sony's full-year sales revenue for fiscal 2023 will be 13,020.8 billion yen, ($84.5 billion), a year-on-year increase of 19%; Operating profit was 1,208.8 billion yen (US$7.85 billion), down 7% year-on-year; Net profit was 970.6 billion yen (US$6.3 billion), down 3% year-on-year.
According to the financial report data, compared with the previous fiscal year, although Sony's net profit in the fiscal year has shrunk, all businesses have performed steadily and are basically in a state of profit growth.
In particular, the gaming and network services business (G&NS).
The business reported sales of 4,267.7 billion yen (US$27.7 billion) for the fiscal year, up 17% year-on-year. Operating profit was 290.2 billion yen (US$1.9 billion), up 16% year-on-year.
According to the financial report, the main reasons for the growth of Sony's game business are the following three points: 1. The increase in sales of non-first-party game software 2, the growth of in-game paid sales 3, and the positive impact of exchange rates. These three points offset the cost of Sony's marketing activities on the platform's hardware products and the decline in sales of Sony's first-party games.
According to the data, PS5 games sold 286.4 million copies during the fiscal year, of which 39.7 million were first-party games. This compares to 264.2 million games sold in the last fiscal year, of which 43.5 million were first-party games.
Software sales are built on hardware penetration, and during the fiscal year, the PS5 ushered in a sales peak, so far, the PS5 has sold 59.3 million units worldwide, and 20.8 million units have been sold in the entire fiscal year 2023, of which 4.5 million units were sold in Q4 alone, and in the same quarter, Microsoft's Xbox Series X|S shipped only 800,000 units.
Sony expects PS5 sales to be around 18 million units in fiscal 2024
The earnings report also revealed the main strategies for Sony's G&NS business over the next three years, which are mainly to expand the customer base, provide richer gaming experiences, and enhance first-party software and PC deployments.
In terms of overall strategic direction, Sony said that it plans to allocate 1.8 trillion yen ($11.6 billion) for intellectual property acquisitions, mergers and acquisitions, investments and flexible share buybacks for the entire Sony Group, including SIE, and the use of this fund will be mainly oriented towards return on investment.
After the earnings report, Sony's U.S. and Japanese stocks both ushered in a rise of about 10%, but Sony announced that it would buy back no more than 2.46% of its shares at a price of no more than 250 billion yen ($1.6 billion), and will carry out a five-share split from October 1.