By Yuri Kageyama, Business Writer
TOKYO (AP) --Sony Corp. reported Tuesday that its fiscal second quarter profit zoomed by 26-fold from the same period last year, boosted by the success of its image sensors, game products and the latest "Spider-Man" movie.
Tokyo-based Sony, which makes Bravia TVs, PlayStation 4 video-game consoles and Wyclef Jean recordings, recorded a July-September profit of 130.9 billion yen ($1.2 billion), up from 4.8 billion yen reported last year.
Quarterly sales rose 22 percent to 2.06 trillion yen ($18 billion).
The Japanese electronics and entertainment giant raised its full-year profit forecast to 380 billion yen ($3.4 billion), up by nearly 50 percent from its earlier forecast of 255 billion yen ($2.3 billion) profit.
That's a more than five-fold improvement from the 73 billion yen earned in the fiscal year that ended in March.
Sony has suffered in recent years as it fell behind rivals like Samsung Electronics Co. of South Korea and Apple, which makes the iPhone, in flat-panel TVs and mobile phones.
A pioneer in mobile music with the creation of the Walkman portable cassette player in 1979, Sony has been reshaping its operations to catch up in new technologies like 4K TVs, digital cameras and game software for its successful PlayStation franchise.
In the last quarter, a weak yen compared to a year earlier worked to boost Sony's bottom line. A weak yen lifts the value of overseas earnings of Japanese exporters.
The absence of costs related to damages at its computer-chips and battery businesses from last year's earthquake in Kumamoto, southwestern Japan, also helped.
Sony said its results benefited from the strong worldwide box office performance of "Spider-Man: Homecoming" and the popularity of a game application for mobile devices called "Fate/Grand Order."
Sony's perennially strong performing financial services businesses, such as life insurance and online banking, also did well, it said.
Civil rights groups call on major corporations to stick with DEI programs
A broad group of civil rights organizations called on the CEOs and board members of major companies Thursday to maintain their commitments to diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives that have come under attack online and in lawsuits.
An open letter signed by 19 organizations and directed at the leaders of Fortune 1000 companies said companies that abandon their DEI programs are shirking their fiduciary responsibility to employees, consumers and shareholders.
The civil rights groups included the NAACP, the National Organization for Women, the League of United Latin American Citizens, Asian Americans Advancing Justice and the Human Rights Campaign Foundation.
"Diversity, equity and inclusion programs, policies, and practices make business-sense and they're broadly popular among the public, consumers, and employees," their statement read. "But a small, well-funded, and extreme group of right-wing activists is attempting to pressure companies into abandoning their DEI programs."
Companies such as Ford, Lowes, John Deere, Molson Coors and Harley-Davidson recently announced they would pull back on their diversity, equity and inclusion policies after facing pressure from conservative activists who were emboldened by recent victories in the courtroom.
Many major corporations have been examining their diversity programs in the wake of a Supreme Court decision last year that declared race-based affirmative action programs in college admissions unconstitutional. Dozens of cases have been filed making similar arguments about employers. Critics of DEI programs say the initiatives provide benefits to people of one race or sexual orientation while excluding others.
In their letter, the civil rights organizations, which also included... Read More