Japanese electronics giant Sony on Thursday announced a 15.5 billion yen ($199 million) quarterly loss due to the natural disaster that hit northeastern Japan earlier this year, the PS3 security breach and falling TV prices. It also lowered its profit forecast for the fiscal year ending March 2012 to 60 billion yen ($769 million), down from 80 billion yen ($1 billion) it expected in May. The revised earnings would still mean profits for the company.
The business operations hit by the March 11 earthquake were coming back quicker than expected, but the company incurred net costs of 700 million yen ($8 million) in repairs, cleaning costs, damages to buildings and other assets and other costs.
The Sony Online Entertainment breach also cost the company 14 billion yen ($179 million) for legal costs, customer support, legal fees, loss of sales, beefed up security and free games and other content to make up for the breach to customers.
The fiscal year forecast was also revised to 7.2 trillion yen ($92 billion) from 7.5 trillion yen ($96 billion), though this still represents an increase from the 71.8 trillion yen of 2010.
