29% drop in profit for Japanese tech giant

Sony on Thursday reported a 29% drop in operating profit in the fiscal second quarter as the Japanese electronics giant suffered from weakness in its imaging sensor business.

Here’s how Sony did in the September quarter versus LSEG consensus estimates:

• Revenue: 2.8 trillion yen ($18.5 billion) versus 2.87 trillion yen expected. That represents an 8% increase year-over-year.
• Operating profit: 263 billion Japanese yen versus 304.4 billion yen expected. That marks a 29% drop year-over-year.

The results follow a fiscal first quarter which saw Sony report a 33% rise in revenue year-over-year to 3 trillion Japanese yen but a 31% year-on-year drop in profit to 253 billion yen.

The company cited weakness in its financial services and pictures division, which saw a small slump on the back of strikes carried out by the Writers Guild of America and other unions, in protest against using artificial intelligence to generate movie scripts.

This is a developing story and will be updated shortly.