Hours after Sony Corporation disclosed its earnings results in Tokyo, the company’s share price on the New York Stock Exchange rose after its audio and games divisions made gains.
The company’s music segment — which had albums from Tyler the Creator and Bad Bunny release this quarter as well as Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter pick up the Grammys’ top album honor — saw sales for the quarter increase 14 percent year-over-year, with operating income rising 28 percent by the same metric. Sony said it saw higher revenues from major streaming services for recorded music and music publishing.
“The rise of streaming is creating more opportunities for music from local artists to become global hits,” said finance chief Sadahiko Hayakawa in an earnings call. “The Sony Music Group is working to enhance local repertoire by discovering and nurturing artists and songwriters at its locations in emerging markets.”
Meanwhile, its Sony Pictures unit saw lower series deliveries in television and lower licensing revenues from its catalog product in motion pictures. The film side, which counted Venom: The Last Dance ($478 million in global box office) among releases in the quarter, saw sales increase 9 percent year-over-year, also due to the impact of adding on boutique chain Alamo Drafthouse.
But operating income decreased 18 percent year-of-year, “primarily due to an increase in marketing costs for theatrical releases,” Sony’s finance chief said on the call. Next up for Sony Pictures is Paddington In Peru, which hits theaters stateside on Friday.
“At this point in time, we expect the impact on the results of the segment from the wildfires in California in the U.S. to be minor,” the exec added. “In motion pictures, there is still some impact of the strikes, such as postponement to the fiscal year ending March 31, 2027 of the theatrical releases of the next Spider-Man and Jumanji movies. However, production activity is recovering. In television productions, the production of new shows, which was impacted by the strikes, has almost stabilized.”
The next Tom Holland Spider-Man movie, which is untitled right now, has a release date of July 24, 2026 while Jumanji 3, featuring Dwayne Johnson, Kevin Hart, Jack Black and Karen Gillan, is set for a Dec. 11, 2026 theatrical release from Sony Pictures.
On the games front, sales for the quarter increased 16 percent while monthly active users on PlayStation platforms hit 129 million accounts, a 5 percent increase year-over-year. The group plans to release Ghost of Yōtei and the Death Stranding sequel in 2025. The company sold 9.5 million PlayStation consoles in the quarter.
