Originally posted by clackers You, however, seem to be a Sony cheerleader, with your selective reporting of the corporation's troubles. And that's how you opened this thread - with Canon and Nikon's problems.
Actually, if you did read my first post in FULL, I opened the thread with Canon Nikon AND Sony, and I even pointed out that Sony is reporting a 9% decline in sales. The title of my post "Sky is falling" actually referred to all three companies.
However, Nikon is suffering more than the other two because they are less diversified, plus their other two divisions are relatively small and making losses, so they have no offset against their imaging business.
Perhaps, rather than selectively quoting out of date articles, you could try and perhaps read my original post more carefully?
I am perhaps guilty of being a Sony cheerleader (I actually don't care, I am not an investor - I am a customer, but equally I am also a customer of Canon and Nikon).
But your posts are certainly not coming across as unbiased. Why draw erroneous and inaccurate conclusions from out of date posts?
For example, you mentioned selling the company headquarters twice now, with a tone that seem to indicate (to me at least, forgive me if that wasn't your intent) as if you think that's a negative.
To me, that's a positive. Any non-productive asset (such as company offices) is dead weight on the balance sheet and a drag on ROA. A well managed company should not be owning these assets in the first place, and if the company bought "vanity" assets out of corporate ego (Sony was definitely guilty in the past as are other companies), then selling them is definitely a good move, PROVIDED a fair price is obtained for those assets. It's not a one-off trick as you seem to think, it frees up valuable capital and improves ROA.
And if I can jog your memory on accounting principles, "one off tricks" are reported separately and do not count towards operating income, so to claim that Sony's results are due to these "tricks" is simply incorrect. Sony did say that they managed to offset the decline in sales by cutting costs, but that's not from layoffs, as restructuring costs are reported separately. Cutting costs could mean many things, including cutting back on marketing as well as closing down stores (both of which Sony have done).
If you had made similar comments about Canon or Nikon, I would have replied in the same manner.
If you are TRULY in favour of Sony "thriving" as you claim, then my suggestion is stop making up false claims and misrepresentations. Nobody else in this thread has done so except you. No one "wins" from wrong facts.