Sony stock slides to 30-year low after record loss

Sony shares dropped to a 30-year low on the Tokyo Stock Exchange today after reporting a record loss of $5.7bn.

The Japanese tech goliath predicts the first profit in five years in 2013, but investors seem unconvinced that the company can turn around its TV business and make any inroads into the smartphone market.

Its shares slid 6.43 per cent to 1,135 yen. Sony stock has lost 38 per cent of its value since this year's high on March 16 of 1,832 yen.

The hits have kept on coming for Sony, with insipid consumer appetite for big ticket tellies, PCs and laptops, increased competition in the gaming industry from smartphones and social networks, natural disasters like the 2011 earthquake and the floods in Thailand and that ever-strong yen, which stamps down its overseas profits.

The company has also seemed to lack imagination in its products, failing to produce a popular smartphone, making no impact in tablets and exciting no one in the TV business enough to ignore their economic fears.

Sony hopes that new leadership under president Kazuo Hirai, who used to run the gaming division, and a cost-cutting programme that includes 10,000 job losses will see it return to profitability next year. ®