Sony’s Stock Rises After Forecasts Expect Biggest Profits in 20 Years

Sony’s stock value closed 3.83% higher on Monday in Tokyo after the company had updated it forecast for the fiscal year that ended in March 31st, revising its operating income upwards from 240 billion yen to 285 billion yen ($2.6 billion). The reason for this update would be an improvement in all divisions of the company except the components segment. After years of spending the massive income of their videogame division on covering the losses of troubling sections like Sony Pictures, it seems like the company is finally entering a much more profitable era.

The full financial report on their closing fiscal year will be presented later this week, but Sony has revised its forecast in prevision of much better results than the numbers expected in February. In an official statement, the company explains that the key to this upward revision is the “expected decreases in amortization of deferred insurance acquisition costs and other costs in the Financial Services segment and lower costs than anticipated in February in the other segments, particularly Semiconductors.” The only division that would actually perform worse than expected would be the components segment.

Analysts from firms like Goldman Sachs are also hopeful about their upcoming report, as they foresee an operating profit guidance of 500 billion yen at least, which would be the highest the company would have seen since 1998, in the peak of the original PlayStation console. They also think the stock value will continue to rise once the market assumes these results: “We think the stock market will soon factor in the next growth phase into the share price. We expect this growth to hinge on games/movies/music, backed by global content price increases and delivery method diversification.”

Sony’s last financial report detailed how they had shipped the most PlayStation consoles in history during the final months of 2016, and expected to have distributed 60 million of PS4 consoles by the end of March 2017. The upcoming report of this week will determine whether they reached their goal or not.