Sony Eyes One-T.-Yen Capital Spending over 3 Years

May 22, 2018

Tokyo- Sony Corp. said Tuesday that it plans to invest about one trillion yen in facilities and equipment, mainly in the semiconductor field, in the three years from April 2018.

The Japanese electronics and entertainment giant revealed the target in its business program covering the period.

"We'll focus on improving the quality of our profits, rather than just increasing the amount of profits," Sony President Kenichiro Yoshida, who took office last month, told a press conference at its head office in Tokyo.

In its chip business, Sony will accelerate investment mainly in CMOS image sensors for use in self-driving vehicles, hoping to reduce its dependence on sensors for smartphones. Sony is eager to become the No. 1 player in the market for CMOS sensors, for which the development race is heating up globally.

The company aims to earn an operating profit of 160 billion to 200 billion yen from its semiconductor business in the year to March 2021.

Sony hopes to build an earnings structure enabling the company to generate at least 2 trillion yen of operating cash flows in the three years, excluding from its financial business, and constantly log 600 billion to 800 billion yen in annual group operating profit.

Sony also plans to strengthen its recurring businesses, including membership-based game sales, in an effort to gain stable profits, rather than just selling individual products.

Also on Tuesday, Sony said it will acquire a controlling equity stake in EMI Music Publishing, which owns and manages copyrights on more than two million songs, for 2.3 billion dollars to strengthen its music business.

"I believe this acquisition will be a particularly significant milestone for our long-term growth," Yoshida said in a statement.

Through a U.S. unit, Sony, which currently owns some 30 pct of EMI Music, will buy an additional stake of about 60 pct from a consortium led by Mubadala Investment Co., an investment fund in Abu Dhabi.

Among the EMI Music-managed songs are those of legendary British rock band Queen and American singer-songwriter Carole King. Jiji Press