Sony’s Bread and Butter? It’s Not Electronics

Sony is best known as a consumer electronics company, making PlayStation game consoles and televisions. And it loses money on almost every gadget it sells.

Sony has made money making Hollywood movies and selling music. That profitable part of the business is what Daniel S. Loeb, an American investor and manager of the hedge fund Third Point, wants Sony to spin off to raise cash to resuscitate its electronics business. But as Loeb pressures Sony executives to do more to revive the company’s ailing electronics arm, some analysts are asking, Why bother? Sony, it is suggested, might be better off just selling insurance. Or just making movies and music. But not electronics. A new report from the investment banking firm Jefferies delivered a harsh assessment of Sony’s electronics business. “Electronics is its Achilles’ heel and, in our view, it is worth zero,” wrote Atul Goyal, consumer technology analyst for Jefferies, in the report.