Sony pushes back profit margin target to 2013
Nov 19, 2009 Others
By Kiyoshi Takenaka and Mayumi Negishi
Japan’s Sony Corp pushed back an elusive target of an operating profit margin of 5 percent to March 2013, as it heads for its second straight loss and loses ground to overseas competitors.
Sony, which is shedding jobs, closing plants and selling non-core assets this year, said on Thursday it now aims to earn a 5 percent operating profit margin and a 10 percent return-on-equity in the year ending in March 2013.
Sony Chief Executive Howard Stringer had originally set the 5 percent margin target in 2005 for the financial year to March 2008 but the company narrowly missed it, and its plans for recovery have since been waylaid by the economic slow down.
The maker of Bravia TVs and PlayStation game consoles said it would deliver on its promise to make its LCD TV and game operations profitable, launch 3D TVs and make a belated entry into lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles.
Investors have been waiting for years for a convincing growth strategy from Sony management.
“It will be quite a challenge for Sony to turn its TV business profitable next year. Price declines are cancelling their cost cut efforts,” Mitsushige Akino, chief fund manager at Ichiyoshi Investment Management Co said. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Amazon, LCD TV, Microsoft Corp, Nintendo Co Ltd, Profit, Samsung Electronics Co Ltd, Share, Sony, Sony Corp, Sony management, Stock Market, TV business
Wall Street futures point to lower start; results due
Oct 22, 2009 Make Money Online
Futures for the Dow Jones industrial average, the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq 100 fell 0.1 to 0.5 percent, pointing to a weaker start on Wall Street on Thursday.
The Labor Department releases at 8.30 a.m. EDT first-time claims for jobless benefits for the week ended October 17. Economists in a Reuters survey forecast a total of 515,000 new filings compared with 514,000 in the prior week.
Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O) launched Windows 7 on Thursday in its most important release for more than a decade, aiming to win back customers after the disappointing Vista and strengthen its grip on the PC market.
Investors awaited more results from companies such as
American Express, Amazon.com (AMZN.O), AT&T, 3M Co., McDonald’s Corp., Dow Chemicals, Merck & Co. and Xerox Corp.
U.S. crude oil fell 1 percent to trade near $80 a barrel, weighed down by gains in the dollar.
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Tags: Amazon.com, American Express, AMZN.O, Crude Oil, Dow Chemicals, Dow Jones, Ebay, economists, EDT, Home Price Index, Investors, Labor Department, McDonald's Corp, Microsoft Corp, MSFT.O, Nasdaq, PC Market, Stock Market, Wall Street, Xerox Corp
Microsoft lets shareholders vote on executive pay
Sep 19, 2009 Make Money Online
Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O) has approved a proposal to allow shareholders to vote on its executives’ compensation, as U.S. corporations’ pay policies come under scrutiny in the wake of the financial crisis.
Shareholders will be allowed to vote every three years on the pay of Microsoft executives, starting with the annual meeting on November 19, the world’s biggest software company said in a regulatory filing on Friday.
The votes will not be binding, but Microsoft said that, in the result of a “significant negative” vote, it would “consult directly with shareholders to better understand the concerns that influenced the vote.”
The U.S. Congress has been discussing legislation on so- called “say on pay” measures to give shareholders more involvement in executive pay in the wake of scandals over massive bonuses paid to failing firms in the past few years, but so far none has been made law.
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Tags: Economy, financial crisis, Microsoft Corp, Microsoft Executive, MSFT.O, Shareholder, Stock Market
