Speculation that Sony may sell film division has started

quote:

---

Sony Stock Soars Amid Investor Speculation That Film, TV Business Might Wind Up On The Block

Sony Corp. stock soared today following the news that Chief Executive Kaz Hirai is stepping down from the helm of the Japanese corporation, to be succeeded by Chief Financial Officer Kenichiro Yoshida.

Wall Street observers say the stock movement is a sign of investor speculation that this changing of the guard might open the door to a sale of Sony’s entertainment assets. Sony’s stock closed at $51.99 Friday, rising 6% in the day’s trading at a time when the markets tanked.

However, insiders at the studio say they see no evidence of a shifting corporate strategy under Hirai’s No. 2. Sony will continue to look for opportunities to grow its film and television business, whether through acquisition or merger, sources say. There’s been no discussion of a sale.

Hirai, an executive who got his start at Sony Music and ran Sony’s PlayStation group before claiming the top job in Tokyo, has been a fierce advocate for Sony’s entertainment business.

Yoshida is a numbers guy with a more cautious outlook. In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, he said he sees Sony as a technology company — and one that should keep consumer electronics at its core.

Those in the U.S. who know Yoshida describe him as a pragmatic businessman who doesn’t regard any part of Sony’s business as a sacred cow. That’s what has triggered speculation that he might be open to selling — just as former General Electric CEO Jeff Immelt shed the company’s media unit to bring GE back to its industrial core.

Said one industry observer: “Kaz was not interested in selling and Yoshida is really not too keen on the entertainment business so everyone (is speculating) that Sony is ready for a sale.”

---

quote:

---

Less than a month ago, Sony CEO Kazuo Hirai said he wanted to ensure his company was “in the driver’s seat,” one of the entertainment players able to buy, not be bought. He had once famously declared that there was no “For Sale” sign hanging on the water tower at the Sony Pictures Entertainment lot.

On Friday, Hirai caught markets and Sony watchers by surprise with his decision to step down as CEO and into an advisory role as chairman beginning April 1. He will be replaced by Kenichiro Yoshida, currently Sony’s CFO and internal head of strategy.

Hirai’s resignation means that Sony’s entertainment assets are losing possibly their loudest and most powerful advocate within the company, and raises questions about their future in an era where consolidation, often on a colossal scale, is the trend of the day. Under Hirai, Sony had made an overture for some of Fox’s assets before Disney produced a bigger bid; without him at the helm, the fate of Sony’s own content businesses is uncertain.

Yoshida, whom Hirai said he had personally recommended to succeed him, said his strategy as CEO would be broadly in line with that of his predecessor. The “vector of my approach” will be the same, but the expression of it will be different, Yoshida said Friday after Sony published its robust third-quarter earnings.

But he offered no specifics. Tellingly, perhaps, he also made almost no reference to Sony’s entertainment businesses, including its Picture Division, which groups together film, TV, music and games, and which recorded an operating profit last quarter after a period of heavy losses. His only nod to entertainment was to tout the creation of a new music label focusing on local talent, a deal signed earlier this week with China’s Tencent.

Instead, Yoshida emphasized the importance of the technology sector. “Market cap is not everything, but the top global companies now are all technology companies….Since Sony is a technology company, we feel a sense of crisis about that situation,” he said, adding that he intends to manage the company “with the market cap in mind.”

For Yoshida, who as CFO has taken hard-headed financial decisions and implemented painful cuts, it may come down to a matter of scale. Sony Corp. currently weighs in with a valuation of $62 billion – small compared to the likes of a combined Disney-Fox, Time-Warner, Comcast and Viacom. Sony is even punier beside the new-media companies that will shape the next decade: Apple ($861 billion), Google ($816 billion), Amazon ($669 billion), Facebook ($561 billion), Tencent ($553 billion), and Alibaba ($492 billion).

The fact that Sony’s Picture Division has returned to modest profitability could be used as an argument both for keeping and for unloading it. The success of “Jumanji: Return to the Jungle” means that Sony Pictures Entertainment has a healthy new franchise on its hands on top of some other recent hits. Equally, however, getting back in the black makes SPE easier to sell

---