Sony Corporation is the fifth largest media conglomerate with its headquarters at Minato, Japan; the company concentrates in consumer and professional markets oriented commodities, its range of electronic commodities includes phones, radio, and television. Currently the company’s board of directors chairperson, who doubles as chief executive officer (C.E.O) is Howard Stringer, Vice president is Ryoji Chubachi and the chief finance officer is Masaru Kato. The current number of employees are above 167,900; in 2010 financial year, the company made an after tax profit of ¥ 7.214 trillion, which is equivalent to $88.205 billion.
Sony is a public company listed in two international stock exchanges: Japan Stock Exchange and New York stock exchange; when operating in the stock exchange, the company’s ticker symbol is SNE.
As a listed company, the company makes its financial accounts according to international financial reporting standards, and makes disclosures as per the standards requirements. It also has to comply with United States Public Company Accounting Oversight Board requirements: the company’s ends on 31st March. The company’s public accountants are PricewaterhouseCoopers Aarata branch; they have been with the company for over ten years. Technology has assisted Sony to develop better customer service; mechanisms to get feedback and respond to customer issues are developed and facilitated by computer systems; the company has embarked on massive innovation and invention in electronic products. The company’s operating tag is “make. Believe”.
In 2010, the company’s cash and cash equivalents are as follows 1,191,608 million Yens; in 2009, the company’s cash and cash equivalents amounted to 660, 789. The above figure was an 80.33 % increase with an amount of 530819 million yens.
The above result is an indication of absuiness that is having an increased growth in liquid cash; the cash can allow the company take advantage of the market as they occur.
In 2010 and 2009, the company’s total liabilities were 9,580,559 Million Yens and 8,796,909 Million Yens respectively; the growth of the total liabilities can be seen in current accounts liability increase. The increase in total liabilities between 2009 and 2010 was 783650 Million yens representing an 8.9% increase. The rate of increase is far small than the rate of growth in current asset so the company has not danger despite the changed liability budget.
Company’s revenues (or net revenues) for the last 3 annual reporting periods has been on a negative growth; the sale revenue including operating revenue, other revenues, financial services revenue are as follows 8,871,414 Million Yens, 7,729,993 Million Yens and 7,213,998 Million Yens for 2008, 2009, and 2010 respectively.
The above sales translated to the following net profits during the same period 26,912 Million Yens, (174,955) Million Yens and 149,447 Million Yens for 2008, 2009, and 2010 respectively. One noted character of the accounts as noted is that the company is that in 2010, when the company minimal sales the profits were the highest, this is an indication of a company that has embarked on cost reduction methods.
The company’s strength is vested in its total fixed assets of 12,013,511 Milion Yens in 2009 and 12,866,114 Million in 2010. According to the accounts, Sony seems to have slowed its massive investments to look into its internal operations so that it can enjoy reduced operating expenses and improve new products to meet changing consumer demands (Sony Corporation official website, 2011).
References
Sony Corporation official website. (2011). Sony Corporation. Web.