Sony said it would buy back as much as 200 billion yen ($1.5 billion) of its own shares after reporting earnings that missed analyst estimates.
The share repurchasing will take one year and is planned to end on May 10, 2023.
Sony’s profit for the three months rose to 138.6 billion yen ($1.06 billion) from 66.5 billion yen a year earlier. It was lower than the 147 billion yen profit averaged by analysts surveyed by Refinitiv.
Despite missing corporate estimates, Sony said its PlayStation gaming division operating profit more than doubled in the quarter.
The Japanese giant sold 11.5 million PS5 units in the financial year ended March, versus 7.8 million in the previous year. Its games division operating profit rose by 175% year-on-year.
After surging sales at the start of the pandemic, now console manufacturers are facing uncertainty.
While rival Nintendo expects a 9% decline in sales of its Switch console, now Sony is also concerned over a lack of available components.
New lockdowns and rising inflation forced Sony to slash its PS5 sales target from 22 million to 18 million, CFO Hiroki Totoki said.
“With the situation in Ukraine and Russia and slowdown of the global economy resulting from rapid inflation, we expect the demand environment this fiscal year to be even more severe than recent years,” Totoki noted.
