Sony estimates $3.2b loss this year, $171 million cost for PSN breach

It has not been a good year for Sony, which was affected both by the massive earthquake in March and the PSN outage that spanned from April into May. There couldn't be any doubt that those things would have a drastic impact on the company's bottom-line, and it's now taking the time to give investors an idea of just how big an impact that could be -- even though the financial issues lie largely elsewhere. Sony is set to announce its full financial report for its fiscal year this Thursday and, to soften the blow, estimates have been revised steeply downward. Previously Sony predicted a ¥70 billion ($855 million) profit, but now thinks a ¥260 billion ($3.14 billion) loss is rather more accurate -- a ¥360 billion non-cash charge taking the wind out of ¥200 billion in operating income.

The earthquake was directly blamed for a loss of ¥22 billion, but that figure could certainly grow as this estimate is only through the end of March. Additionally, Sony has provided a early guess of a ¥14 billion (about $172 million) total cost for the PSN breach. That's less than two bucks per exposed account, but again we wouldn't be surprised if it's a figure that increases through the year. You know, once the lawyers start having their fun.

The Wall Street Journal, gamesindustry.biz

Sony [PDF]

HP releases 2011 Q2 earnings early, following leak of foreboding internal memo

HP kicked off this morning's Q2 earnings call citing a leaked company memo that recently popped up at Bloomberg. That memo, which had the outfit's CEO, Leo Apotheker warning of "another tough quarter," resulted in a five percent drop in HP shares in after-hours trading Monday, according to the Wall Street Journal, and prompted the release of the outfit's Q2 earning a day ahead of schedule -- an earnings call was originally slated for Wednesday. According to the report, the company managed to pull in $31.6 billion in revenue and $2.3 billion in earnings, compared to $30.8 billion in revenue and $2.2 billion in earnings the same time last year.

So what brought about the pot-stirring internal memo? Well, it seems HP's struggled to keep up with the competition when it comes to consumer computer sales. Despite an increase in revenue in every other segment of the company's business, HP's Personal Systems Group (which covers enterprise and consumer sales) saw revenue decline five percent year-over-year, with the portion covering consumer computers down 23 percent. That might seem like a big dip, and it is, but Apotheker says the company is "excited by the tablet opportunities," continuing on to say that the impending release of the company's TouchPad "will be an exciting product release for HP." For now, we'll just have to sit back and see if the webOS slate has the stuff to pull HP out of the consumer computer lurch. Full PR after the break.

Wall Street Journal HP, Bloomberg