A large-scale hack of Sony’s servers last year brought huge publicity to the company — as employee and industry insider emails leaked, a planned Sony Pictures film release was scrapped and then subsequently rushed out as an online release, and the finger of blame was pointed at North Korea.
Reputational damage caused by the incident is all but impossible to quantify. But the cyberattack has had a specific financial cost to Sony’s business, detailed today as a line-item on its preliminary results for its Q3, ending December 31, with the company noting its Sony Pictures division took an estimated $15 million (1.8 billion yen) hit in “investigation and remediation costs” over the quarter to deal with the cyberattack.
Sony said operating income for Sony Pictures is expected to have decreased 21.9 billion yen year-on-year to 2.4 billion yen ($20M) — primarily as a result of decreases in Motion Pictures and TV productions sales, but with income also taking a sizable hit from the hack. (The ‘clean-up’ costs of which is not that far off the total profit being expected by the division.)
Reporting consolidated results for its business as a whole, Sony said it expects sales in its first three quarters to increase 6.3% year-on-year, off the back of “significant” increases in its games & network services, mobile communications and devices segments.
Overall, Sony’s operating profit for the quarter is being forecast at 178.3 billion yen ($1.52BN) — a doubling year on year.
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