Fitch Downgrades Sony Stock to 'Junk' - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 26 November 2012 / 11,891 Views
Rating company Fitch has been the first group to downgrade Sony stock to 'Junk' status. The company lowered its rating of the company to BB-. 'Junk' status generally refers to anything of a rating of BB or lower. This means a high risk of default and very little chance of any short term or medium term gains.
The downgrade to 'junk,' "reflects Fitch's belief that meaningful recovery will be slow, given the company's loss of technology leadership in key products, high competition, weak economic conditions in developed markets and the strong yen," said the ratings group.
"The future of both companies will depend on their ability to curb loss-making segments and rediscover the kind of technological leadership, which historically enabled them to develop must-have products," Steve Durose, Fitch’s head of technology ratings for the Asia-Pacific region, said in a statement. "Sony is the higher risk of the two, hence its lower rating."
Sony CEO Kazuo Hirai is cutting 10,000 jobs and is moving Sony away from it struggling TV division. He is focusing on the companies mobile devices, games and digital imaging to turn the company around. Sony has sold stakes in two display making ventures, which is after the company has lost 692 billion yen ($8.43 billion) in its TV division in the last eight years.
More Articles
Sad times, when I was growing up I think maybe 90% of tvs in stores here used to be either Philips or Sony branded, now you barely see any on display next to LG or Samsung models.
The last CRT I bought was a Philips but it was junk made in China and lasted just a few months. Europeans don't make quality high-tech stuff because now all is make in China (made in Japan was still dominant before the crisis but now they were forced to delocalize in China too).
So this means that Sony is junk?
I don't think that there is enough room for three consoles next gen, so perhaps it would be good if Sony goes third party.
IF this continues Sony will be forced to go 3rd party. Not that it's a bad thing.
Holy crap, that happened a lot faster than I thought it would. Samsung's officially put Sony out of the TV business.
Heck they're putting everyone out of the TV business...
They didn't even give Sony a last chance. I mean, without this, they may have made a profit this quarter.
Sony is junk. No surprise here.
And if we ever lose the Sony games division, things will only get worse for gamers due to less competition.
I'm such an underdog gamer.. I'm actually starting to like Sony now..
Sonys gaming is doing pretty well, it's other area's mainly their TV business where they are pissing away money.
yeah very true about the vita but the ps3 is pumping out close to a half million units a week on here which is making a fair amount of incoming for them, only thing I see risking everything they've got in consoles is when they announce the ps4 people will slow down buying the ps3 could really hurt their profits.
TVs : Sony can thanks Koreans for dumping ! Japanese tried to let their production in Japan but in a global world, cheap and dumping competition was fatal, the "Japanese quality" which is renown was not enough against price war. In France 90% of TVs bought are Korean.
hey, what are you talking about. Japanese companies did the same thing to AMERICAN companies like RCA, Magnavox, Zenith, Motorola, Emmerson. American companies where slow to ship jobs to china while Japan had already set up shop there and in other asian countries
Japanese wiped out almost all US hardware manufacturers(radia, clocks, tvs) and now the KOREANS are going to do the same to them
^Vizio is an American TV maker that's doing well.
Sad times when the phrase "It's always possible to make something a little worst and a little cheaper, and the people that preffer it are its deserved victms".
The problem is in the TV industry the little worse is sony. They are no longer the leader in TV industry which makes their prices hard to justify and it gets reflected in their sales.
