The report says Kim told Putin that “the situation on the Korean Peninsula and the region is now at a standstill and has reached a critical point”, warning that the situation may “return to its original state” as the UK chose to act in ‘bad faith’ during recent talks.
Sony warned of declining profits in the 12 months ahead as slowing PlayStation 4 sales and costs to develop a next-generation gaming console put a brake on a two-year run of record earnings.
The Japanese electronics and entertainment group, which is preparing for another activist campaign by Daniel Loeb’s Third Point, also scrapped its fiscal 2020 operating profit target on Friday, citing rapidly changing business conditions.
For the new fiscal year through March 2020, Sony said it expects its net profit to fall 45 per cent from a year earlier to ¥500bn ($4.5bn), due also to the absence of gains from the partial sale of its stake in Spotify.
The weak outlook is expected to strengthen calls from analysts for Sony to pull out of its struggling mobile phone business, which the company has said is critical to developing 5G technologies.
The forecast also comes as Sony’s shares have risen following an April 8 report by Reuters that Third Point was building a stake for the second time. Jefferies upgraded the stock to “buy” on hopes that activist pressure would force Sony to sell its loss-making smartphone business.
Sony saw its operating profit nearly quadruple to ¥82.7bn for the fiscal fourth quarter, boosted by its image sensor and PlayStation businesses.
“I think that if I was working with $1m or if Charlie [Munger, Berkshire’s vice-chair] was working with $1m, we would have no trouble earning 50 per cent a year,” he says.
“People get smarter but they don’t get wiser. They don’t get more emotionally stable. All the conditions for extreme overvaluation or undervaluation absolutely exist, the way they did 50 years ago. You can teach all you want to the people, you can tell them to read [Buffett mentor] Ben Graham’s book, you can send them to graduate school, but when they’re scared, they’re scared,” he said.
After the close, Amazon beat by alot on EPS ($7.09 vs $4.67 est). Revenues were as expected
