Sony Financial Group told the Tokyo Stock Exchange on August 10 that it now expects pretax profit of ¥37bn for the year to March 2027, reversing the ¥20bn pretax loss it had guided for as recently as May 14. Operating income moves from a projected ¥18bn loss to a ¥29bn profit, and profit attributable to owners of the parent swings from a projected ¥16bn loss to ¥23bn. Operating revenue guidance rises a more modest 1.9%, to ¥1.07tn.
| Metric | May Forecast | August Forecast | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Operating revenue | ¥1.05tn | ¥1.07tn | +¥20bn (+1.9%) |
| Operating income | -¥18bn | ¥29bn | +¥47bn |
| Pretax profit | -¥20bn | ¥37bn | +¥57bn |
| Net profit attributable to owners | -¥16bn | ¥23bn | +¥39bn |
| Adjusted net profit | ¥110bn | ¥110bn | Unchanged |
Two drivers, one realized and one still pending
Management cites two changes behind the upgrade. Sony Life, the group's insurance arm, is still rebalancing its bond holdings under an asset-liability management program, but it has revised which securities it plans to sell, and the resulting loss on those sales is now running smaller than the company assumed in May.
The forecast also now builds in a gain the group expects from transferring an equity-method stake tied to SP.LINKS, the payments company formerly known as Sony Payment Services. That sale has not closed. A separate filing from the same day shows Sony Bank, the group's banking subsidiary, received notice that a co-sale right under a shareholders' agreement had been exercised on its stake in an affiliate the filings identify as BXJA1, which owns SP.LINKS and ETC Solutions. The sale still needs regulatory approval, is expected to close sometime during the year to March 2027, and is projected to add about ¥11bn of pretax profit once it does.
The number that didn't move
Despite the ¥57bn swing in pretax guidance, Sony Financial Group's adjusted net profit forecast, its preferred measure of underlying earnings power, stays at ¥110bn. That is unchanged from May and 2.4% above the ¥107.4bn restated for the year to March 2026. Both the bond-sale losses and the SP.LINKS-related gain are treated as one-off items and excluded from that adjusted figure by design. The dividend forecast also holds, at ¥8.00 per share for the year, split evenly between an interim and a final payment.
What the first quarter already showed
Results for the three months to June, reported the same day, previewed the shift. Pretax profit came to ¥13.7bn, against a ¥34.1bn pretax loss a year earlier, while adjusted net profit rose 43.6% to ¥31.5bn on gains across life insurance, general insurance and banking. Life insurance's adjusted profit rose 34.1% to ¥23.1bn, non-life insurance rose 42.7% to ¥4.9bn and banking rose 126.3% to ¥4.2bn.
The BXJA1 stake sale still needs sign-off from regulators before Sony Financial Group can book any of the ¥11bn it has already written into its outlook.