Sega Sammy halves annual losses

Sega Sammy Holdings Inc has reported that its annual fiscal results are in the red for the second year in the row – but that losses halved from the previous period.

The company said in an earnings statement for the year ended March 31 that it had suffered a net loss of 22.88 billion yen – compared to the previous year’s loss of 52.47 billion yen.

It said this year’s loss stemmed largely from anemic personal consumption which undercut sales, forcing it to book a range of one-off expenses including write-downs on its faltering game arcade stores.

However, Sega Sammy saw a pretax profit of 6.64 billion yen against the precious year’s 8.22 billion yen loss, on sales of 429.19 billion yen, down 6.5 percent.

The pretax profit were helped by cutbacks in a range of expenses such as advertising costs.

The company forecast its net and pretax profits in the next fiscal year will come to 15 billion yen and 26 billion yen on a projected 2.1 percent sales fall to 420 billion yen.