Sony's Credit Rating Now Downgraded by Moody's to One Step Above Junk

[dgstorm]

Oh how the mighty fall sometimes. Sony was once one of the most untouchable, powerful and profitable companies on the planet. Now, they are struggling to survive. Moody's, the credit rating agency, just announced they are downgrading Sony's credit rating to "one step above junk." They also added,

“Without robust restructuring in the coming 12-18 months, Sony’s non-financial services businesses will at best achieve roughly break even, and are also at risk of remaining unprofitable.”

To put it in perspective how bad things are for Sony, just this year they had to combine forces with their competitors, Toshiba and Hitachi just to be able to create competitive LCD TV products. They have been getting hammered by better technology from Samsung and LG. Sony TVs were once the "de facto standard" for reference designs, yet now Sony's R&D is so behind they have to form alliances with their rivals. Do any of you guys remember the old CRT Sony Trinitron TVs? I remember having one that was over twenty years old and it still had a perfect picture.

Sony's fairly new (seven months in the position) CEO, Kazuo Hirai, is now focusing the company's resources on digital imaging, gaming, and mobile. Will he be able to turn the company around? Only time will tell.

Source: AndroidAuthority

[Ads]

[J515OP]

Do any of you guys remember the old CRT Sony Trinitron TVs? I remember having one that was over twenty years old and it still had a perfect picture.

Still have one. It doesn't get used anymore but what a great TV (for standard def). Sad to see this since Sony is still capable of being a technology leader if they can regain their focus. Honestly the PS3 was so far ahead of its time you could buy the original version in 2006, a full year before the iPhone, and to this day you have all the modern conveniences of a super machine home media center: gaming console, linux pc, tv web browsing, video and audio chat, youtube, media player, media streamer, dvd palyer, blueray player and of course video rental and streaming through services like Hulu and Netfix and the the PS store that didn't even exist when the thing came out. Simply amazing if you think about it.

[Tom T]

I just bought a Sony Laptop running Windows 8 out of the box, but I doubt it will help their credit rating. Still, nice machine, and killer design as you would expect from Sony.
I wonder how much the tsunami that hit Japan hurt Sony.

Sent from my Galaxy Note 10.1

[amdaley]

Due to the financial crash everyone has fallen.
The Big the Small & the In between.
Its strange how the markets fail to acknowledge how Moody's amongst other rating agencies didn't see the crash coming & in very many cases got their predictions very badly wrong.
The financial ratings agencies came in for severe criticism when the financial crisis started in 2007 because a large percentage of the investments that were backed by mortgages that were either never going to be paid back or were even fraudulent,were given the very best grade by the three supposed best rating agencies Moody's Standard & Poors & Fitches.
The markets had become so complicated that any word from these agencies was treated as gospel.
Things have changed. Recently one of the agencies downgraded some countries credit rating which should have put up the interest rate of that countries borrowing.
The exact opposite happened in that the market ignored the downgrading & the interest rate fell instead of going up.Investors have become much more cautious now when looking at what the ratings agencies are saying.

[amdaley]

Due to the financial crash everyone has fallen.
The Big the Small & the In between.
Its strange how the markets fail to acknowledge how Moody's amongst other rating agencies didn't see the crash coming & in very many cases got their predictions very badly wrong.
The financial ratings agencies came in for severe criticism when the financial crisis started in 2007 because a large percentage of the investments that were backed by mortgages that were either never going to be paid back or were even fraudulent,were given the very best grade by the three supposed best rating agencies Moody's Standard & Poors & Fitches.
The markets had become so complicated that any word from these agencies was treated as gospel.
Things have changed. Recently one of the agencies downgraded some countries credit rating which should have put up the interest rate of that countries borrowing.
The exact opposite happened in that the market ignored the downgrading & the interest rate fell instead of going up.Investors have become much more cautious now when looking at what the ratings agencies are saying.

EDit:
I have several pieces of Sony equipment & have always found them to be very well built & very reliable.
I would have no hesitation in buying more Sony products in the future.
So Moody's put that in your pipe & smoke it