Sony throws cold water on the holidays
The last quarter of 2009 will be bad, execs say, and that's grim news for the entire electrics sector.
Sony (SNE) expects its holiday sales to be poor. That is terrible news for the consumer electronics and PC industries.
Sony is a nearly perfect proxy for those sectors. It sells PCs, video games, TV screens, and digital cameras. Many of Sony’s competitors will have to gird for another harsh holiday selling season, unless the forecast from the big Japanese company is based on a large drop in market share across most of its businesses.
Sir Howard Stringer, Sony’s CEO, was quoted by Reuters as saying: “There hasn’t been that turning point that many had hoped for. We are waiting for a signal that hasn’t arrived.”
If Stringer is a canary in the coal mine of holiday electronics sales, it means that companies from Best Buy (BBY) to Microsoft (MSFT) and Nintendo to Dell (DELL) might post worse-than-expected fourth-quarter revenue.
Analysts are guessing that American holiday retail sales will be flat to slightly down this year. High unemployment and tight credit could make those figures stunningly optimistic. Christmas numbers for 2009 could be as bad has they have been in decades.
Sony has done worse than many of its competitors over the past two years. It is still large enough and its product line is large enough that its predictions are a warning to a sector of the business world that has not begun to recover and may lag well behind much of the general economy.
Top Stocks writer Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 24/7 Wall St.
Related articles:
MORE ON MSN MONEY
DATA PROVIDERS
Copyright © 2013 Microsoft. All rights reserved.
Quotes are real-time for NASDAQ, NYSE and AMEX. See delay times for other exchanges.
Fundamental company data and historical chart data provided by Thomson Reuters (click for restrictions). Real-time quotes provided by BATS Exchange. Real-time index quotes and delayed quotes supplied by Interactive Data Real-Time Services. Fund summary, fund performance and dividend data provided by Morningstar Inc. Analyst recommendations provided by Zacks Investment Research. StockScouter data provided by Verus Analytics. IPO data provided by Hoover's Inc. Index membership data provided by SIX Financial Information.
Japanese stock price data provided by Nomura Research Institute Ltd.; quotes delayed 20 minutes. Canadian fund data provided by CANNEX Financial Exchanges Ltd.
STOCK SCOUTER
StockScouter rates stocks from 1 to 10, with 10 being the best, using a system of advanced mathematics to determine a stock's expected risk and return. Ratings are displayed on a bell curve, meaning there will be fewer ratings of 1 and 10 and far more of 4 through 7.
133 | 268 | 459 | 583 | 667 | 590 | 672 | 430 | 258 | 140 |
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 |
LATEST POSTS
Long-term investors should focus on high-quality companies with long histories of dividend increases.
FIDELITY VIEWPOINTS
- How to sell covered calls - Fidelity Investments
- Savvy year-end tax moves to consider now - Fidelity Investments
- Seven ways to prepare for tax changes
- Five reasons an annual review is crucial - Fidelity Investments
- Take a look at mid caps now - Fidelity Investments
- State of the sector: Health care - Fidelity Investments
VIDEO ON MSN MONEY
ABOUT
Top Stocks provides analysis about the most noteworthy stocks in the market each day, combining some of the best content from around the MSN Money site and the rest of the Web.
Contributors include professional investors and journalists affiliated with MSN Money.
Follow us on Twitter @topstocksmsn.