Sony said it was enjoying strong sales of new LCD TVs and camcorders and that the one-off pension gain, amounting to a hefty 73.5 billion yen in the quarter, was about 20 percent larger than anticipated due to stronger Japanese share prices.
But the company stuck by its forecast of an operating loss of 20 billion yen for the year to March, underscoring a lack of confidence in its core electronics division, which would have lost 47 billion yen in the quarter without the pension gain.
"We still don't know what kind of products and at what prices our competitors are going to bring to market in the year-end shopping season. So we are taking a cautious stance," Chief Financial Officer Nobuyuki Oneda told news conference.
Sony, the world's second-largest consumer electronics maker after Japan's Matsushita Electric Industrial Co Ltd, said group operating profit came to 65.92 billion yen ($568.8 million) in the second quarter ended September, against a 43.4 billion yen profit a year earlier.
Sales were virtually flat at 1.703 trillion yen.