Sony’s not getting much love with the investors these days.
Sony’s faced some unsurprisingly harsh public perception over the past few weeks, thanks to how the PlayStation Network and Home were both hacked and a lot of credit card information was compromised. As a result, it turns out that the company’s stock hasn’t been doing terribly well recently.
Investor confidence is naturally down; as a result, share prices dropped 3.7 percent this week after it was announced that Sony Online Entertainment had been hacked. Tokyo’s stock market was closed on Tuesday and Thursday for national holidays this week, but reactions to the news on Friday wasn’t good.
On top of this, analysts are apparently saying that Sony’s in a pretty precarious position, thanks especially to rumors that a third attack on the company’s networks is planned this weekend. According to Kota Ezawa, an analyst for Citigroup Global Markets Japan:
“There is a real concern that trust in Sony’s business will decline. The network business itself still only makes a small direct contribution to earnings, but we see a potential drop in hardware sales as a concern.”
Howard Stringer, Sony’s president, openly apologized to the public for the hacks. On top of that, Sony is working on providing its customers in North America and Europe with identity theft protection.
Source: CVG via GamePolitics
