Thursday, March 07, 2013

Mini-Console Post

I just wanted to note what Sony has sold in the last month:
-- Sony sells DeNA shares for $438M
DeNa is a "Japanese mobile portal", according to Joystiq.
-- Sony agrees to sell US headquarters for $1.1 billion
That was a 37-story building on Madison Avenue, by the way.
-- Sony sells Tokyo office building for $1.2 billion

It doesn't take calculus to figure out that Sony needs cash. Their problem is that it's very expensive to issue bonds when your credit rating has been reduced to junk status, and servicing the debt would become considerably more costly, so they're turned to selling assets instead.

There's also a problem with selling assets like buildings, though. Both of those buildings, since they were in downtown NYC and Tokyo, are going to continue to rapidly appreciate in value. They're giving up future value--quite a lot of future value--to raise cash now.

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