The March 11 quake's negative impact on Sony sales is estimated to be about 22 billion yen in the just ended year, it said. But Sony also said that revenue likely would increase in this fiscal year, after a fiscal 2011 decline of 0.5%, to 7.18 trillion yen.

Sony said that for the just ended year it expects to record charges of about 12 billion yen, "consisting principally of idle facility costs at manufacturing sites and an incremental provision for life insurance policy reserves." An estimated net margin loss of about 5 billion yen, associated with "a decrease in sales resulting from the earthquake and an estimate of variable costs," is also expected.

The net loss was 260 billion yen in the March 31 year just ended, including the writedown on the value of deferred tax assets. That compares, Bloomberg reported, with the 76 billion yen profit average of analyst estimates the news service compiled in the past month, and with Sony's previous annual-profit forecast of 70 billion yen.

Sony also discussed the company's problems with trying to resume completely its PlayStation Network and Qriocity online services, after an attack between April 16 and April 19 by hackers compromised personal information from more than 100 million users who had game, music and film accounts.