Sony has denied reports that it has given a profit warning and said comments by finance director Mr Katsumi Ihara in the Nikkei Financial Dailyhad been mistranslated into English from Japanese.
"There is no change to existing forecasts," a Sony spokesman in Tokyo said.
The newspaper had quoted Mr Ihara as saying electronic components turnover is below expectations, which could feed through to profitability. The Sony spokesman said that although sales growth has slowed, it is too early to say what effect this might have on the group as a whole.
The spokesman said a comment that the newspaper attributed to Mr Ihara that the television and audio equipment business is "disastrous" is incorrect.
The spokesman said Mr Ihara did not say that, but that when he took up his office in June, Ihara had scrutinised every sector closely and found profitability was not as strong as he had assumed in some sectors.
The spokesman said Sony's full-year forecasts are unchanged.
The electronics giant has predicted net profit will rise 13 per cent to 100 billion yen in the year to March 2005, with pretax profit forecast at 160 billion yen on revenue up 1 per cent to 7.55 trillion yen.
In its first quarter to June, operating profit declined 41.1 per cent to 9.8 billion yen, although net profit rose to 23.3 billion yen from 1.1 billion yen a year earlier. Revenue rose 0.5 per cent to 1.612 trillion yen and pre-tax profit slumped 81.5 per cent to 6.6 billion yen.