Sony Corp.'s latest earnings disappointment held a silver lining: the company's willingness to entertain some of activist investor Daniel Loeb's suggestions. And it may be just the beginning.
The Tokyo-based company forecast a $1.1 billion annual loss as it sells the personal computer business and splits the TV-manufacturing division into a separate unit that it may eventually divest. While falling short of Loeb's calls for a bigger breakup, the moves sparked an 11 percent jump in the shares last week, and followed a pledge to provide more transparency in Sony's financial statements.
"This goes a long way towards what Dan Loeb was talking about," Lawrence Haverty, a fund manager at Gamco Investors Inc. in Rye, New York, said in a phone interview. Gamco oversees $47 billion and owns Sony shares. "I like the idea of first things first and one step at a time. There's an awful lot of really encouraging stuff that's happening."