Sony has announced it will delay its third quarter financial results following the brutal attack on its film division at the end November.
The move comes as a result of continuing computer problems linked to the attack by the Guardians of Peace, which led to the leaking of emails, personal data and films from the Sony Pictures Entertainment (SPE).
In a statement Sony said: "As a result of the cyber-attack, which has been now recognised as a highly sophisticated and damaging cyber-attack, a serious disruption of SPE’s network systems occurred, including the destruction of network hardware and the compromise of a large amount of data on these systems. In response to this cyber attack, SPE shut down its entire network."
"Most of SPE’s financial and accounting applications and many other critical information technology applications will not be functional until early February 2015 due to the amount of destruction and disruption that occurred, and the care necessary to avoid further damage by prematurely restarting functions."
Sony will hold a conference on February 4 to discuss forecasts for the third quarter, and will delay the actual results from February 16 until March 31.
"Even with the anticipated restoration of these applications in early February 2015, SPE will not have sufficient time to close its financial statements in time for submission of the quarterly securities report in the middle of February 2015," the company explained.
"SPE must then enter transactional data for the two-month period the systems were offline and perform verification procedures over the restored data."
Shares in Sony on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) fell towards the end of trading hours yesterday from a high of $22.23 to a low of $22.11 in afterhours trading, but bounced back to $22.17.
A lack of confidence in the firm was seen in December, causing stock prices to fall, caused by the press revealing the extent of the leak. Share prices have since recovered to pre-attack levels.
