Sony on Thursday forecast that its aggressive restructuring programme would help it break even at the operating level in the current year, though only if costs of Y110bn ($1.1bn) for that restrucuring are stripped out.

Sony became the latest Japanese electronics company to forecast an improvement as it reported results for the year to March 2009 that beat its most recent forecast in January, suggesting that the company has reaped some benefits from restructuring and recent weakness in the yen.