Sony Corp. on Thursday announced a group pretax loss of 13.72 billion yen in the first half through Sept. 30, a sharp reversal from the profit of 113.73 billion yen marked in the corresponding period last year.

The high-tech giant attributed the decline to poor performance in its core electronics business amid a global economic slowdown and intensified competition. However, its game and movie businesses performed strongly, it said.

In its group earnings report based on U.S. accounting rules, Sony said it marked a net loss of 43.26 billion yen for the first half, compared with a 73.78 billion yen loss the year before, on revenues of 3.425 trillion yen, up 5.2 percent.

The company will pay an interim dividend of 12.50 yen per share for the half-year period, unchanged from last year.

For the full year, the company left unchanged its downwardly revised earnings forecast of last month.

On Sept. 28, Sony said it expects a group net profit of 10 billion yen, revised down from a projection in July of a 90 billion yen profit, and a group pretax profit of 70 billion yen, down from 200 billion yen, on group revenues of 7.5 trillion yen, down from 7.7 trillion yen.

Sony also released its group earnings for the July-September quarter, in which it posed a net loss of 13.18 billion yen, against the profit of 18.66 billion yen a year earlier, and a pretax profit of 610 million yen, down 99.2 percent, on revenues of 1.787 trillion yen, up 5.7 percent.