While a majority of us, including yours truly, consider Sony an electronics and entertainment company (lumping music, pictures, and PlayStation under that), the truth is that they’re a lot more. In fact, most mature companies like Sony and Apple have stakes in a lot of businesses that the general public might not be aware of. As an example, Apple more recently invested $1 billion in Chinese ride-hailing service Didi Chuxing. Sony for its part has always had a diverse portfolio which has ranged from being an ISP in Japan with Yahoo as a partner, to offering financial services and loans. Now, one of those investments is paying off in strides.

Again, most of these types of investments tend to go unseen to you and I and only pop up in business journals and quarterly earnings reports. That’s why it’s fascinating to learn that Sony has a 39% holding in M3, a medical startup thats seen its value increase by more than $1 billion in the last 12 months. So what is M3?

 M3 is a medical web portal founded in 2000 that is used by doctors in Japan, China, the U.S. and other countries to find medical studies, look up drug information and network with each other. The company, also based in Tokyo, said earlier this year that it plans to increase its own investments in health-care startups in Japan and abroad. 

Now back to the money part.

 The Tokyo-based consumer electronics company has seen the value of its stake in M3 Inc. rise more than 50 percent over the past year to about $4 billion, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The 39 percent holding has increased by more than $1 billion in the last 12 months. 

Sony has been playing the long term game with a lot of their divisions like TVs which has recently rebounded to being profitable and mobile, which, despite many challenges ahead, will likely finally post a small profit this year.

 M3 acquired assets from Sony in 2003 and went public in 2004. M3 shares have surged this year on rising sales and profits. The stock was little changed Thursday after gaining 4.5 percent to an all-time high of 3,480 yen on Wednesday. Sony shares were also little changed. 

While for Apple, an extra $1 billion in profits doesn’t mean much, seeing how the company has a market cap of $526 billion, that’s still a nice chunk of change for Sony, which has a $36 billion cap.

Discuss:

Do you think investments such as these are a distraction for Sony or a smart move on their part?

[Via Yahoo]