Mumbai: Eros International Media Ltd. has announced unaudited financial results for the quarter ended June 30, 2018.
Eros maintains focus on films with high ROI potential and augment the library with quality content for exploitation through the distribution channels and explore new bundling strategies to monetize existing content. Enhances the momentum to invest in future slates comprised of a diverse portfolio mix ranging from high budget global theatrical releases to lower budget movies with targeted audiences. Eros continues to leverage the longstanding relationships with creative talent, production houses and other key industry participants that has been built from founding years to source a wide variety of content.
Key Business Highlights & Announcements:
- Eros released 14 films in Q1 FY2019 (1 medium budget and 13 small budget films) as compared to 5 films in Q1 FY2018 (1 high budget, 1 medium budget and 3 small budget films)
- Eros and V. Vijayendra Prasad have agreed to partner and jointly develop scripts, greenlight projects, produce & distribute films and web-series across Hindi, Telugu and Tamil languages
- The Company revenues were driven during the quarter with the releases ranging across regional languages – Bhavesh Joshi (Hindi), Meri Nimmo (Digital release), Blackmail (Overseasi), Haami (Bengali), Goodnight City (Bengali) and Alinagarer Golokdhadha (Bengali) and others
- Eros successfully premiered India’s first straight to digital film, Eros Now original, “Meri Nimmo” on the platform
- TV and Others segment included satellite sales of catalogue films to Zee Entertainment Network and more
- Eros remains focused on its film pipeline, with 40 – 50 films across genres, Hindi and regional languages slated to release during this financial year, a comprehensive slate of forthcoming releases will see Happy Phir Bhaag Jayegi, Manmarziyaan, Tumbadd and Take Care Good Night (Marathi) shortly. In addition, it plans to release host of new content series including short form web series, short films, as well as digital films on Eros Now
Commenting on the performance of Q1 FY2019, Mr. Sunil Lulla, Executive Vice Chairman & MD of Eros International Media Ltd. said: “We have started the year on an excellent note on operational and strategic parameters. Our strategy of a content driven approach reflected in a robust green lighting process enabling us to de-risk our model. Our film content is deeply researched and evaluated for its revenue potential across platforms and markets by our business leaders, due to which we were able to again deliver margin enhancing performance in Q1FY2019. The new JV kicking in with V. Vijayendra Prasad for Hindi and regional content and Reliance Eros Productions LLP for USD 150 mn already in process is bound further boost our content strategy and reflect in our financial performance in the forthcoming quarters”.
The first quarter was marked by the successful releases of our films which contributed to the overall growth. Our strong slate across languages, active pre-sales and catalogue monetization of our films’ library further supported the performance during the quarter. Looking ahead, we have drawn a compelling line-up for the remainder of the year featuring high-potential movies such Çolor Yellow Productions “Happy Phir Bhaag Jayegi”, Anurag Kashyap’s “Manmarziyan”, the India-China co-productions, ‘Panda’ by Kabir Khan, trilingual “Haathi mere Saathi” and multiple other films across languages.
He further added, “As always, we continue to be a pioneer in industry innovations in catering to the changing tastes and preferences of the audiences. In this quarter, we released “Meri Nimmo” straight-to-digital on the Eros Now platform. I am happy to share that the film received a tremendous response from the audience and we look forward to launching more such films and originals on the Eros Now platform during the course of this fiscal. Along with it the roll-out of fresh and strong original content, makes us confident that the pace of subscriber addition for Eros Now will further accelerate, going from 50 to 100 cities and almost doubling the subscriber base to 16 million by end of the Fiscal year.
