Mumbai: Eros International Media Limited (Eros International), a leading global Company in the Indian film entertainment industry, today announced its consolidated financial results for the quarter ended December 31, 2016.
The marginal decrease in revenues is on account of a narrower film slate comprising 3 medium budget and 5 small budget films in Q3 FY2017 as compared to 1 high budget, 4 medium budget and 10 small budget films during the Q3 FY2016 offset by comparatively stronger catalogue revenues.
Despite demonetization impacting theatrical revenues, the company’s strong performance was driven by presales across all revenue streams and catalogue sales momentum.
Operational Highlights:
Refocus on library monetization & strong presales ensures a profitable quarter
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- Theatrical performances of movies such as Rock On 2, Kahaani 2 (Overseas), Chaar Sahibzaade 2 (Punjabi), Double Feluda (Bengali), received subdued response at the box-office primarily due to the temporary effects of the demonetization in India
- The Company released a total of 8 films during the quarter (15 films in Q3 FY 2016). This was also due to holding back further releases in the quarter until the negative impact from demonetization subsides.
- Strong pre-sales strategy safeguarded overall performance – 65% of the total film slate cost in Q3 FY17 covered through satellite, overseas and theatrical pre-sales. Few of our films also benefitted from opportunistic pre-sales deals through our co-producers to Amazon which has made a big impact in India and further increased the underlying value of our library.
- In the second half of FY 16 we had held back catalogue revenues to bring about balance sheet efficiencies. In FY 17, we have significantly caught up with those sales with substantial revenues this quarter being contributed from catalogue monetization, given that we chose not to release further new films in the demonetization climate.
- Diversified revenue mix
- Theatrical Revenues contributed – 35.5%, Overseas Revenues – 30.4% and Television & Others – 34.1% as a percentage of Income from Operations
- Trinity Pictures – Building franchises and not just films
- Trinity’s first franchise film Sniff – I Spy, a superhero film directed by Amole Gupte slated for 5th May release. Comics, Gaming, Merchandise and Animation extensions in place
- Sniff comics to be distributed by Diamond Comics, first comic to be published in February
- Sniff Arcade Game in partnership with Viaan Studios will be launched as a mobile game
- A tie-up with Imagica for licensing the Sniff merchandise
- Animation Series for digital/television in partnership with Green Gold post film release
- 3 brands already on board for in-film integration
- In pre-production and casting for 5 other franchises, 3 of which will enter production in 2017. These include 2 Indo-China productions:
- Live action bilingual (Hindi & Tamil) elephant film directed by Prabhu Solomon
- Ace director Krish’s buddy cop film, shot in Hindi and Tamil simultaneously
- Two Indo-China co-productions; Kabir Khan’s travel drama, The Zookeeper & Siddharth Anand’s cross-cultural romantic comedy, Love in Beijing
- Trinity Writers Room has completed development on 15 other franchises and 80 film concepts and while not all of these will turn into films in the next 3 years, plans are underway to develop some of them into comic /novels etc.
- Trinity’s first franchise film Sniff – I Spy, a superhero film directed by Amole Gupte slated for 5th May release. Comics, Gaming, Merchandise and Animation extensions in place
Announces largest slate by any Indian studio in CY17
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- More than 50 movies with more than 40 directors across 8 languages
- 9 Bengali Films, including Soumitra Chatterjee’s Posto with Windows
- 5 Malayalam Films, including Maqtro Pictures’ C/O Saira Banu starring Manju Warrier
- Exciting Line-up of 5 Tamil Films including films directed by Manikandan & Venkat Prabhu.
- 4 Marathi Films with Everest Talkies, including Hemant Dhome’s Baghtos Kay Mujra Kar and Prakash Kunte’s sequel to Coffee ani Barach Kahi
- 2 Punjabi Films with Baweja Movies, including Harry Baweja’s Guru Tegh Bahadur & Jaita
- 2 Telugu Films with Idream Production
Commenting on the performance of Q3 & 9M FY2017, Mr. Sunil Lulla, Executive Vice Chairman & MD of Eros International Media Ltd. said, “This quarter results gave us a chance to bring out the strength of our valuable library. In spite of demonetization move by the Government which had a temporary negative impact on theatrical revenues, we demonstrated our robust business model by bringing in strong contributions from catalogue sales across television and other distribution channels. Rock On 2 although impacted directly by the demonetization benefited from strong pre-sales in television and digital streams. Although the movies released during the quarter witnessed weak box office performances due to lack of footfalls, we firmly believe, that the demonetization step, in the longer term, will throw up a huge opportunity for us to strengthen our lead in corporatizing the Indian Media and Entertainment industry.
“As we look ahead, we are investing smartly for the longer term in-line with our portfolio approach across varied budgets and languages. Our strong industry-leading production slate of over 50 movies in CY2017 has gone through a stringent green-lighting process for many months”.
“The upcoming line-up includes highly promising projects such as five films from Trinity, two Indo-China co-productions, a Shahrukh Khan film from Color Yellow, two sequels from our own IPs like Vicky Donor-2, Badlapur-2, Munna Michael starring Tiger Shroff, Chanda Mama Door Ke starring Sushant Singh, amongst others.”
