Thursday, May 07, 2015

The DWA Conference Call

DreamWorks execs talk to the financial press.

... DreamWorks' only feature film release of the year came through in spades for the company. It has collected over $150 million in U.S. theaters. ...

Foreign exchange swings took a bite out of Home's reported profit ... Katzenberg used the example of the Russian ruble, which has depreciated significantly against the U.S. dollar this year. In local currency, Home was the company's top grossing film of all time in Russia. However, it failed to meet that mark after translating results back into dollars. ...

DreamWorks' output deal with Netflix is a big reason why the company thinks it can grow TV revenue to $250 million this year, with a profit margin north of 30%. The company delivered 40 episodes to Netflix in 2014 across four TV series. This year, that production will spike higher. ...

[Management predicted] 2015 will be a breakeven year for the company -- excluding the restructuring charges that DreamWorks is taking to organize the business for lower movie production volumes. Its TV division will be key to that result, as will the home entertainment performance of recent feature films. ...

DreamWorks Animation has a lot of strengths, but DWA artistic staff past and present continues to say administration is top heavy and production decisions could be crisper.

But its television and internet initiatives should be profit centers for the company. And Kung Fu Panda 3 should be quite helpful too.

2 comments:

Maya said...

Cool animation and virtual effects

Unknown said...

Home needs another $47 million just to match The Penguins of Madagascar's world wide gross of $374 million. And didn't DreamWorks write that movie off? Home has a respectable domestic gross but disappointing international returns.

Site Meter