Wednesday, February 18, 2009

DreamWorks Animation Watch

Yesterday, in between running around like the proverbial headless rooster, I bopped over to the DreamWorks Animation campus. The place is humming. And it's not just inside the studio's vine-covered walls:

Dreamworks Animation (DWA) was upgraded today by analysts at Wedbush Morgan ... The analysts upped DWA to "Buy" from "Hold." Over the last 52 weeks the stock has ranged from a low of $20.39 to a high of $32.73.

The stock getting a greenlight, particularly in this market (see below) is a good thing, yes? On the other hand:

DreamWorks Animation SKG Inc. is teaming up with Cerelink Digital Media Group of New Mexico to use the resources of the Computing Applications Center so DreamWorks can render its three-dimensional films in New Mexico.

As part of the project, an ultra high-speed link now connects New Mexico to Hollywood. That was done by the Computing Applications Center in collaboration with the University of New Mexico, the New Mexico Department of Information Technology, National LambdaRail and Cerelink DMG ...

More jobs in New Mexico, fewer jobs in Glendale. And yet again On the other hand:

Goldman downgraded Dreamworks (NYSE: DWA) to Neutral from Buy and lowered its target to $25 from $35 citing high expectations for "Monsters vs. Aliens" and DVD market softness ...

DreamWorks Animation steady hiring of new personnel has now leveled off. Even when you're a cartoon studio with a hot hand, you play it cautious when 1) the stock market's having conniption fits, 2) you only have one film coming out in 2009, and 3) you don't have a great roadmap for what lies around the next corner.

Cost containment is the order of the day, and while nobody is thrilled with wage levels not rising, nobody is complaining (at least, not to me).

The sentence I hear over and over ... and let me know if you've heard this before ... is:

"I'm happy to have a job ..."

It's rapidly becoming 1936, all over again.

1 comments:

Anonymous said...

News Release

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact:
Cerelink Digital Media Group, 505-899-6550
Melissa Walters-Leymon, 505-266-5637

Cerelink® Digital Media Group Clarifying Information
Regarding Partnership With DreamWorks Animation SKG Inc.

RIO RANCHO, NM – February 19, 2009 - This information seeks to clarify and outline details regarding the partnership between Cerelink Digital Media Group, the New Mexico Computing Applications Center (NMCAC) and DreamWorks Animation SKG Inc. Earlier this week Gov. Bill Richardson announced that Cerelink DMG entered into an agreement with the Glendale, California-based company.

While Cerelink Digital Media Group will be using NMCAC’s resources to explore the delivery of on-demand and scalable computing resources as a cloud service, DreamWorks Animation will not be using the NMCAC supercomputer, Encanto, as part of this partnership. While we believe the state’s supercomputer has the potential to be used by digital media companies in the future, Cerelink Digital Media Group will instead be building out compute capacity for this effort using DreamWorks’ standard rendering platform, Intel based c-class HP blades.

The potential for future collaborations involving the use of Encanto remain open, however no part of the agreement announced on February 17, 2009 was intended to associate the collaboration with DreamWorks Animation and the use of this supercomputer.

###
About Cerelink ®
Cerelink, Cerelink Digital Media Group and Cerelink Digital Labs use broadband Internet connections and other advanced technologies to power innovative solutions that deliver economic value for a variety of clients. Cerelink is based in Corrales, NM. http://www.cerelink.com, http://www.cerelinkdmg.com, http://www.cerelinkdl.com

About NMCAC
The New Mexico Computing Applications Center (NMCAC) was approved by New Mexico’s Legislature in 2007 and began operations in 2008 as a resource for applications-driven high-speed computer problem solving. Working closely with the Los Alamos National Laboratory, Sandia National Labs and the State’s three research universities, the NMCAC is dedicated to serving the needs of the people of New Mexico as well as tackling some of the nation's most pressing problems like energy and the environment using high-speed computing. http://www.newmexicosupercomputer.com/

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