After a shaky first quarter post the Starz split, things are looking a lot better for Lionsgate. Having managed to beat out the Wall Street forecasts, there are even better things ahead with a strong release slate, too, as our entertainment attorney from Blake & Wang P.A., Brandon Blake, is here to share.
Beating Forecasts
In their latest quarterly earnings release, which details Q3 for them, Lionsgate Studios saw an 18% tick up in revenue, landing at $724M, and operating income at $85M – much better than Wall Street believed it would make.
Motion Picture revenue was up 35%, with 2 highly successful releases, The Housemaid and Now You See Me, Now You Don’t, helping along the $421M taken. And importantly, we will only see The Housemaid’s full impact in Q4 for them, given it only had 12 days of Q3 in its run.
The news wasn’t all good, however. Higher prints and advertising costs put pressure on the film segment, although it still brought in $58.5. This helped to offset some of the good news into an overall net loss for the year so far, but it’s still great to see the studio hitting its stride now that it is operating separately from Starz.
Strong Slate Ahead
With the Starz split finally put to bed, we are also looking at a year with a much stronger Lionsgate release slate ahead. Their TV production arm also did well, with revenue of $303M and a segment profit of $55.7M. Although these are lower than the previous year, that’s mostly a timing snag. Their extensive library has been bringing in strong revenue, rising 10% to set a billion-dollar new record.
While Lionsgate itself likely would have liked to see that loss gap close up a little more, it’s a more impressive showing than we saw in the prior quarter, and suggests we will see some great results from them in their next fiscal year.
Film and Television 