Dreamworks Animation SKG
Contact
1000 Flower Street Glendale, CA 91201
Phone: (818) 695-5000
Twitter: twitter.com/dwanimation
Homepage: http://www.dreamworks.com/home/
Investors’ page: http://ir.dreamworksanimation.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=185803&p=irol-irhome
Key Executives
Background Information
Dreamworks Animation is an animation producing company that has been around since 2004. They are well known to the world having produced numerous films including ‘Shrek,’ ‘Wallace and Gromit,’ ‘Chicken Run,’ ‘How to Train your Dragon,’ ‘Kung Fu Panda,’ and ‘Madagascar.’
History
On October 12, 1994, three experienced hollywood entertainment veterans gathered up and founded Dreamworks SKG targetting to create a new Hollywood major film company. Mr. Katzenberg, a former Disney executive, recruited his own animation staff from Disney, while Spielberg brought in some of his animation artists from Amblimation, located at London.
In 2004, with Jefferey Katzenberg, Dreamworks’ animation department departed from its parent company Dreamworks/Public Data Images. They made an individual company that distributes and produces their own animations and named it Dreamworks Animation. Since their foundation in 2004, Dreamworks Animation has won 3 Academy Awards, 1 Golden Globe Award and has been nominated for both Academy awards and Golden Globe awards countless times.
Current Plan(2016)
- MOVIES
Starting this quarter, Dreamworks Animation SKG changed their plans from producing 3 movies a year to producing only 2 movies a year. Although they have produced only one movie last year, “Home“; this year they are planning to launch 2 movies; ‘Kung Fu Panda 3’ and ‘Trolls‘.
- KUNG FU PANDA 3
Kung Fu Panda 3, one of Dreamworks Animation’s most successful animated film after Shrek, has hit the film market with great impact and has already achieved success world wide.
Avoiding to launch their movie at the same date with the new Star Wars movie, Kung Fu Panda 3 pushed back their launch date to January 29th. Collaborating an advertisement for Super Bowl with Wix before the release turned out to be a big success to have the public aware of the movie.
Though their stock prices have dropped by 6 dollars per stock, Dreamworks Animation did not seem to be worried at all. By earning 48 million dollars at the first week of the release, Kung Fu Panda kept their effort at the Box Office with great consistency.
However, due to Deadpool’s amazing success at the Box Office, Kung Fu Panda 3’s winning streak had to stop at the third week of their release. Though Kung Fu Panda 3’s weekly gross immediately reduced after Deadpool and Zootopia’s monopoly, the ‘Panda‘ still had an alternative and unreplacable plan.
Thanks to the Chinese giants who distributed and exhibited the ‘Panda’ movie at China, Dreamworks Animation could not only succeed on having a great start on 2016, but they also could recover their stock prices. Due to the success, Dreamworks could announce their last quarterly reports for 2015 safely with 55 cents per share: which was 39 cents higher than expected to be.
2. TROLLS
Trolls is the last movie that Dreamworks Animation will release this year. Trolls will be open to the public in November, with some star voices that the audience might recognize. For Dreamworks Animation to continue their favorable situation, and compete with Disney and Pixar, Trolls must also achieve success.
- NEW MEDIA
VOLTRON: LEGENDARY DEFENDER
Not just movies, but Dreamworks Animation has reached their range to Television Series all over the world. Realizing that producing profit-unpredictable feature films might not make a jackpot, Dreamworks Animation switched their target to a rather non-risky platform such as SVODS since 2013. After buying Classic Media’s classic TV animation characters for $155 million, Dreamworks Animation has announced that they will be producing and distributing Noddy, the classic 90s-00s animation at France and at the United Kingdom.
Netflix is one of the most frequently accessed media platform that 69-million people use regardless of their age. Dreamworks Animation has announced a partnership with Netflix last January. Netflix are now going to be a global home of various Dreamworks -Animation produced featured films including ‘The Adventures of Puss in Boots,’ and ‘Dinotrux.’ Plus, the two video giants will be launching ‘Trollhunters,’ and ‘Voltron: Legendary Defender’, a remake of a legendary Japanese animation.
Awesomeness TV is also one of Dreamworks Animation’s main source of income. Though giving Verizon 24.5% of Awesomeness TV’s stake, Dreamworks still remains as the main owner having over 50% of the stakes. It costed about 110 million dollars to buy the Awesomeness TV, but it is now making 70 million dollars of extra revenue every year; which is exceeding the profit of any other source of income that Dreamworks Animation has.
How important are these new media that Dreamworks started to concentrate on?
As seen above, Dreamworks Animation’s revenue has exceedingly increased in 2015. Compared to 2012, 2013 and 2014 was not a good year for Dreamworks Animation because their revenue from feature films reduced and the profit from their newly-trying items weren’t too strong to shine. However, in 2015, even though ‘Home’ was the only featured film that they produced, their revenue from TV series and media made Dreamworks Animation leap in the market.
Like above, Dreamworks Animation is having fun with the new media that they have recently started investing on. Although feature films are not doing so well as they did in the past, their strategy concentrating on subscription video-on-demand are crucial to their growth.
- INTERNATIONAL OPPORTUNITIES
Not just China, but now they are targetting the whole world. Dreamworks Animation has put effort on producing spin-offs for each countries. They concentrated ‘Kung Fu Panda’ spin-offs in China and ‘How to train your dragon’ spinoffs in Korea; which have made a huge amount of profit and awareness of the company in countries.
On April 20th, Dreamworks Animation and Korea Telecom made an agreement to launch a ‘DREAMWORKS CHANNEL’ in South Korea. After having a bunch of success in Asia, Dreamworks Animation decided to launch their own channel in South Korea; which is the third independent channel that they have created in Asia. Starting in May, the channel will be officially distributed via ‘OLLEH TV.’
Conclusion
In a nutshell, Dreamworks Animation seem to having been adjusting to the market trend for a past few years, but they have now fixed their goal using new media as their medium. Though it might be risky to put most of their eggs in Netflix, investors and the public will have to look forward to what the company is up to in the following years.
Citation
- Dreamworks Animation Q4 2015 Earnings Call. Retreived on April 22, 2016. http://ir.dreamworksanimation.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=185803&p=quarterlyearnings
- Wall Street Journal Dreamworks Animation Retreived on April 22, 2016. http://quotes.wsj.com/DWA
- Verizon becomes minority partners with DWA’s Awesomeness TV. Retreived on April 22, 2016. http://seekingalpha.com/news/3171687-verizon-becoming-minority-partner-dreamworks-animations-awesomenesstv
- Kung Fu Panda 3 Box Office Results. Retreived on April 22, 2016. http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=kungfupanda3.htm
- PRNewswire. January 5, 2016. Netflix and DWA’s partnership. Retreived on April 22, 2016. http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/netflix-and-dreamworks-animation-expand-global-relationship-300199181.html
- Steven Mackenzie. March 24, 2016. Jefferey Katzenberg interview. Retreived on April 22, 2016. http://www.bigissue.com/features/interviews/6379/dreamworks-ceo-jeffrey-katzenberg-were-in-a-golden-age-for-animation
- Tom Eames. July 23, 2012 Dreamworks Animation buys rights to classic animations. Retreived on April 22, 2016. http://www.digitalspy.com/movies/news/a394823/dreamworks-buys-rights-to-he-man-casper-lassie-noddy-more/
- Katy Finbow. April 8, 2016. Noddy, launches in France and the United Kingdom. Retreived on April 22, 2016. http://www.digitalspy.com/tv/news/a640413/noddy-toyland-detective-dreamworks-to-reboot-character-for-new-tv-series/
- Paul Bond. February 23, 2016. Dreamworks Animation’s stock prices rise. Retreived on April 22, 2016. http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/dreamworks-animation-blasts-past-expectations-868808
- Sara Alessi. April 20, 2016. Dreamworks Channel reaches to the Republic of Korea. Retreived on April 22, 2016. http://worldscreen.com/tvkids/dreamworks-channel-reaches-south-korea/
- Jan Dawson. March 2, 2016. Retreived on April 22, 2016. http://variety.com/2016/biz/news/the-strategy-strengthening-dreamworks-animation-stock-1201719924/
- Moira Keihm. February 7, 2016. Retreived on April 25, 2016.http://heavy.com/social/2016/02/kung-fu-panda-3-super-bowl-commercial-wix-com-superbowl-ad-2016-watch/