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Tag: Eros STX

  • Eros STX reports $144 mn revenue for first 6 months of FY21

    Eros STX reports $144 mn revenue for first 6 months of FY21

    KOLKATA: Multinational media entertainment company Eros STX Global Corporation has reported $144 million revenue million for the six months ended 30 September 2020, compared to $210 million in the prior year period. 

    The decline in revenue has been attributed to significant reduction in global film releases resulting from the negative effects of Covid2019, partially offset by revenue growth from the STX film library.

    Operating expenses stood at $152 million and, excluding merger related costs, were $134 million, for the period, compared to $276 million in the prior year period. This decline was driven by significantly lower film release marketing and distribution costs due to the pandemic.

    “The company is in the process of finalising its complete financial statements for the six months ended 30 September 2020. Completing the full financial statements has required additional time and resources due to the complexities associated with converting legacy Eros from IFRS to US GAAP and to legacy STX’s accounting policies, and the ongoing deployment of a new and integrated SAP accounting platform. The company expects to issue complete and reviewed financial statements for the interim period by 30 April 2021,” it stated in a filing.

    As legacy STX was deemed the accounting acquirer in the business combination, the consolidated financial results for the six-month period ended 30 September 2020 include only two months of legacy Eros, starting on 31 July 2020 when the merger of Indian film and entertainment studio Eros International, and the American film studio STX Entertainment closed.

    Net cash provided by operating activities was $13 million and, excluding merger related cash costs, was $27 million, for the six months ended 30 September 2020.

    Operating Loss of $7 million and, excluding merger related costs, operating profit of $10 million, for the six month period compared to an operating loss of $65 million in the year ago period.

    As of 30 September 2020, total debt was $384 million and cash on hand was $82 million. The company’s fiscal 2021 ending net debt balance is expected to be below the $325 million guidance provided on the investor call held on 4 November 2020.

    These interim results are a subset of the previously announced preliminary financial results for the first nine months of fiscal 2021, ended 30 December 2020. 

  • How Eros Now plans to reach 50 mn subscribers by 2023

    How Eros Now plans to reach 50 mn subscribers by 2023

    MUMBAI: OTT platform Eros Now caused a hubbub in the industry last week, when it unveiled its plan to roll out 46 new titles in 2021. The revamped content slate comprises 33 film premieres and 13 original series, produced by and starring some of the most talented individuals in the Indian film fraternity. Couple of these shows have already started launching on the platform.

    In tune with the maxim 'go big or go home', Eros Now has set its sights on acquiring 50 million subscribers by 2023. The streaming service also has interesting "content and experiences" in store for its Indian audience in the upcoming year.

    Original content slate

    The original films part of the 2021 content slate are Nawazuddin Siddiqui-starrer Roam Rome Main, The Last Rave, and Switch, among others. Original series include Pyaar, Salt City, Metro Park 2,754, The Swap, Flipkart and 7 Kadam among others. The titles will feature artists like Siddiqui, Vikrant Massey, Rajkummar Rao, Akshaye Khanna, Ranvir Shorey, Amit Sadh, Dulquer Salmaan, Mahesh Manjrekar, Rituparna Sengupta, Mammootty, Sonali Kulkarni, Rohini Hattangadi, and others.

    Eros Now is targeting to become both a national and a regional brand at the same time. The company is planning to release minimum one and sometimes two originals per month over a 12 month term. With this move, Eros intends to drive higher impact and higher reach for its original and have deeper quality narrative and better performances from the talent. Eros Now chief executive officer Ali Hussein quipped that they believe in spending more time in the writer's room, script, post-production, casting and quality of content.

    Marketing and promotions

    Each film and original will have a unique promotional plan. Most of the shows will be available dubbed in different regional languages. Hussein disclosed that initially most of the dubbing was done manually but now the team is working on backend technology where he is piloting something with dynamic subtitle. The platform will debut this process by the end of the month, where technology will automatically pick up the script supposedly in Hindi and convert it into English and then convert it into local languages in subtitles. In 2021, the company is looking at a technology that will convert the subtitles to computer generated voice – an automated dubbing. Version one of this technology will be launched before the end of 2020. A partnership with NBC is also being worked out.

    Focus on actors rather than A-listers

    One of the things that Eros Now is enforcing as a culture is moving away from A-list celebrity driven content to more narrative or story driven content. There is a clear change seen in consumer preferences on OTT platforms with more regional content being sampled, said Hussein. “There will be a larger investment in terms of content and then we will build the business over a period, it is about a four-six quarters phenomenon.”

    Key takeaways from Covid2019

    The Covid2019-induced lockdown was the first major moment when the country saw an increase in video-on-demand content with home viewership increasing almost three times. Eros Now, too, witnessed 3X growth in large scale viewing. Hussein reveals that the company is more conducive to in-home viewing. He added, “One of the most encouraging factors was looking at in-home viewing because that kind of implies two real factors, first being less churn on m-o-m basis metric, and second is additional amount of time spent.” A large part of the new subscribers are coming from tier-3 and 4 cities in India and they’re interested in watching original content in their native tongue, which has led the platform to announce the addition of 46 new titles in eight languages for 2021.

    Subscriber base and growth rate

    In the half-year ended 30 September 2020, Eros Now increased its paid subscriber base by 6.9 million, to a total of 36.2 million. The company is banking on this new content slate to further deepen user engagement and reinforce the platform’s growth. The company targets to be at 50 million subscribers in the next 18-24 months or by March 2023.  “We are also looking not just at overall subscriber matrix looking at various slices and dices in avenues like what’s the growth coming from the devices side in tier 3 and tier 4, what is our growth in large screen viewership, we are high lightly focused on two major announcements coming on in the international market in upcoming weeks of what are we doing in developed markets like US and UK and developing markets like Africa and South East Asia,” detailed Hussein.

    Pre-production and direct OTT release

    The Eros Now CEO shared that his partnership with Epic revealed that a lot of production work including graphics is happening real time on a game engine. So, leveraging technology for post-production is Hussein’s key focus.

    The OTT platform, along with its parent's theatrical arm, has invested $1 billion in content creation over the last five years and will continue investing, he asserted. Apart from digital expansion, from the studio perspective Eros will be aggressively looking at content slate in the first quarter. Comparing his shows with other streaming giants in the market, Hussein said that the company is not just looking at thriller dramas but also at romance comedy and regional content, where it sees a significant amount of growth coming from.

    With the surge in Covid cases in the US and Europe, there is a lot of news in the international market as well about direct OTT release. In the meantime, he is trying to get a sense of how international movies like Tenet and Wonder Woman are performing and what is the overall consumer sentiment before releasing movies directly on the OTT platform.

    Technological advancements and bundle deals

    Hussein revealed that Eros is in talks with NBC regarding a partnership; it’s also working closely with Microsoft to launch new backend technology. “The platform has got delayed hence we pushed back the launch of the English language service, which will now happen in Q1 of 2021. So, once the service gets launched very similar to consumer psychographic, there will be different segments, you can either choose to watch a particular genre or you can opt for a bundle. Obviously, they all will be housed under larger Eros Now filters but larger vision is to have micro-bundles. It will be based on both language and genre.”

    Changing regulatory landscape

    When asked about online content being brought under the MIB’s ambit, Hussein said the OTT platforms were governed by the IT Act earlier as well and hoped for the effective implementation of the newly introduced changes in 2021. From a business side, Eros is not jumping into any assumption about what can happen and what will happen. When the IAMAI along with other digital organisations came up with a self-regulatory code last year, he considered it a progressive step to give responsibility back to the content creators and streaming platforms. He pointed out that the I&B ministry has a good understanding that their audience is not the same as on television.

    Importance of partnership and collaboration

    Eros Now has partnered with Apple+ and has scaled it to four markets including the US, the UK, Canada and India. The platform will soon be introduced on Apple+. It has also partnered with YouTube Music, for a special first-time user plan of Rs 99 for three months. This was a situation where two services were bundled together strategically. Hussein opined, “In the times to come, on the distribution side, whether it is two brands competing or collaborating to create a customer value proposition is one aspect; another aspect of partnership is going to work with mobile, telcos, distribution partners around the world, and how we scale the consumers.

  • Eros Now reaches 36.2 mn paying subscribers

    Eros Now reaches 36.2 mn paying subscribers

    KOLKATA: Eros Now, the OTT platform owned by ErosSTX, has reached 36.2 million paid subscribers and 211.5 million registered users worldwide as of 30 September. This represents 6.9 million net new paid subscriber additions over the past six months.

    This subscriber growth has been powered by its investment in technology and the larger partnership with Microsoft. In a recently completed project, Eros Now uploaded content to a central content repository, built on Microsoft Azure, that can quickly process large volumes of data to distribute to hubs via satellite. Consumers then connect to these hubs to securely download content to their mobile devices without internet connectivity. By using this system, consumers in low connectivity regions can access Eros Now’s rich media content and pay for services in modes they prefer. Enabling video distribution via satellite could be game changing for the OTT business in developing markets like India, South East Asia and Africa where more than 50 per cent of the population has intermittent access to internet and internet video.

    Another major attribute to the platform’s growing popularity has been the Eros Now Original Series. The recently released and critically acclaimed original series Flesh, starring Swara Bhaskar, generated the highest ever time spent viewing by Eros Now consumers – more than any other original series so far. Overall engagement on the platform has increased dramatically so far this year and is approximately double the pre-lockdown engagement.

    This festive season, Eros Now has partnered with Paytm to offer 100 per cent cash back to the digital payments app’s consumers in India who subscribe to the Eros Now’s monthly pack of Rs 49 and to unlock #DilwaliDiwali and enjoy the best of movies, original series and more.

  • Eros International unveils new identity for Eros STX Global Corp

    Eros International unveils new identity for Eros STX Global Corp

    KOLKATA: Eros International Plc has changed its corporate name to Eros STX Global Corp. Along with the change in the corporate name, the brand has come with a new logo, a new website, and a new stock ticker ESGC for New York stock exchange.

    Eros Intl Media CEO Pradeep Dwivedi shared the new identity for Eros STX Global Corp on his social media account.

     

     

    The name change follows the completion of company’s merger-of-equals transaction with STX Entertainment on 30 July. The corporate name change does not affect the company’s share structure or the rights of the company’s shareholders, and no action is required of the company’s existing shareholders in connection with the corporate name change.

    Read more news on Eros & STX Global merger 

    As described in the new website, the merged entity has six divisions Eros Now, Eros Motion Pictures, Eros STX International, STX films, STX television, STX alternative. The merger which was announced earlier this year brings two major forces of Bollywood and Hollywood together.

    In a recent interaction Dwivedi delved deeper into the merger of the two entities and shared his belief that the merged entity should be able to build the first compelling Indian studio that will capture worldwide attention both in terms of theatrical and streaming business.

  • Pradeep Dwivedi gives further insights into Eros-STX flagoff

    Pradeep Dwivedi gives further insights into Eros-STX flagoff

    The pragmatic and cheerful boss of Eros International’s (Eros STX Global corporation) Indian operation had come on board at a very crucial time. Within a few months after his joining in January 2020, the big merger of Eros International and US-based STX Entertainment was announced. While a corporate merger comes with its own challenges, the SARS COV2 induced crisis has just multiplied it. Despite the obstacles, the efforts are underway for smooth integration. Eros International Media Ltd India CEO Pradeep Dwivedi gleams with the hope of making an Indian studio that will be recognised globally.

    Other than typical profit and loss benefits, Dwivedi believes the merged entity should be able to build the first compelling Indian studio that will capture worldwide attention both in terms of theatrical and streaming business. Starting 23 September Eros International will be known by its new corporate name Eros STX Global Corporation. The brand is launching a new website along with it. Against this backdrop, the media veteran spoke elaborately on the ongoing integration efforts, possible outcomes of the merger, digital business during a virtual fireside chat with Indiantelevision.com founder, CEO and editor-in-chief Anil Wanvari.

    Edited excerpts follow:

    Read more news on Eros International

    Have the companies started working together?

    We are working very closely ever since we started the merger. There is a segmented approach to our business. We have streaming, theatrical, cable and satellite distribution business. We are trying to harmonise these areas to figure out a significant cost synergy to ensure that the combined entity is operating far more efficiently than the two companies were working individually. The logical assumption would be that many companies go for massive headcount reduction. However, the beauty of our merger is that we have very lean and organized teams on both sides. The combined company is of little over 500 people which is not a big number. Moreover, the kind of market focus and talents Eros has is very distinct from the ones that STX brings to the table. The companies are complementing each other. We are working very closely and integration efforts are going on.

    You said you are streamlining your businesses. How are you finding synergies in distribution and syndication in the Chinese market?

    We have been working more on the distribution of Bollywood movies to the Chinese market, STX has been leveraging financing, ideas to create content out of China. I know the tension against China is extremely high currently. There are nationalistic sentiments on accounts of border disputes. In the US, there are nationalistic sentiments around trade disputes. My sense is both are genuinely well-placed concerns. But I think the human spirit will overcome some of these geopolitical issues and we will find a way forward to recommence the business.

    Watch more fireside chats with industry veterans

    How the merger is changing your thought process overall?

    The idea is really that when you combine both there’s a global play that is coming out. The kind of storylines that are emerging and amalgamating across the world can be universally played out. With the rise of OTT, the audience has also become global in a way. Indians are very happily following Turkish, Korean, and Mexican content. In terms of technology, we are making sure the audience who does not understand Hindi slate is able to get subtitles, language conversion which is where our partnership with Microsoft Azure comes into play. We are investing in AI technologies to be able to create consumer access at the most basic level.

    We have 125 million dollars of capital commitment as part of equity capitalization. We are also very choosy about what kind of money we are taking in. As our CEO often says it is not about money, it is about the quality of the money.

    Recently you had to face impairment charges which have led to a negative sentiment overall. Your share price is also going down…

    The movie production side is a long lead side. You invest in talents, directors, stories, and stars. If everything is well, you will have a movie production after nine months. You also have scenarios where producers and directors have gone to such a state that content is not coming out even after three years. Obviously, you have made those advances, there is no way you can monetise half of the content. If you get delayed in content coming out, you take impairment but that does not mean you have taken a cash loss on that. At some point of time, when the content gets produced, when you get the movie out, you can drive back the money as well. The reason for the impairment was taken not due to any losses.

    Over the last year or so, we were very unfairly targeted by short-sellers. They don’t pick a large share but target short-mid cap companies. India does not have this problem as much as the US has. They will also typically target a foreign private issuer because promoters are not based in the US but only listed there for market access. When you start hammering them with all kinds of innuendo, stockholders get distressed and they would possibly try to sell or exit the stock to recover the money they have invested in. Hence, the short sellers would be able to buy it out cheap and would be able to recover huge amounts of money on that. While it is not illegal, it is an orchestrated strategy in the marketplace. We have taken the bulls by the horn. We have filed litigations against all of these short sellers.  Hearings are going on in multiple courts. I can’t share more as it is subjudice now. But I can say, we have been proven right on every single front. When they have challenged our finances, operations, we have been proven correct. Governance is the cornerstone of what we do.

    Read more coverage on Pradeep Dwivedi

    How has the work progressed in the last six months?

    The pandemic has allowed us to do two things very distinctively. Firstly, the mundane stuff including IT system, mail system, technology, digital assets management, reporting standards, IFRS versus US GAAP, all of those are being addressed.  At the content level, where productions have been stopped, there are two subsets of works that are happening. One is of course post-production. The other interesting part is the whole creative part of the work. Just cut to six months before the pandemic did not start. There was a mad rush to put out content. This bit of a pause has given time to writers to think through innovative content. Some of the ideas we are getting now are very interesting, the kind of stories are very compelling. My sense is that once we are moving out of the pandemic, you will see some amazing stories coming out.

    Have your shoots started?

    Our shootings have started but in a very small way. I won’t say it is full-fledged. There are two projects on the floor, and both are outdoors. We are not doing anything in Bombay right now. There is work happening in Himachal, Uttaranchal, and north Karnataka.

    You were supposed to launch Eros Now Prime in June. Have you changed the plan?

    It is still in work for launch. We have readiness because we took Comcast NBC content and there will be content from STX library also. It will have British, American, and southeast Asian content. Eros Now Prime is essentially a premium English service at phase I. There will be some old popular TV shows along with brand new shows. As we move forward, we will put English translation, subtitles.

    You have a fabulous catalogue of music. Has that moved?

    It comes on two levels. One is Eros Music as a label. We are looking at investing more in that label, getting new talents both in film and non-film music. The other is the whole YouTube partnership which is largely to drive the traffic and traction around Eros Now as well. It is a bundled package. We are a strong believer in b2b2c which essentially means we will do partnerships with large players who deal with large consumer ecosystems. We will provide value for them to build stickiness for their own consumption. In return, they will allow us a large consumer base access.

    Where do you see Eros STX in three years?

    As a company, I believe we should be able to build the first compelling Indian studio that has captured worldwide attention both in terms of theatrical outcome and streaming. It's about doing more than business and creating great content & good stories.

  • Eros International, STX Entertainment announce completion of merger-of-equals transaction

    Eros International, STX Entertainment announce completion of merger-of-equals transaction

    KOLKATA: Eros International and STX Entertainment have announced the completion of their merger-of-equals transaction. The newly-combined company will migrate in the coming weeks to trade on the NYSE under the symbol ESXI and will operate under the name Eros STX Global Corporation. The company will continue to be domiciled in the Isle of Man and headquartered in both Burbank, California, USA and Mumbai, Maharashtra, India.

    Pursuant to the merger agreement, Eros International issued contingent value rights (CVRs) to the former stockholders of STX Entertainment in the merger. The CVRs will be settled in ordinary shares of Eros STX on a date between 75 days and six months after the effective time of the merger.

    Eros STX will benefit from diversified underlying sources of revenue and consumers with a truly global media and consumer entertainment play, building a powerhouse between East and West. Eros STX has a unique capability to present film and episodic libraries and pipeline of original content to a broad and growing global audience through multi-year output deals, strategic alliances and the market leading Eros Now streaming platform. Eros STX is well positioned to create long-term value for shareholders, partners and employees.

    In India, Eros STX will continue to have a leading box office presence and one of the largest and most valuable libraries of Indian language films. In China, the Company will benefit from and expand upon some of the most comprehensive business and creative relationships in the industry. In the United States and the rest of the world, it will utilise its revolutionary, industry-disrupting and cost effective, data-driven production, marketing and distribution system innovations to create the studio system of the future: visionary, nimble, efficient and sustainable.

    Eros STX capital structure includes $110 million of incremental equity, with an additional $15 million to be completed within the next 90 days, from new and existing global investors including TPG, Tencent, Hony Capital and Liberty Global. The combined company is expected to generate approximately $50 million in annual run-rate operating synergy.