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Funimation Negotiating to Acquire Geneon Titles (Updated)
posted on by Egan Loo
Navarre Corporation CEO Cary Deacon reported during his company's Q3 2008 earnings conference call on Thursday that its Funimation anime distribution subsidiary was "in very early stages of negotiations to acquire some of the Geneon library of titles." He also noted that Geneon and A.D. Visions used funds from Japanese investors to raise their bids for recent anime licenses. Now that Geneon is no longer distributing in North America, there is a "downward pressure on pricing" in new anime licenses. The Geneon's anime market share stood at about 10%.
Deacon announced in a Wednesday report of Navarre's financial results for the third quarter that "Funimation had a solid quarter" that met profit expectations. Funimation is part of Navarre's publishing segment with Encore and BCI. That segment's Q3 sales were US$31.4 million, which is down from last year's Q3 sales of US$35.0 million. Navarre cited BCI's "poor performance" for the downturn. (Navarre does not report Funimation's financial figures separately from BCI and Encore.) Funimation did benefit from its renewed videogame rights agreement with Atari. Atari's US$10 million prepaid royalty advance to Funimation in 2004 was earned out, which means that Funimation will receive additional revenue in future quarters.
Source: ICv2
Update: Article updated to clarify that Geneon's market share, not Funimation's, was 10%.
