Marvel Q3 profit surges on Iron Man
Title is year's No. 2 box-office film and set Blu-ray record
By Danny King -- Video Business, 11/4/2008
NOV. 4 | Marvel Entertainment's third-quarter profit jumped 39% as its film-production sales and earnings surged on the May theatrical release of Iron Man, which Marvel developed with Viacom's Paramount filmed-entertainment unit.
Net income for Marvel, which creates entertainment franchise titles such as Spider-Man and Wolverine and the X-Men, rose to $50.6 million, or 64¢ a share, from $36.3 million, or 45¢, a year earlier, as revenue rose 48% to $182.5 million, Marvel said in a statement today. The company was expected to earn 45¢ a share on $146.1 million in sales.
Marvel's film-production operations, which didn't take in revenue for the first three quarters of last year, had $40.4 million in operating profit on $90.2 million in sales on theatrical and DVD pre-sale revenue from Iron Man. The film grossed $580 million at the worldwide box-office after its May 2 theatrical release, and its $318 million in domestic theatrical revenue made it the second-highest domestic grossing movie of the year behind Warner Bros.' The Dark Knight, according to BoxOfficeMojo.com.
"We're very pleased with the success that we've achieved thus far in 2008 and that we anticipate for the remainder of the year," Marvel chairman Morton Handel said in the statement today.
Iron Man had 7.2 million DVD unit sales during the first week after its Sept. 30 release, making it the top U.S. debut of the year and is the best-selling Blu-ray disc of all time, Viacom CEO Philippe Dauman said on that company's earnings call yesterday. Presales of the title helped boost Paramount's third-quarter DVD sales from a year earlier by 30%.
Marvel's film-production sales surge more than offset a drop in the company's licensing activity, whose year-earlier sales were boosted by the May 2007 release of Spider-Man 3.
Marvel today also increased its 2008 sales and net income forecasts to as much as $670 million and $2.65 a share, up from its Aug. 5 estimates of as much as $480 million and $1.75 a share. Analysts are forecasting 2008 profit of $1.93 a share on $527.9 million in sales.
