For those that enjoy keeping up with this sort of thing (like us!), nothing of significance for Dragon Ball fans came out of Navarre’s Q3 2011 earnings conference call, which took place this past Tuesday. FUNimation is still listed as a “Discontinued Operation” and is still up for sale, but no appealing offers have been made to Navarre. We had originally been told that a resolution by the end of calendar 2010 would likely happen, but Navarre now anticipates that if a suitable buyer (and thus offer) is not found before the end of next quarter, they will consider bringing FUNimation back into the standard-operational fold. Navarre management noted that they have been running FUNimation as if they were going to keep owning them all along, being a little more stringent with new licenses and monetizing existing heavy-hitters (such as Dragon Ball) pretty darn well to keep things going as fantastically as they have. Net income from discontinued operations (which includes FUNimation) was up, so while FUNimation does not necessarily fit in with the overall Navarre business plan moving forward (which is more about distribution than production), they do well enough that they may end up keeping them around to leverage the cash flow benefits that they bought them for in the first place!
FUNimation Business News Updates
03 February 2011, 9:55 AM EST