Features
Corbis reports on 2005 financial performance
Corbis held its 3rd Annual Meeting in New York City on March 14th to discuss the company’s performance over the last year and its goals for 2006. The company reported revenue for the year totaled $228MM representing an increase of 34% over 2004. Discounting the effect on revenue of the acquisition of zefa visual media, however, revenue grew organically by only 4% over 2004. Management also reports that, due to the zefa acquisition, the company did not achieve profitability (as they had projected at last year’s annual meeting) and that their profitability goal would be delayed. Nonetheless, Bill Gates confirmed his continued support of the company stating, “I’m very committed to Corbis.”
As a privately held company, Corbis has no obligation to provide details of its financial condition or profitability to the public. Beyond the financial information included above, the company revealed no information regarding segment break-down of revenue, the operating performance of various divisions, the actual losses incurred by the company over-all, or specific revenue projections for 2006. Many industry watchers believe Corbis holds these annual meetings with the press and analysts to generate publicity and interest in anticipation of taking the company public. On this point, again, the company remained vague, saying it would look into diversifying ownership within the next two to three years. Against this opaque financial back-drop, CEO Steve Davis and his upper management team took the opportunity to discuss their plans for the future of the business.
Davis says the company will compete more aggressively in the commercial market place in 2006. To accomplish this, it will concentrate on increasing its database of images and improving its services to its clients. Senior Vice President, Images, Gary Shenk stated that the company will build its creative images collection by adding 600,000 new images this year, with a concentration on RF, which Corbis believes is the strongest growth area of the stock photo business. Management also sees a bright future in the mobile phone market for imagery, a market it has served successfully in Asia since 2002.
Corbis will also continue to expand other business activities, including its rights clearance service (in which Corbis earns fees for doing the leg-work to clear and secure rights for images, footage, and music) and its in-house assignment photography agency. The company also plans to provide digital asset management services to its clients through its recently acquired DAM software company, Emotion. At the meeting, Corbis announced its acquisition of architecture and interior design specialty agency, Beateworks/InsideOutPics. Click here for more details on the acquisition.
Posted in: Features, Stock Photo Companies
Comments(1)
post a comment »pino granata, March 28, 2006 [#]
I’m very ommitted to Corbis, says Bill Gates. I’d like to know more about the meaning of what Bill Gates claims. He has spent an awful lot of money to make Corbis working and the results are in front of every one. May I say that they are disappointing? Now the question is this photography having some benefit form the huge investments Bill Gates has done in Corbis? I don’t think so.Corbis has bought great agencies which worked beautifully( The Stock Market, Outline, Sharpshooters just to mention a few) and didn’t have the same results these companies had when run by the former owners. Worse, hundreds of people have lost their jobs.I don’t want to blame only Corbis for the actual situation, but it is a fact that from a guy like Bill Gates who gives billions for charity, I expected a different behavior while I see that since Corbis , Getty and others entered in our business this is falling a part. An example? A few weeks ago I went in Germany for business and I saw that an agency used to have 75 employees , now has only twenty and struggling to survive. And I was told that in Germany there is only one agency privately owned and everybody wonders until when.