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Cinevistaas


Cinevistaas produces television serials.

It produces a handful of serials (mythological, youth-related, etc.) for well-established television channels such as Sony, Star Plus, Star One, Channel V, Sun TV etc.  It entered the Southern market (Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, and Kerala) for the first time in the last financial year.

The company reported declining profits on an erratic revenue base over the last five years – reporting net losses on revenues of about 30cr in the last twelve months.  It employed minimal debt to finance its operations.

The primary risks impacting the business are the fickle and dynamic tastes of the viewers exacerbated by intense and innovative competition for viewing time.  This doesn’t bode well for predictability of the business’ earnings.

Another major risk impacting the business is its low bargaining power with established channels that puts it at a disadvantage in a multitude of ways from responsibility for failures and pricing per episode (which gets lower even if channel has low ratings) to payment of miscellaneous charges (uplinking etc.) and other unfavourable terms (upfront telecast fees, own production/marketing, unpopular time slots, etc.).  All of these factors have a severe adverse impact on profitability.

More specifically, the company appears to be managing its operations poorly resulting in losses for all its shows. It incurs excess costs for expensive shooting while being at the mercy of the channels to pull the plug on the shows at any time, which leaves it holding the bag for all losses.  Moreover, it appears to be inefficient with late deliveries of output as a result of last minute changes, editing, etc.

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