16/03/2010

Scandinavian media group Egmont increased its operating profits by €25m to €125m in 2009 thanks to its film division Nordisk Film and the Millennium phenomenon that sold over 6.5m tickets across the region.

According the group’s official2009 figures, Nordisk Film raised its EBITDA (Earnings Before Interest, Depreciation and Amortization) from €34m in 2008 to €53m last year, while revenues at €445m decreased from €472m the previous year.

“Our cinemas had an exceptional year, with the highest box office sales ever: 6.2 million tickets sold in Denmark and 375,000 in Norway,” said the group’s CEO Allan Hansen. “The Stieg Larsson films proved an overwhelming success, in terms of film distribution. At the end of the year, almost 6.5 million Nordic cinema goers had seen the three films, and the first two had sold over 1.7 million DVDs. The trilogy is continuing to sell both tickets and DVDs in 2010. Finally, our film production unit defied the tough conditions in the Danish film industry, with three out of four film releases performing above expectation in 2009.”

Those include Headhunter (221,000 admissions) and Karla and Katrin (175,000 admissions). For Hansen, Nordisk is now ready to make a "controlled offensive" in 2010, for which digital screen development will play a major part.

Nordisk Film’s mother company Egmont registered pre-tax profit of €47m in 2009 (€15m the previous year). Revenues from the group’s various media activities (including film, TV, books, game consoles and music) across 30 countries declined slightly from €1.565bn in 2008 to €1.44bn in 2009 due to the conversion of unchanged foreign revenue at lower exchange rates and lower advertising income.