Eros Intl lines up Rs 700 cr capex for next two years

Leading movie distributor Eros International Media today said it has lined up a Rs 700 crore capex programme for the next two years.

"We have lined-up a capital expenditure of Rs 700 crore over the next two years. Most of the the funds will go into distribution of films and also to co-produce movies in more regional languages such as Bengali, Gujarati and Telugu," Eros Group Executive Chairman Kishore Lulla told reporters after the company's listing ceremony here today.

The company made a stellar debut on the bourses today, opening 21 per cent higher at Rs 213 on the Bombay Stock Exchange and 17 per cent up at Rs 204.45 on the National Stock Exchange.
    
Eros International Media, a part of Eros International Plc, raised Rs 350 crore through the public offer and plans to use the proceeds to acquire and co-produce movies in several languages.
    
The issue garnered a robust response from investors and was oversubscribed 25.76 times. While the issue was oversubscribed 80 times in the segment reserved for high net-worth individuals (HNIs), the retail portion was oversubscribed about 12 times.
    
The company currently distributes about 100 movies a year, of which around 20 are Hindi movies and the remaining are in regional languages such as Tamil, Marathi and Punjabi.
    
"Ours is a bottomline-driven company and we have been growing at a 59 per cent CAGR for the last five years. We expect our bottomline to grow at 40-50 per cent for the next two years. We also have a good cash inflow of Rs 330 crore and hope to maintain this over the next two fiscals as well," Lulla said.
    
This fiscal, the company is all set to release about seven to eight big budget movies (above Rs 40 crore) such as 'Ra.One', starring Shahrukh Khan, and 'Agent Vinod', with Saif Ali Khan, amongst others.
    
It recently released blockbusters 'Anjaana Anjaani' and Rajnikanth-starrer 'Endhiran' in Tamil and 'Robot' in Hindi.
    
"'Anjaana Anjaani' has turned out to be a good profitable movie. We did about Rs 30 crore in the first three days. We have sold all the satellite rights and have already recovered our costs," Eros Chief Financial Officer Kamal Jain said.
    
The company plans to release around one movie every 15 days, he said.