Zoo Digital looks to future with optimism as it delivers annual results

ZOO Digital Group has announced its audited financial results for the year ended 31 March 2020. Revenue was $29.8 million, which was an increase on the $28.8 million recorded the year before.

Over the year, ZOOstudio was adopted by a major media company to manage its localisation operations and ZOOsubs served all the major Hollywood studios.

It also increased its overall number of dubbing clients to 29, from 23 in the same period last year.

In a statement Zoo said: "Recent industry announcements confirm strong growth tailwinds in the global home entertainment market, requiring an acceleration in content creation and localisation

"The impact of COVID-19 on the media localisation business has seen a structural shift to cloud-based solutions and off-premise voice recording that favours our world class technology and services

"COVID-19 has resulted in almost all ZOO staff working from home with little productivity impact and has not hindered our ability to recruit an extra 13 people since February."

Stuart Green, CEO of ZOO Digital, commented: "The financial year completed has been one of considerable progress, in which we continued to demonstrate growth against our key strategic priorities.

"We saw increasing traction within our customer base, ongoing positive structural changes within the OTT consumer video market and growing recognition of our cloud-based systems and services, which was accelerated by the disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic in the final weeks of the year.

"Trading in the first three months of FY21 has been strong, with first quarter sales currently expected to be at least 15% ahead of the equivalent prior year period. This is also reflected in similar underlying growth in current order books for both localisation and digital packaging services.

"Through our membership of the Netflix Preferred Fulfilment Partner (NPFP) programme we have been adding new customers and strengthening our relationship with some existing ones. Additionally, we anticipate future growth driven by OTT country launches.

"Whilst it is not usual for buyers in our industry to commit to significant volumes of work in advance, the multiple significant media companies and digital distributors that now regularly use our services give us reason to expect that growth will continue throughout the year ahead.

"The market has shown considerable resilience during this challenging period and we are confident of continued momentum. We are satisfied we have enough visibility, and sufficient opportunities in our pipeline, to enable us to resume market forecasts, and look to the future with optimism."

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