DreamWorks Animation Swings to Quarterly, Annual Loss

DreamWorks Animation (NASDAQ: DWA  ) unveiled some red ink in its Q4 and fiscal 2012 results. For the quarter, the company posted revenue of $265 million, a 21% year-over-year improvement on Q4 2011's $219 million. The bottom line, however, plunged into negative territory with a loss of $83 million ($0.98 per diluted share), compared with a $24 million ($0.29) profit in the same period the previous year.

Although that revenue figure beat the average analyst expectation of $213 million, EPS missed by a long shot. The market had been anticipating a much narrower loss of $0.03 per share.  

For the full year, revenue was just under $750 million, or 62% better than in 2011. The net loss was $36 million ($0.43 per diluted share), against a profit of $87 million ($1.02) the year before.

DreamWorks Animation attributed the bottom-line shortfalls to a series of expensive writeoffs for several of its titles, including a $165 million charge for the underperforming Rise of the Guardians, and a $54 million hit to delay a planned 2014 release, Me & My Shadow.