Pixar’s Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Steve Jobs, and Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Simon Bax, have conducted a teleconference to discuss information relevant to the third quarter results. The teleconference was held Tuesday, November 8, 2005 at 5:00 p.m. ET, 2:00 p.m. PT.
Notes in reverse chronological order:
– End of conference call.
– Jobs: “Chicken Little” – I haven’t seen it, yet. I hope to see it next week.
– Jobs: film following “Cars” will need to have distribution deal in place by early next year
– Jobs on guarding against piracy: the world has seen digital downloads of movies, but not in high quality, yet. Some evidence shows that the people downloading illegally wouldn’t have bought them anyway. Piracy effects on Pixar are difficult to measure. Best to create legal methods, so that people don’t get into the habit of stealing. That’s not a healthy culture. Hollywood has some time to put in place legal alternatives and experiments, so that people don’t develop the habit of pirating films.
– Jobs: right now it looks like Blu-ray will win, but nothing’s certain, yet
– Jobs on Blu-ray vs. HD DVD – Pixar would like to be in the format their audience’s players play
– Jobs plans summer 2007, 2008, 2009 release dates for the first three films after “Cars”
– Jobs will not go into any details of the ongoing negotiations with Disney
– Jobs: Pixar not against doing sequels – just not doing any now under current deal with Disney
– “Cars” DVD release planned for November 2006
– Jobs: Pixar’s movies aren’t “wait for the DVD” type movies – people go to the theaters to see them, then get the DVD
– Jobs: Biggest problem with downloading feature-length films via iTunes is bandwidth – takes too long in U.S.
– Jobs: I like Disney’s Bob Iger a lot – again, Disney is first choice
– Pixar gets same revenue split as all other video partners with Apple
– Disney is our first choice for distribution deal
– Jobs thinks there is a lot of room for animated films in the summer
– 8 million “Finding Nemo” and 5 million “The Incredibles” computer games shipped
– 125,000 copies of Pixar short films sold via Apple iTunes Music Store in just under 1 month
– “Cars” will be a huge cap on the Disney relationship or the beginning of a new chapter with Disney
– Executive Producer John Lasseter is very happy with the results
– “Cars” animation is complete
– We will announced 3 films following “Cars” after distribution deal is set
– Discussions are very productive with Disney
– We will know about results of Disney discussions by the end of the year
– CEO Steve Jobs: We are in deep discussions with Disney
– CFO Simon Bax reviews results available in the earnings report (see related article)
– Welcome to the Pixar Animation Studios Q3 2005 Conference Call
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Related article:
Pixar reports third quarter financial results – November 08, 2005
Pixar runs on Power Mac G5s and Mac OS X – May 29, 2004
Report: Pixar switching to Apple’s Mac OS X on Power Mac G5s – March 10, 2004