In the four quarters of 2011, ATM Group, Poland’s largest independent television and film production company, posted 115.34 million PLN in revenue, up one million PLN on 2010, and 2.1 million PLN in net income with EBITDA of 21.1 million PLN.
Each year ATM Group posts a profit on its operations and pays regular dividends to its shareholders. The dividend for 2010 was 0.18 PLN per share, with a total of 15.5 million PLN paid out in 2011.
ATM Group maintains a strong market position due to its television series. Two of them, ‘Father Matthew’ and ‘The Ranch’ are among the five most-watched productions in Poland. Another two, ‘Kiepski’s World’ and ‘First Love’, both airing on Polsat, are still going strong after years of broadcast. In the fall of 2011, ATM Group launched production of a new soap, ‘The Mall’, which debuted on TVP1 in late January 2012. In September 2011, ATM Group’s subsidiary Baltmedia produced a pilot for a new crime series, ‘Smak zemsty’, for Polast. The series will begin filming in the spring to air in the fall. In addition, ATM Group companies are producing more content for thematic channels, including cooking shows for Canal+.
Digitization is now a key event for the broadcasting and production industries. After getting a terrestrial television multiplex license (MUX1) from the National Broadcasting Council in 2011, ATM Group launched ATM Rozrywka TV in February 2012. The channel will begin full-time broadcasting by the end of May 2012 before the start of the 2012 Euro Soccer Championship. ATM Rozrywka TV will air films, series, entertainment shows, docu-soaps and documentaries.
In September 2011, in the Warsaw’s district of Wawer, ATM Group launched ATM Studio, the most state-of-the-art film and television production complex in this part of Europe. The 14,000 sq.m. complex includes offices, soundstages, television studios, production and postproduction facilities, a cinema room and catering facilities. The center’s 2011 production slate included the show ‘The Voice of Poland’ (produced by Rochstar for TVP 2), the movie ‘Top Floor’, the series ‘The Ranch’ and a slew of commercials. In the short time since its opening, ATM Studio has become a landmark on the cultural map of Warsaw. It hosted the performance of ‘The Carol Night. 30 Years Later’, an event to mark the 30th anniversary of the imposition of martial law in Poland, and is the home base of the Nowy Teatr. Producers’ interest in ATM Studio carried over into 2012. In February the following productions were shot in the complex: the series ‘The Fifth Stadium’ for TVP, a number of commercials including a BZ WBK spot with Chuck Norris, and the feature film ‘Big Leap’. The show ‘The Clash of the Choirs’ is due to being taping any day now. The company is currently in talks with other tenants, which will generate additional revenue for ATM Group in the coming quarters.
ATM Group is steadily growing in the industry’s services sector. In the summer 2011, ATM System, an ATM Grupa S.A.’s subsidiary specializing in television and event production, produced the 2011 European Women Basketball Championship and Poland’s largest music events: Heineken Open’er Festival, Selector Festival, Coke Live Music Festival, Eska Music Awards and Przystanek Woodstock. The ATM System’s team also produces Extraclasa soccer matches.
One of ATP Group’s areas of development is film production. In 2011, the company co-produced two historical epics: Jerzy Hoffman’s ‘Battle of Warsaw 1920’ and Janusz Zaorski’s ‘Polish Syberiada’ (premiered in 2012), as well as Jan Komasa’s ‘The City’, a movie about the Warsaw Uprising (which is due to begin shooting in spring 2012).
ATM Grupa S.A. continues its international expansion, especially in Central and Eastern Europe. In the fall of 2011, the company sold the production rights to the series ‘The Ranch’ to the Ukrainian channel 1+1, which is owned by Central European Media Enterprises Ltd. In addition, the production company TKL picked up the rights to ‘Clueless’ for the Vietnamese channel HTV7.
In 2012, the Executive Board of ATM Grupa S.A. has set itself new strategic goals.
‘First of all, we want to continue to strengthen our technology offering, especially in ATM System and ATM Studio’, says Andrzej Muszyński, CEO of ATM Group. ‘We are investing in another HD OB truck with a 3D capability, the first such truck in the industry. We also hope the high standard of our Wawer studios will attract more producers. As for film production, we want to focus on more prestigious movies. One example of this involvement is a film about the 1944 Warsaw Uprising, Jan Komasa’s ‘The City’. But, above all, we are developing new interesting series and hoping that the market will notice them.’
Further Information
Established in 1992, ATM Grupa S.A. is Poland’s largest independent television production company. Now best known for its television series, such as ‘The Ranch’, ‘Father Matthew’, ‘First Love’, ‘Kiepski’s World’, and ‘The Mall’, which premiered in January 2012. ATM Grupa S.A. is the only company in the industry with its own television studios and equipment providing a full range of TV production services. The company produces programming for broadcasters including Polsat, Polskie Media (TV4) and Telewizja Polska. To find out more, visit atmgrupa.pl and facebook.com/grupaatm.
