IDW’s “parent company”—actually a holding company consisting of a travel brochure publisher and IDW—has become renamed IDW Media Holdings, and IDW’s Ted Adams will be the CEO. While the entire backstory is a little convoluted, as I understand it with my unfrozen caveman business writer mind, IDW took on an investor years ago, IDT Corporation, a publicly traded company which eventually spun off its media holdings as CTM Media Holdings — which has just been renamed IDW Media Holdings to reflect the great success that IDW has had in recent years. Here’s the PR, and the above graphic which shows how the company is organized into divisions, with Top Shelf and the games component added in.
CTM Media Holdings, Inc., a holding company consisting of CTM Media Group and a majority interest in IDW, announced today that it will begin operating under the name IDW Media Holdings to reflect the growth of IDW as its principal line of business, and Ted Adams, a founding partner and current CEO and Publisher of IDW, will take over as CEO of IDW Media Holdings.
IDW Media Holdings, Inc. will be an integrated media company consisting of IDW Publishing, the award-winning, San Diego-based comic-book and graphic novel publisher; CTM Media Group, a distributor of print and digital advertising; IDW Entertainment, the television-development arm of IDW Publishing; San Diego Comic Art Gallery, a new comic art gallery space launching in summer 2015; Ettractions, a travel-based web portal; Top Shelf Productions, a publisher of independent and creator-driven graphic novels; IDW Games, producer of tabletop board games and card games; and IDW Limited, the high-end print collectibles division of IDW Publishing.
“Ted Adams has built IDW into an entertainment giant,” said Howard Jonas, the chairman of CTM Media Holdings. “IDW’s growth in just its fifteen years of existence has been extraordinary and is a testament to Adams’ ability to build, diversify and grow his business. He is the perfect person to serve as CEO over IDW Media Holdings and continue to grow all its interests in exponential ways.”
CTM Media Holdings currently has two classes of common stock listed on the OTC Pink Sheets Pink Tier under the symbols CTMMA and CTMMB. As part of an integrated effort to boost the presence of the Company, IDW Media Holdings will register its common stock under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and seek to list its shares on a national securities exchange with a ticker symbol reflecting its updated identity.
“These changes will be great for all of our media business units and even better for investors,” said Ted Adams, IDW Media Holdings’ CEO. “As I’ve done throughout my time running IDW Publishing, I am looking to grow the business with the established teams we already have in place. We are poised to make IDW Media Holdings into something truly beneficial for all involved.”
IDT and the CTM have never really had much impact on how IDW is run, since leaving it in the very capable hands of Adams and Greg Goldstein made the most sense. However for Snoopy Sally’s like The Beat, you can look at IDW’s quarterly reports and maybe get some interesting info:
In the three months ended January 31, 2015 and January 31, 2014, direct market revenue accounted for 48% and 58% of IDW’s revenue, respectively. Non-direct market revenue accounted for 26% and 22% of IDW’s revenue in the three months ended January 31, 2015 and January 31, 2014, respectively. Digital publishing revenue accounted for 9% and 10% in the three months ended January 31, 2015 and January 31, 2014. Other publishing revenue, which includes new product launches and specialty sales, accounted for 5% and 6% of IDW’s revenue in the three months ended January 31, 2015 and January 31, 2014, respectively. IDW’s revenue from IDW Games (a new revenue generating category) accounted for 8% and 0% of IDW’s revenue for the three months ended January 31, 2015 and January 31, 2014, respectively. IDW’s other sources of revenue include direct to consumer sales, licensing and royalty revenue, which accounted for 5% and 5% of IDW’s revenues for three months ended January 31, 2015 and January 31, 2014. IDW Games revenue and Micro Comic Fun Packs (included in other publishing revenue) have greatly expanded the number of distributors and accounts that IDW sells to directly. IDW’s primary customer is Diamond Comic Distributors, Inc. (“Diamond”), an unaffiliated entity that handles the vast majority of all comic publishers’ direct market distribution. Diamond purchases IDW’s publications and subsequently sells them to both the direct and non-direct markets. Retail stores are also indirect IDW customers.
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In the three months ended January 31, 2015 and January 31, 2014, IDW generated net revenues of $7,022,000 and $6,516,000, respectively, and operating income of $897,000 and $1,460,000, respectively.
