June 14, 2007
Getty Files 2006 10-K
By: Jim Pickerell
Getty Images has filed its 10-K with the SEC for the year ending December 31, 2006. This filing was delayed due to an investigation relating to the company's stock-option grant practices started in November 2006 and completed in April 2007. The investigation concluded there had been backdating, but "the evidence obtained and reviewed did not establish any intentional wrongdoing." (See stories 894, 951 and 957.) The current report details slight changes in the gross revenue and net income figures previously reported due to the necessity of restating earnings.
In January 2007, the company said 2006 revenue was $807.3 million. The restatement moved that number to $806.6 million. Earlier, the company had reported net 2006 income was $129.6 million and with the restatement, that number jumped to $130.4 million.
Some other statistics revealed as a result of this filing include:
In 2006 ,Getty Images added 150,000 images created in-house and by contract photographers to the Creative section of its site. They added 400,000 images supplied by partners. At the end of 2006, it had about 1.8 million images on the Creative section of the site and of this writing, slightly over 2 million. There is no information on the number of editorial images on the site, or any way for outsiders to calculate that number. After the recent move of TIB images to the Rights Ready subset of the Creative section of the site, over 50% of the RM images and 42% of the RF images on the site have been supplied by partners.
The company has 1,750 employees, of which 943 are in the Americas, 663 in Europe and 144 in the rest of the world.
Over $554 million or 68.7% of Getty's $806.6 million in gross 2006 revenue came from four countries. This breaks down to: $326.4 million (41%) from the U.S., $111.5 million (14%) from the UK, $68.3 million from Germany and $48.2 million (6%) from France. Approximately $67.2 million (8.3%) came from Asia/Pacific and approximately $58.62 million (7.3%) came from Canada and the rest of the Americas not including the U.S. The remaining $126.38 million (15.7%) came primarily from other countries in Europe.
During 2006, Jonathan Klein's compensation package from Getty Images was valued at $3.95 million. $950,000 of this was salary, $1.75 million in stock awards, $1.16 million in option awards and $94,416 in other compensation.
WGPN to Acquire Several Image Banks
Vancouver-based consulting, software development and management company WGPN announced it is launching new online content distribution services and acquiring several digital photography databases. The resulting image bank will be hosted at photobank4u.com. The beta phase of the new WGPN service will be limited to image and software licensing, but the company plans to expand the offering to mobile content, including ringtones, images and video.
WGPN plans to use a payment system based on codes, which are valued in the $10-to-$200 range and are redeemable for digital content. The code system is designed to save the image buyer time. After a customer purchases a code from WGPN, individual image purchases will take less than five seconds.
Fotolia Says No Price Hike
By: Julia Dudnik Stern
In late May, micro-payment image seller Fotolia announced plans to raise the price of its credits from $1 to $1.36 with the release of Fotolia V2. Less than two weeks later, the company decided against the price change, citing feedback from both image providers and buyers. Although the credit price will remain $1, Fotolia is changing its overall pricing structure by introducing a new license called the Small Standard RF License. Specifically targeted for Internet use, this is the smallest image size available to buyers for one credit. The previous smallest size has now doubled in cost, selling for two credits.
iStockphoto Expands Search, Formats and Languages
By: Julia Dudnik Stern
iStockphoto has become the first microstock site available in 12 languages. It's added localized sites in Japanese, Portuguese, Brazilian Portuguese, Italian, Polish and Russian.
In addition to expanding internationally, the company has announced the addition of .wmv and .mp4 formats to its stock video collection. The new formats offer greater flexibility to customers who may not own video-editing software. The .wmv and .mp4 files are easily integrated into commonly used document formats.
Also, functionality of the iStock search engine was expanded. Advanced search options have been integrated into a single AJAX search bar, while several new community features designed to track popular and emerging trends have been introduced.