CEO Comment

2023 was a somewhat challenging year, with a depressed global advertising market, combined with US strikes by both the Screen Actors Guild and the Writers Guild of America.

However, our team continued to deliver across an exciting range of visual storytelling, with feature films, drama series, entertainment formats, TVCs and print campaigns visiting our Spanish and Portuguese shores over the course of the year.

The difficult headwinds impacted our financial performance with billings at 64.17M€ (75.6M€), revenues at 20.58M€ (26.52M€) and EBITDA at 323K€ (1.66M€) for the Palma Pictures Media Production Group.

We shot projects throughout Spain, with units enjoying the varied backdrops of locations in areas such as; Mallorca, Barcelona, Madrid, Salamanca, Tenerife and Valencia.

Our Portuguese office, led by Vita Lains, also continued to build momentum with advertising work for the likes of; Mortlach, Tylenol and Zevo shooting with us.

Our staff and freelance crews worked tirelessly to deliver ‘Picture Perfect Service’ to our varied clients and we were happy to enhance our talent base by welcoming Alberto Codes (Casting Director), Joan Segura (Production) and Steph Howe (Marketing), as well as bolstering our Scripted team with Kino Reyes (Line Producer) also joining us.

Despite the strike action we still hosted a sizeable slate of Scripted projects including; Atmosphere Entertainment / EOne ‘Den of Thieves – Pantera’, Clerkenwell Films / Amazon Studios ‘The Mallorca Files – Season #3’, BBC Studios / Apple ‘Trying – Season #3’ and Bad Wolf / HBO ‘Industry – Season #3’ amongst others.

The national Spanish Rebate was also boosted in January 2023, which helped in significantly sharpening Spain’s competitive edge in attracting future Scripted projects.

We also finished the year with several confirmed projects for early ’24 and with a significant pipeline of work going forwards over the course of the year.

Our entertainment formats had a good year, with both ITV UK and ITV Australia’s ‘Love Island’ shooting with us again in Mallorca during the summer. We also played host to Evolution Media’s ‘The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills’ which shot in Sitges.

Our advertising teams worked on projects for brands such as; Sky Mobile, NEOM, Avios and TUI, whilst with photo we captured eye-catching campaigns for brands such as; John Lewis, Hollister and Chase Bank.

Our dedicated talent agency continued to gather momentum and delivered another record year for billings.

CSR activities continued apace and we passed our environmental audit for the thirteenth year running, retaining both our ISO 14001 and EMAS certifications. Other activities included our ongoing support for local charities.

Our annual investment program was boosted to a CAPEX of 400K€ in 2023, as we looked to position our broad inventory for increasing demand.

Our mainland offices in Barcelona and Madrid serviced some great TVC work for brands such as ‘Honda’, ‘Kubota’ and ‘Cetaphil’.

In Q4 we decided to close our Palma Pictures Studios (IP Development & production) business line and maintain focus on our production service offering.

Overall and despite the general uncertainty in the marketplace, an action-packed year and one which paved the way for the year ahead.

I will look forward to sharing both our challenges and successes in the next edition of our Palma Pictures Annual Report.

Mike Day, CEO