Quickflix appoints administrators after negotiations with Stan fail to reach agreement
Quickflix has appointed Ferrier Hodgson as voluntary administrators after negotiations with rival Stan, which owns a major stake in the business, failed to come to agreement.
As Mumbrella revealed back in 2014, Stan’s acquisition of 83m preference shares in Quickflix gave the Nine/Fairfax owned entity a key blocking stake in its rival.
Management of Quickflix had been seeking to restructure these shares by claiming it was putting off new investors in the company, which has been facing mounting losses and increasingly running low on cash.
Quickflix told the market that Stan had demanded either a $4m payment or $1.25m and the transfer of all of Quickflix’s streaming customers. Quickflix is currently in a trading halt with a market capitalisation of $2.22m and cash on hand of some $659,000.
Finally, some sense.
About time.
I look forward to the SVOD stories on Mumbrella in a post Quickflix world.
Hi Jack,
We have covered the SVOD space extensively outside of Quickflix.
Here are just a few stories: https://staging.mumbrella.com.au/war-may-reshape-media-landscape-260883
https://staging.mumbrella.com.au/streaming-wars-what-impact-are-stan-presto-and-netflix-having-on-the-media-landscape-342177
https://staging.mumbrella.com.au/streaming-wars-stan-presto-netflix-fetchtv-telstratv-342483
Cheers
Nic – Mumbrella
sorry for the staff as there are some good folks there
Quickflix was the first real streaming service in Australia, the innovators, it has around 100,000 paying customers, who are generally paying more than Stan and Netflix because the range is Fantastic, both on DVD and streaming, where else can you watch HBO shows like Game of Thrones, plus black sails, Vikings, etc and the latest movies in the one place, quickflix is a great service, it’s a shame Stan couldn’t work with them.
Does it really make sense to spend $50 million creating Stan when they could have worked with Quickflix and created something uniquely Australian to rival Netflix. I’m glad I’m not a Fairfax shareholder!
Pity that some writers seem to take joy and delight in a company that a rival, who has been given a stake in, by a another party who bought that stake with a view to bringing down or making life as hard as it can for the original company. I’m sure the shareholders and staff will be equally as pleased about their job or investment .
The silly thing is that if both companies worked together to share content and subscribers both would be the better for it. Nine/Stan have budgeted 100 Million dollars yet Quickflix and Stan could have worked together on an afflilate or pay-per-view basis to share. Quickflix has all OTT protocols and distribution agreements in place, Stan has had start from scratch.
Don’t write Quickflix off just yet. Bigger entities than Stan are out there and interested.
I don’t subscribe to Quickflix, but in the wake of this news I decided to have a look at their website.
I noticed one of their “plans” allows you to “own” TV episodes or series.
I have frequently debated the advantages/disadvantages of owning DVD/Bluray movies and series versus buying them from an online distributor. My argument being that whenever you buy online you don’t actually own anything.
Here we have a great example. If Quickflix closes shop, what happens to all those TV shows that are owned by their customers? One would presume the customers will lose out.
Colin Gwyther – Hoping those shares will pick up in value?