The Navarre Corporation released its first quarter fiscal year 2009 financials for the three-month period ending on June 30th, and although sales rose from $137 million in Q1 in the previous fiscal year to $142 million, net income fell from $1.9 million to $627,000 for the most recent quarter. The reason for the decline in income was that net sales for the higher margin publishing segment fell 7.4%.  Sales for FUNimation Entertainment, a wholly owned Navarre subsidiary, exceeded expectations, but were below sales from the first quarter a year ago when FUNimation released Afro Samurai, which Navarre referred to as “the bestselling anime DVD of 2007.” 

Still as reported in the upcoming ICv2 Guide #59 Anime/Manga, which includes complete market share information for the first half of calendar year 2008, FUNimation’s sales for the first six months of this year were actually up 4% over sales for the first six months of 2007 according to VideoScan—and FUNimation was the only major American anime company to post an increase over 2007 for the period.

Navarre CEO Cary Deacon cited FUNimation’s new content acquisitions including the 30 titles whose rights were previously held by ADV (see “Funimation Schedules First Sojitz Titles”), the distribution rights to the top films in the Geneon catalog (see “FUNimation Sets Dates for First Geneon Releases”) , and the rights to the new Afro Samurai: Resurrection property as reasons why FUNimation sales should be strong for the rest of the company’s fiscal year.