Navarre, the parent of #1 U.S. anime company FUNimation, may not end up selling FUNimation after all, according to comments in this week’s conference call with analysts.  The company reported a quarterly profit of $1.7 million for the FUNimation division (now reported as “discontinued operations”), vs. $435,000 in the year ago period. 

Navarre put FUNimation up for sale in May (see “FUNimation on the Block”), but had not reported progress since then.  In the conference call, Navarre CEO Cary Deacon gave an update on progress.  “Yes we have had offers and indications of interest,” he said.  “We have gone through management presentations with those parties and some of those parties have come back with further rebids.  At this point we’re analyzing those rebids and expanding our look at it.

“The predesigned strategy that we’ve talked about earlier was to sell that asset and move forward with our distribution expansion strategy.  However, we’re analyzing the value of selling that asset and whether that makes sense at this time based on the price levels and the indications of interest that we have.  We’re not final in that process but we will very shortly decide whether the indications of interest and the ability to close a transaction is valid or whether we should continue to run FUNimation. 

“I’m pleased to tell you that (I think you’ve seen in the quarter) FUNimation continues to be run as if we’re going to own it.  We’ve said from the get go that nothing is certain in life and we can’t just let FUNimation slide so we’ve done a good job of running FUNimation.

“Would we like to sell it?  That answer is yes, it’s part of our strategic plan; but we’re going to be very selective in that decision and decide whether it’s best to keep it or to sell it at the current levels of indication.”

Deacon said that by the end of the calendar year there would probably be an indication of whether or not Navarre will sell the FUNimation subsidiary.