Montreal: At its annual general meeting in Montreal last week, Coscient Group president and ceo Guy Crevier told shareholders the company is replacing its subsidiary structure with new business units. Crevier says additional details on the rebranding exercise will be made public in January. As part of the consolidation, he says all financing has now been centralized at head office.

Crevier says Coscient plans to aggressively build its rights library, specifically through the production of more exportable, English-language programs. He says the book value of the library increased by 34% in the past year, with Coscient productions now making up 46% of the total library value.

The new business unit structure takes effect Jan. 1, 1999 and consists of: Canadian drama, headed by Andre Picard, international drama (Jacques Methe), animation and children and youth (Andre Belanger with Michel Lavoie), entertainment and documentaries (Andre Larin), large format (Picard) and distribution (Stephen Greenberg). Francine Allaire is named head of development and Stephane Reichel is head of production.

Support services based at head office will serve all the business units, namely, development, production, finance and administration, legal and commercial affairs, as well as communications.

Crevier says Coscient will focus on the development of four key niches in the world market: drama (including made-for-tv movies, series and feature films), animation, youth programming, and documentaries. The company also produces and distributes large-format films.

At the agm, Coscient reported net earnings of $630,000 for the first quarter in fiscal ’99, a 12.5% hike over the first quarter in ’98. Revenues were $31.2 million for the period, representing a 9.9% increase.

The growth was largely due to the production of made-for-tv movies for the international market, shot in English for primary distribution in the u.s. and English Canada.

Gross margin was 20.7% of revenue while ebitda reached $2.5 million, a 26.4% increase over last year.

On Dec. 1, Coscient completed a rights offering of 4,574,473 Class a shares, with net proceeds of approximately $22.5 million.