Prime Focus Ltd Q2FY26 – VFX Dreams, CFO Dramas & The Great Hollywood Hangover

1.At a Glance

Once upon a post-production timeline, Prime Focus Ltd (PFL) – India’s visual-effects juggernaut turned global creative services empire – is back in the limelight, though not all the frames are glowing. Founded by Namit Malhotra in 1997, this ₹13,238 crore market cap media-tech hybrid is literally theBaap of Bollywood CGIand the stepbrother of Hollywood blockbusters via its DNEG arm – the Oscar-winning studio behindDune: Part TwoandOppenheimer.

At ₹171 a share (as of Nov 19, 2025), Prime Focus trades at a mind-bending P/E of 110 – the kind of number that makes accountants sweat and storytellers dream. The company’s recent quarters resemble a Christopher Nolan screenplay: billion-rupee VFX revenues, high drama, CFO exits, and a rights issue that could rival Marvel’s budget.

In theBhagavad Gita, Lord Krishna says,“Change is the law of the universe.”And Prime Focus seems to have taken that literally—changing CFOs, investors, divisions, and even its business DNA faster than some studios change release dates.

Return in 3 months: +6.2%.ROCE: 7.95%.ROE: -16.7%.Debt: ₹5,255 crore (ouch).Operating Profit Margin: 25.1%.

Now let’s fade in to the behind-the-scenes of India’s most cinematic balance sheet.

2.Introduction – The Blockbuster That Forgot Its Ending

Prime Focus Ltd is not just a company; it’s a film in progress. Act One was pure hustle — Mumbai’s post-production garages meeting Hollywood’s grandiosity. Act Two saw it evolve into a global creative services empire with Oscar-winning output. Act Three? That’s the cliffhanger — balancing creative brilliance with financial overexposure.

From working onGadar 2toOppenheimer, this company’s credits are longer than a Sanjay Leela Bhansali film. But fame comes with FX bills, and those have piled up faster than popcorn tubs in a multiplex.

Over the last few quarters, Prime Focus fought a tough macro environment. The Hollywood writers’ and actors’ strikes hit the pipeline hard, causing utilization drops across DNEG’s global facilities. The result: OPM fell from 21% in FY23 to 6% in FY24, before rebounding to 17% in 9MFY25.

And just when the world thought the curtain might drop, they pulled off a ₹4,000 crore rights issue, a $200 million foreign fundraise, and an acquisition of an AI company that now wants to be the “Operating System of Generative Content.”

That’s not financial engineering — that’s creative direction on steroids.

3.Business Model – WTF Do They Even Do?

Imagine if Netflix, Pixar, and TCS had a child. That would be Prime Focus.

The company operates two major divisions:

1. Creative Services (≈90% of FY24 revenue)This is the glamorous side — where magic meets math. Under theDNEGbrand, PFL does high-end VFX, 3D conversion, animation, and post-production. DNEG has become a global powerhouse, with studios across London, LA, Vancouver, Montreal, and even Bengaluru. Their recent projects includeFast X,Dune: Part Two, andThe Last of Us. Basically, if it blows up on screen, DNEG probably made it happen.

2. Tech / Tech-Enabled Services (≈10%)Operated throughPrime Focus Technologies (PFT), this arm handles subtitling, dubbing, mastering, and AI-driven content automation under theCLEAR®platform. Think of it as the IT backend for the world’s media houses — ensuring every dubbed, censored, localized version of your favorite show reaches your OTT app on time.

Together, they’re trying to make Prime Focus less of a production house and more of amedia infrastructure company.

Question for you: do you think Bollywood producers understand the difference between “content pipeline” and “cash flow pipeline”? Because Prime Focus sure does — and sometimes that’s the problem.

4.Financials Overview

P/E (TTM): 110× — clearly, the market values optimism more than arithmetic.

Commentary:From ₹1,061 crore topline, they managed just ₹4 crore PAT — that’s less profit margin than a samosa stall after Swiggy commission. QoQ decline