I find that a bit surprising. Where do they get the bulk of their income? Surely, I thought the decision to establish a new stable of original superheroes was tied to the loss of the Star Wars license.
In a way, sure, but it's also simply tied to their desire to continue growing. There was no desperate need to find a way to survive without Star Wars. Not sure on what exact metric he was using, but Mike Richardson said Dark Horse's 2013 was it's best year ever by a 30% margin.
They've got Hellboy, the Whedonverse, Alien/Predator, creator-owned stuff of various degrees (Mind MGMT, Usagi Yojimbo), various video game spinoffs, some merchandizing programs (like with Game of Thrones), some manga, etc. They're fairly smartly diversified across a lot of different kinds of properties.
Here's
a great interview with Mike Richardson and Scott Allie back when the Star Wars news broke.