• Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Login
  • Register

Publishers Lunch

The Publishing Industry's Daily Essential Read

  • Publishers Marketplace
  • Site Guide
  • Help

Penguin Random House Has Softer Sales (Probably) and Strong Earnings In First Half

August 29, 2014
By Michael Cader

Penguin Random House plus the separately-owned Random House Germany together had sales in the first half of 2014 of €1.461 billion, with operating EBITDA of €159 million. (The Santillana trade publishing business was added July 1, after the close of these results.) It is the first time that the combined business has reported sales for the first six months of the year, and while the company did not disclose direct comps to prior performance, sales look to be down by about €40 million, or 2.7 percent, likely from the Random House side (which had Dan Brown’s Inferno in 2013, and strong continuing Fifty Shades sales), with profits nearly flat. (Accounting variations between the two companies make it harder to compare earnings than sales, however.)

This time last year, Random House alone had sales of €915 million and profits were a first-half-year record of €131 million. Separately, Penguin had strong first half sales of £513 million pounds in 2013 — or about €585 million (up from £441 million in 2012) — and operating profit of £28 million (or €32 million).

CEO Markus Dohle writes to employees about the “solid first-half performance” that “it was our children’s and YA megabestsellers across our companies internationally that had the greatest impact on our top and bottom lines.” John Green’s The Fault In Our Stars was the leading performer (as Pearson noted in July), selling 5.7 million units across all territories. Other strong titles came from Gayle Forman, James Dashner, Jeff Kinney, and Frozen and Lego movie tie-ins.

Overall at Bertelsmann, sales rose almost €500 million to €7.85 billion, and operating EBIT was flat at €1.015 billion. CEO Thomas Rabe said in the release: “The first six months of 2014 went satisfactorily for Bertelsmann. The significant increase in revenues is a testament to the effectiveness of our strategy, and last year’s big investments are paying off. In the past few months, we have made significant progress in our four strategic directions: strengthening the core, digital transformation, expanding growth platforms, and our businesses in growth regions. We are well on our way to making Bertelsmann a faster-growing, more digital and more international company long-term. In the months and years ahead, we will focus on expanding our Education business, which will become a third mainstay of revenues alongside Media and Services.”

For some additional context and background, we are working on a beta feature so new it doesn’t even have a name yet. But think of it as “Index Pages” for major companies and storylines — highlighting stories from our vast archive and other PM data (like our publishers/imprints trees and dealmakers pages). Our Penguin Random House page — still a work in progress — is posted here.

Filed Under: Earnings Reports, Free, Publishers

sidebar

Primary Free Sidebar

Login


Forgot password
Quick Pass users click here to log in
Get Full Access
The publishing industry's essential daily read

Each Publishers Lunch Deluxe subscription includes full access to our searchable multi-year archive of industry news, a nightly email reporting 10 to 50 deal transactions, and our database of industry contacts, scripts, and posting privileges.

Learn More

RSS Automat

  • NYU Launches Five-Day "Advanced Publishing Institute" Program for January 2024 March 25, 2023 NYU site
  • Hachette UK to Publish "Spare Us!" Parody on April 6 March 23, 2023 Publisher site
  • Netflix to Stream Series Based on Ramit Sethi's Book, "How to Get Rich" March 23, 2023 THR
  • James Patterson Signs First-Look Development Deal with Skydance Television March 22, 2023 Deadline
  • "I find it kind of stunning that the [Internet] Archive would put its entire free service at risk over such an obviously wrong stand" March 21, 2023 Dan Kennedy / Media Nation
  • Douglas Stuart's Young Mungo Is Being Adapated Into a TV Series by A24 March 21, 2023 Deadline
  • Reid Hoffman Posts a Free eBook About His Experiences with ChaptGPT-4 March 16, 2023 Free PDF
  • Siri Hustvedt Reveals that Paul Auster Is Receiving Cancer Treatment at Sloan Kettering March 14, 2023 Instagram post
  • John Jakes Dies at 90 March 14, 2023 NYT
  • Barnes & Noble Children's Awards Shortlists March 13, 2023 BN
© 2023 Publishers Lunch. All Rights Reserved.