Penguin Random House Sales Fall Organically, Gain On Foreign Exchange, As Earnings Declined
Bertelsmann reported results for the first six months of the year, with Penguin Random House declining on an organic basis by 1.8 percent — though topline sales still rose by 6.3 percent, due to the weakness of the euro. Sales for the period were €1.916 billion, compared to €1.804 billion a year ago. Earnings were down by both measures, with EBITDA of €257 million, compared to €324 million a year ago. The company noted, “Adjusted for exchange-rate effects, revenue and earnings declined, given the inflationary pressure and supply-chain challenges.” You can see the dual effect on PRH US sales — […]
Barnes & Noble Education Loses More Than Ever In First Quarter
Barnes & Noble Education started their fiscal 2023 by doing what unfortunately they do best: Losing more money than expected. In the seasonally soft quarter, sales of $264 million were up from $241 million a year ago, but still well behind pre-pandemic levels of $338 million in fiscal 2019. The net loss of ($52.7 million) was worse than last year’s net loss of ($43.6 million), and their worst loss for this quarter in at least the last six years. Retail sales of 236.5 million rose $26 million, mostly on merchandise and café and convenience food product sales, rather than textbooks. […]
Quarto to Sell Smart Lab, Close Distribution Service
In reporting results for the first six months of 2022, Quarto followed the classic corporate move of burying the most interesting developments at the very bottom of their announcement. They will sell the toy imprint Smart Lab (acquired as part of Becker & Mayer), “in order to focus on our core publishing business.” The will also close their distribution service, “which will start to impact our sales from July 2022.” They have “received a non-binding offer” for Smart Lab and “a sale is expected to be completed by September 2022.” The business is carried at an asset value of $2.36 […]
Baker & Taylor’s Systems Remain Offline More Than A Week After Ransomware Attack
Following a ransomware attack over a week ago (on the weekend of August 20-21), Baker & Taylor’s systems have been down, and remain so on Monday morning. The outage has been widespread: Title Source 360 and EDI have been inaccessible (and even their phone systems were down), with the company unable to process orders to library customers as a result. In the latest update, the company said: “We want to take this opportunity to thank you again for your continued patience and cooperation as we deal with the service disruption we’ve been experiencing. We know that it has been frustrating, […]
Understanding the Contours of Growing Backlist Sales
Some interesting data has surfaced recently providing more nuance about the true scope of backlist sales — from both the antitrust trial and NPD Bookscan — that’s worthy of gathering in one place. During the pandemic, Bookscan data showed a marked acceleration of backlist sales, from roughly 62 or 63 percent of print units in 2019 up to 70 percent of print units so far this year, with a trendline that looks like it never changes direction. That has been attributed to a number of pandemic-driven effects: A shift to more online sales; a reduction in new releases (particularly early […]