Wiley reported fourth quarter and fiscal year results for the period ended April 30, with sales of $536 million, up from $474.6 million, a 13 percent increase, including $14.8 million in foreign exchange variance and acquisitions. Operating income was $51.2 million, improved from a loss of ($170.7) million a year ago, and adjusted EBITDA was $112.7 million, up from $92.8 million. Academic & Professional Learning (which includes trade books) grew 15 percent as reported, “driven by strong growth in Education Publishing and trade publishing, accompanied by further recovery in corporate training.” For the full year, sales were $1.94 billion, up […]
Indigo Finishes a Tough Year with Signs of Improvement
On Tuesday, Indigo announced results for the fourth quarter ended April 3, 2021, with sales of CA$199 million, up from $178.1 million last year. The net loss for the quarter was $(39.5) million, compared to a big loss of $(171.3) million last year, when they took significant impairment charges. For the full 53-week year, sales were $905 million — “normalized” at $889 million over 52 weeks — down by 5.5 percent overall (and 7.1 percent on a normalized basis) from $958 million last year, in a year disrupted by COVID-related store closures. Two years ago, sales had reached $1.047 billion. […]
Storytel Streaming Sales Increase 20 Percent in Q1
Swedish ebook streaming service and publisher Storytel reported results for the first quarter ended March 31, with streaming sales of SEK517.1 million ($62.1 million), up 20.5 percent from SEK429.3 million a year ago. Print publishing sales were SEK125.2 million, up from SEK114.7 million, gaining 9.1 percent. Pre-tax loss for the quarter was SEK(73.5) million, compared to a loss of SEK(37.5) million in Q1 2020. (Still in growth mode, the company doesn’t consider earnings a key performance indicator.) During the quarter, Storytel acquired a majority stake in Swedish publishing house Lind & Co., and added a new market, Israel, following the […]
HMH Books & Media Sales Rise
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt continues to excel in issuing earnings press releases featuring prose that’s far more encouraging than the data. In their minds they are becoming a “pure-play learning technology company” with “a strong start to the new year” and “impressive growth in important key performance indicators, positioning HMH amongst the largest and fastest growing companies in the edtech market.” In their accounting, they are a debt-laden company that has lost nearly unfathomable amounts of money relative to their size since going public. Compared to what was a bad pandemic quarter a year ago, sales from continuing operations — setting […]
WH Smith High Street Sales Down 14 Percent, As Company Warns of a Potential Cash Crunch
WH Smith announced six month results for the period ended February 28, with High Street sales of £270 million, down 14 percent over the prior year, and profit of £33 million, compared to profit of £47 million last year. By the quarter, High Street sales were 88 percent of 2019 sales in Q1, 84 percent in Q2, and 87 percent in Q3 to date. The company called out High Street’s resilience and said the business was “well placed to continue to generate cash from its portfolio of well-located stores and growing internet businesses.” Reduced rents at lease renewal played an […]
Lagardere Agrees to New Corporate Structure, Will Keep Group Intact For now
As previewed earlier in the week, Arnaud Lagardere and the principal shareholders in Lagardere have reached an agreement that would end the special corporate structure under which Mr. Lagardere has controlled the company, despite owning only 7 percent of the public shares. Lagardere’s holding company is “relinquishing their rights” in exchange for 10 million new shares in the public company — worth a little over 230 million euros at current prices, and doubling their current stake after the dilution — and he will serve as chief executive for the duration of his current six-year term as a board member. While […]