Lagardere Publishing rebounded in the first quarter of 2013, with sales of 419 million euros up 6.6 percent (or 25 million euros) on a topline basis, and up 7.9 percent according to the company’s like-for-like comparison. Hachette Book Group USA was a bright spot (following a soft holiday quarter to end 2012), up 14.9 percent, thanks to “a host of new works” and strong backlist film tie-ins including Safe Haven by Nicholas Sparks, Beautiful Creatures by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl, and A Story Of God And All Of Us by Mark Burnett and Roma Downey. “As usual, sales of […]
Earnings Reports
After Layoffs and A Big Writedown, Cengage Talks Openly About Chapter 11
Cengage continues its slow march to the inevitable restructuring that has loomed for a while, and for the first time management has openly (and casually) talked about bankruptcy reorganization. The main questions now are who will lead that bankruptcy plan, can they organize a pre-packaged plan, and which private equity company will control what’s left? The latest step is driven by Cengage’s third quarter earnings report. In a modest “operational restructuring” they took a $12.7 million charge related to firing an unspecified number of employees. More significantly, the preliminary results of a new strategic plan and revised more realistic expectations […]
Acquisitions Help HMH Trade
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt reported results for the first quarter of 2013, with the trade unit continuing the upswing from the end of 2012, driven by the acquisition of the Wiley culinary titles “as well as general interest and young readers titles.” HMH Trade sales of $39.8 million were up 25 percent compared to $31.9 million a year, and EBITDA nearly doubled to $6.7 million. (The unit records a high margin in part because HMH accounts separately for “certain general overhead costs not fully allocated to the business units such as legal, accounting, treasury, human resources and C-suite functions” in a […]
Another Opaque Quarter for Harper With News Corp Spinoff Closer to Completion
News Corp. reported third quarter earnings after the close of the market Wednesday and once again the company disclosed nothing in particular about HarperCollins. Notably, this time around it didn’t even merit an adjective. (Harper itself characterized the previous quarters as “favorable”: before that, it was “solid,” “challenging,” and “terrific” — but this time they declined to comment.) At the larger newspaper publishing unit of which Harper is a small part, sales decreased $87 million to $1.938 billion, while operating income dropped $45 million, to $85 million. The declines owed to another $42 million in costs related to the phone-hacking investigations […]
Harlequin Cuts Jobs On Weak Quarter; Authors Appeal Royalty Lawsuit
Harlequin sales fell 4 percent in the first quarter, down $4 million to $102.5 million (CA) , with operating profit declining 27 percent to $14.9 million, falling $5.6 million in the period. Parent company Torstar had a similar weak overall quarter, and announced further restructuring in both the book publishing and general media divisions. They are cutting approximately 105 jobs companywide — with roughly 20 to 30 of those positions coming from Harlequin (a deduction based on the dollar figures provided). The book publisher took a restructuring charge of $2.3 million for the quarter, and expects to save $2.1 million […]
Simon & Schuster Overcomes BN Issues with Rising Profits and Small Sales Drop
Barnes & Noble’s negotiations with Simon & Schuster over terms continues unresolved, but the publisher’s first quarter results did not appear to suffer measurably as a result. Like the prior two quarters, sales fell but profits rose for S&S: At $171 million, sales declined by $5 million or less than 3 percent (after a 6 percent decline in the bigger holiday quarter). And profits rose, as adjusted OIBDA gained $2 million (or 20 percent) to $12 million, and adjusted operating income rose $2 million, at $10 million. The company attributed the sales decline to difficult comparisons to a year ago, when […]