Earnings Reports

News Corp. reported third quarter sales for the period ending March 31 after the close of the market Wednesday. In a departure from recent reports, the release actually mentions their book publishing unit by unit, once, in this morsel: Profits fell in their newspaper-dominated publishing business unit, but “the decline was partially offset by improved contributions from Dow Jones, HarperCollins and the integrated marketing services business.” In a brief statement of their own, Harper said they had “a terrific quarter across the board” thanks to “lower returns and higher ebook sales in most areas.” Worldwide digital sales for the quarter […]

Harlequin’s parent company Torstar reported first quarter results Wednesday. The book publishing unit had sales of $106.6 million (CA), down by $9.4 million, excluding the impact of foreign exchange (which added another $700,000 in earnings.) EBITDA was down $1.5 million in the quarter at $21.4 million, which Torstar attributed to “lower revenues as we continue to adjust in the print and digital book publishing markets to the shift to digital reading.” As in the past, the sales drop was attributed to “declines in print revenues  [that] more than [offset] digital revenue growth.” Global digital revenues, up $2.9 million compared to […]

CBS reported first quarter earnings after the close of the market on Tuesday, with Simon & Schuster recording strong results: sales rose 14 percent, up $21 million to $176 million. It’s a quarter with traditionally thin margins, but OIBDA rose as well, up $3 million to $10 million, with operating income of $8 million, as gains in content sales were “partially offset by higher costs related to legal matters”–which presumably means the settlement discussions with the Department of Justice and state attorneys general. Since those settlements have not been finalized, there is no larger charge against earnings declared yet for the […]

Pearson issued a brief first quarter trading update, in advance of their annual meeting. Sales rose 3 percent overall in the period, at £1.16 billion, up 11 percent on a constant-exchange-rate basis. The company expects profits in the first half of this fiscal year to be lower than a year, with income “heavily weighted to the second half” and comparisons that include the previous sale of their stake in FTSE International. They expect Penguin to “perform in line with its industry this year” (which usually means low growth). The unit “will benefit from its consistently strong publishing schedule, which is […]