McGraw-Hill reported third quarter sales, with their education division dropping 11.6 percent to $1 billion compared, as operating profit fell 16 percent to $298 million. The decline came entirely from the K-12 line, which fell almost 20 percent, “in a 2009 state new adoption market that deteriorated all year as budgetary pressures led a growing number of school districts to postpone purchases.”Release Meanwhile, Barnes & Noble can’t catch a break from Wall Street analysts no matter what they do. On Friday Credit Suisse reduced their target price for the company to $16 per share (about two dollars below its current […]
Earnings Reports
Amazon's Earnings Spike
Amazon well-exceeded analysts expectations, reporting third quarter earnings about 40 percent higher than predicted. And the company thanked Kindle, in their traditionally non-specific way: “Kindle has become the #1 bestselling item by both unit sales and dollars – not just in our electronics store but across all product categories on Amazon.” Earlier in the day, they also announced a Kindle for PC application to allow reading on computers. Sales rose 28 percent (including the incorporation of Zappos) to $5.45 billion for the quarter, as net income rose 68 percent to $199. North American media sales, which had unexpectedly stalled last […]
Pearson OK at Q3
In one of those UK “trading updates” that doesn’t disclose actual data, Pearson tells investors the company is “trading ahead of expectations” so far this fiscal year and raised its earnings guidance a few pence, to “at or above 60 pence a share” for the full year. Primarily, the pound has stayed weak enough against the dollar and the company has “outperformed the US schools market.” At Penguin, currency neutral sales are down 4 percent, but with the weak pound actual sales are up 12 percent “as the expected tough retail market conditions were largely offset by a good publishing […]
Book Sales Fall 4 Percent at WH Smith
Reporting preliminary annual results for the fiscal year ending August 31, the UK’s WH Smith said sales fell 5 percent at their High Street stores, at 892 million pounds. Same-store sales on books declined 4 percent, but their gross margin increased, with high street operating profit of 49 million pounds, up 4 percent. The company credited itself with “further progress implementing our strategy to build on our authority as a popular book specialist. We saw good market share performance versus the general retail market with strong market shares in kids books and celebrity autobiographies.”Smith statement Bloomsbury offered a brief “interim […]
Barnes & Noble's New Earnings Schedule Has Bookstore Comps Down 4.1 Percent
Barnes & Noble announced results for their new fiscal quarter, aligned to dovetail with the just-acquired BN College. Reporting sales for the past nine weeks of the new quarter, same-store sales at BN fell 4.1 percent at $665 million, while results at BN.com rose 8 percent to $91 million. The retailer said that for the full fiscal 2010 quarter, they expect that comp-store sales decline to range between 1 percent and 3 percent–meaning they see sales improving from here. Of course those forward-looking comparisons are set against a lower bar–October is when book sales started to plunge last year as […]
BN Completes BN College Acquisition
Barnes & Noble announced after the close of the market that they completed their acquisition of privately-held Barnes & Noble College Booksellers from Len Riggio. The purchase price was reduced from $596 million to $514 million, “reflect $82 million in cash bonuses paid by College to 192 members of its management team and employees” (not including Riggio.) The original purchase price acknowledged that BN College had about $136 million in cash on hand, making the effective price $460 million, which presumably has not changed materially. The company did say that the refinancing of their lightly-used $1 billion revolving credit facility […]