Full-year sales at The Quarto Group rose 13 percent to 112.7 million pounds, but only because of the full-year integration of their MBI acquisition and the late-year rally in the dollar. Adjusted operating profit rose 23 percent to 6.4 million pounds, but actual operating profit plunged over 45 percent to 5.25 million pounds. As part of the report, the board said it “is discussing whether to change the group’s reporting currency from sterling to the US dollar” which “would give a more nuanced view of performance.” Chairman Laurence Orbach tells shareholders that “November was horrible…. Books commissioned in earlier years […]
Earnings Reports
Currency Drives Strong Year for Penguin and Pearson
As expected, Penguin rode the big swing in dollar/pound exchange rates to sales for the year of 903 pounds, a 6.7 percent increase, as adjusted operating profit rose 26 percent, to 93 million pounds, exceeding the company’s long-discussed target margin of 10 percent a year. (On a “constant exchange rate basis,” though, the company says sales were flat, and profits rose 4 percent; on an underlying basis, after accounting for the sale of a small wholesaling business in 2007, sales grew 3 percent.) Those profit gains came in spite of a charge in the “the small units of millions of […]
Weak Currency Drives Strong Finish for Harlequin
Harlequin record a strong fourth quarter, with sales of $126 million (CA) up over 18 percent from a year ago, and ebitda of $18.4 million up more than 30 percent. Good results were made even stronger by the decline of the Canadian dollar against the US dollar, and they say that “Harlequin’s revenues, to date, have not been significantly affected by the global, and in particular, U.S. economic situation.” But parent Torstar suffered overall, with writedowns producing a net loss of $211 million for the quarter. They are cutting their dividend in half, and “as part of a planned transition,” […]
Simon & Schuster Holds Steady in Fourth Quarter
CBS reported fourth-quarter sales after the close of the market, with sales of Simon & Schuster doing well given the economic climate, rising one percent to $245 million. Earnings suffered, however, as OIBDA declined 4 percent, at $28.3 million, and operating income was off 3 percent, at $26.1 million. The publisher took a $4.2 million “restructuring charge,” primarily due to the layoffs in December, though also including a modest charge due to the bankruptcy of Woolworth’s in the UK. For the full year, S&S had sales of $858 million, down three percent, as OIBDA of $88.2 million reflected a 9 […]
Meyer Drives Lagardere to Finish the Year Ahead
Lagardere has announced preliminary figures for their fourth quarter and fiscal year. The pulishing unit had sales of 595 million euros for the final quarter powered by the “exceptional performance” of Stephenie Meyer in the US a “sold” sales of illustrated books in France, offsetting a “slowdown in sales” in the UK. Meyer sold 8 million books in the US in December alone, and over 28 million books in the year. Though they publish her in the UK as well, “success of Stephenie Meyer only partially compensated for the departure of James Patterson to another publisher and the non-recurrence of […]
Sales Plunge at Harper; News Corp. Takes $8.4 Billion Writedown
In a dire quarter for parent company News Corp.–which is taking a total writedown of $8.4 billion, including $2.8 billion against the $5.7 billion acquisition of the Wall Street Journal, and fell well short of analysts’ diminished expectations–publisher HarperCollins only performed poorly. Sales collapsed by 25 percent, down from $406 million a year ago to $305 million, the lowest total for this period since February 2002. The company cites “lower sales driven by the weakening retail market as well as a difficult comparison to a year ago” when they had a trio of strong bestsellers, but Harper hasn’t been below […]