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. […]
Earnings Reports
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 […]
Sales Rise 19 Percent at HarperCollins
News Corp. reported fiscal third quarter results after the close of the market on Thursday, with HarperCollins recorded sales of $490 million, up 19 percent from $412 million a year ago. That sales total included $8 million from recent acquisitions and $10 million in foreign exchange gains. Earnings rose more, up 45 percent to $80 million, compared to $55 million a year ago. The gains were driven “by the success of numerous backlist titles, including the Bridgerton series” by Julia Quinn following the success of the Netflix adaptation. Sales were also helped by “faster digital growth.” Digital sales were up […]
Sales and Earnings Rise at Simon & Schuster
ViacomCBS reported first quarter 2021 results on Thursday morning, with sales at Simon & Schuster of $185 million — up $15 million, or 8.8 percent, versus the same period a year ago. With the parent company classifying S&S under “discontinued operations” while the pending sale to Penguin Random House awaits regulatory review and approval, ViacomCBS has changed the way they report the publisher’s earnings, showing operating income before other items of $27 million. The publisher says operating income was up 80 percent for the quarter, and compares to $15 million a year ago. Simon & Schuster ceo Jonathan Karp said, […]
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 […]
More Financial Updates, from Bertelsmann and Lagardere
Alongside more detailed corporate reporting elsewhere, Bertelsmann issued a brief first quarter trading update on Thursday, with revenues of €4.2 billion, versus €4.1 billion a year ago. Penguin Random House was among the three divisions that “delivered particularly strong performances” and “double-digit organic growth rates. (Note that topline growth at the company was far lower than the estimated “organic” growth, suggesting that foreign exchange weighed on results.) Separately, Penguin Random House Grupo Editorial announced an agreement to acquire Spanish-language children’s and YA imprints Molino and Serres, along with Catalan-language imprint, La Magrana, from the RBA Group close once the relevant […]