Simon & Schuster’s parent company CBS reported third quarter sales after the close of the market on Thursday, with book publishing revenues rising 11 percent to $226 million from $203 million a year ago, good enough to turn sales positive for the year-to-date. Operating income also grew modestly, by $1 million, up to $44 million, “as the increase in revenues was largely offset by higher production and selling costs.” As in the prior quarter, digital revenues comprised 23 percent of sales. Both print and digital sales grew and key titles for the quarter included what CBS ceo Les Moonves called “the […]
Earnings Reports
Houghton Slashes Expectations Again After Poor Quarter; Stock Falls Sharply
After a job-ending $40 million reduction in expectations for former ceo Linda Zecher followed by a warning from the board that things might be even worse, those ominous signals (“Considering the importance of the third quarter, HMH plans to provide a further update on its expected financial performance for the full year when it issues its third quarter earnings in November 2016”) bore out poorly on Thursday morning for Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. The company lowered their forecast for the year dramatically again in reporting those third quarter results “in light of weaker-than-expected results in the domestic education market,” now expecting sales […]
Amazon’s Stock Falls on Slimmer Than Expected Profits; Media Sales Now Even with Apple
Amazon and Google both reported third quarter sales after the close of the market on Thursday. Amazon was expected to exceed analysts’ expectations (yes, that’s as crazy as it sounds) but they only fulfilled that halfway: Indeed sales of $32.7 billion were about $130 million ahead of those estimates, rising 29 percent overall, but profits returned to disappointing, with net income of $252 million or 52 cents a share — down from a quarter ago, and down from analysts’ target of 85 cents a share. Those profits were additionally disappointing when you consider that the company’s profit engine — the AWS web services […]
Potter Lifts Bloomsbury Sales Again, Though Profit Declines
Bloomsbury reported results for the first half of their fiscal year, ending August 31, with sales rising £10 million to £62.7 million, though adjusted profit fell to £1.5 million down £.5 million), blamed on the ending of their contract for publishing services with the Qatar Foundation. As in the previous fiscal year, Harry Potter continues to drive Bloomsbury’s results: Essentially all of the gain in sales came trade publishing, which comprised £37.3 million, and most of that from children’s books, particularly the Harry Potter Box Set and the Illustrated Edition of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (plus Sarah Maas’s A Court of Mist and Fury). The non-consumer division […]
Apple’s “Services” Grow 24 Percent, Pulling Even or Ahead of Amazon
Apple reported fourth quarter results on Tuesday morning, with sales of $46.9 billion in line with expectations and net income of $9 billion, or $1.67 per share, a penny per share above “expectations” — even though those numbers were below results from the same quarter a year ago. iPads moved another 9.3 million units in the quarter, and “services,” which includes the digital media stores, was up 24 percent year over year, to a new record of $6.325 billion for the quarter, compared to $5.086 billion a year ago. On the investor call, the company underscored that “App Store revenue continued […]
Another Disappointing Update from Pearson Sends Shares Down Further
Pearson’s third quarter trading update surprised investors who thought they had become accustomed to the education giant’s postponed recovery. The statement reads politely, “Pearson is reiterating its 2016 guidance and its 2018 goals are unchanged,” but the numbers have sales for the first three quarters of the year down 7 percent in underlying terms, and down 10 percent measured in constant exchange rates, saved a bit by the plunging British pound, which leaves actual topline numbers down only 3 percent (since two-thirds of their revenue comes in US dollars). That’s actually a little less poorly than they were doing at the […]