Harlequin’s parent company Torstar reported third quarter results Wednesday for the period ending September 30. The book publishing unit had sales of $115.7 million (CA), down slightly by $1.8 million, (or less than 1 percent), largely due to foreign exchange rates but buffered by the benefits of the other half of Harlequin’s German business at the beginning of the second quarter of 2010, to the tune of $700,000. EBITDA was up for the third quarter by $600,000 (or 2.4 percent) to $24.8 million, with, as always, “digital revenue growth more than offsetting declines in print retail and direct-to-consumer revenues.” Those […]
Publishers
Acquisitions and eBooks Lift Bloomsbury Sales
Sales at Bloomsbury rose more than 16 percent, to £44.9 million for the six months ending August 31, driven by recent acquisitions and ebook sales that grew more than six-fold from a year ago, now at £2.5 million for the period. Like-for-like sales with the Continuum acquisition were still up 11.9 percent, but pre-tax profit declined to just £0.3, from £0.8 a year ago, due to restructuring costs and their relocation to new offices in London. With recent purchases, Bloomsbury’s Harry Potter cash stash is down to just under £9.5 million. UK sales were £30.8 million and US sales were […]
McGraw-Hill Misses Estimates, As K-12 Sales Are Hit
McGraw-Hill reported sales and earnings below expectations and pared back their full-year earnings forecast this morning. Sales at McGraw-Hill Education, which will be kicked out of the corporate nest next year to stand on its own, fell 11.1 percent, to $937 million. Adjusted operating profit fell by the same percentage, at $314.7 million. The decline came almost entirely from the School Education group in particular, where declining state textbook adoptions drove a 21.4 percent drop in sales to $420.4 million. Higher ed and professional sales were “essentially flat.”
Cengage Swings to Loss; Will Need to Refinance
Cengage had sales of $1.88 billion in their most recent fiscal year, ending in June, but the textbook company went from income of $47 million in the previous year to a loss of $37 million. Thirty-one percent of recents come from digital products and print-and-digital bundles. Bought by Apax Partners in the overvalued days of cheap and abundant credit in 2007 for $7.75 billion, the company still carries gross debt of $5.7 billion, which costs $480 million a year in interest. CEO Ron Dunn “says it will need to refinance within 18 months,” but also indicates to the FT there […]
Perseus Sees Opportunity Ahead
Perseus Books Group ceo David Steinberger issued his annual letter to employees, “reflect[ing] on a fiscal year of hard work and impressive results.” The privately-held company (which therefore does not release actual figures) “generated strong financial results” in their fiscal year, ending June 30. On the overall environment, Steinberger writes: “We continue to live and work in a time of global opportunity, technological revolutions, and economic uncertainty. The evolution and transformation of our industry in particular has been and will continue to be a significant challenge as evidenced by the recent collapse of Borders. The current economic climate is very challenging […]
Briefs: Amazon Lights a “Kindle Fire” Under Its Tablet; Quercus Sales Fall From Larsson Ebb; and More
Multiple reports (including this one from TechCrunch) indicate that Amazon’s tablet, which will be formally introduced at an event Wednesday morning, will be called the Kindle Fire, and will not be ready to ship until the second week of November. For the first six months of 2011, Quercus reported sales of 12 million pounds, down 20 percent from a year ago (largely due to a natural ebb in Stieg Larsson volume sales, which had boosted Quercus’s bottom line significantly for the past few years) though profits rose slightly to 3.4 million pounds during the same time frame. The cost of […]