Pearson issued a brief trading update ahead of February’s full report of earnings for the year, raising their profit guidance yet again, to 76 pence per share (up from 72 pence per share), which took the stock to a new high. Even with the end-of-year Borders surprise, they say that Penguin “performed strongly in our key trading season and will report record results despite tough conditions in the physical book retail market.” Overall profits of 850 million pounds are expected to be up 20 percent over last year, “fuelled by [their] consistent investment in the global learning industry, in digital […]
Publishers
Random CEO Writes on Year’s Highlights
Random House ceo Markus Dohle writes to employees worldwide to “celebrate a good fiscal year for Random House worldwide despite the hurdle of ailing economies in most of our territories.” Among the highlights, Stieg Larsson Millennium trilogy is “on course to sell 14 million copies in 2010” in the US across all formats, with another 2 million trade paperbacks and e-books in Germany. Worldwide digital sales are expected to be up by 250 percent over 2009, and in the US he acknowledges that “for some of our fall publication titles, nearly half of the overall first-week sales have been in […]
Sales Up Slightly As Scholastic Underdelivers
Sales at Scholastic rose 2 percent in their second quarter, at $675.7 million, up 2% from $660.1 million a year ago. Earnings from continuing operations before taxes were $124.3 million, up 22 percent–except that the company took a large writedown this time last year. Trade publishing sales of $53.4 million rose 8 percent compared to a year ago. Overall, “results were below our plan, reflecting lower spending by school districts and lower than expected revenue in clubs.” The company said they had “lower sales of educational technology relative to a year ago, as well as higher promotion spending in School […]
Consumer Sales Fall As Wiley Stays Almost Flat Overall
Sales at John Wiley fell one percent in their second quarter, to $442 million, and operating income of $78 million is technically ahead of this time last year–but only because of last year’s $11 million writedown related to GIT Verlag. Absent that charge, income fell 10 percent, “due to top-line results and increased investment in digital products and support systems to support future business growth.” The professional/trade division was “soft,” particularly “compared with a strong second quarter last year. Low traffic and sell-through at some retail accounts contributed to these results. eBook sales continue to grow, more than doubling over […]
Publishing Flat At Courier As They Take Another Writedown on Creative Homeowner Line; Hastings Keeps Selling Fewer New Books
Courier reported that both fourth quarter and full-year sales rose 3 percent, at $68.4 million and $257.1 million respectively, but weakness in the home improvement market led to yet another writedown at their Creative Homeowner publishing unit. They took a $4.7 million non-cash impairment charge due to “the systemic problems it currently faces in the home improvement market,” bringing fourth quarter net income down to $1.1 million. The publishing division had sales of $11.9 million in the fourth quarter, even with a year ago, as a 6 percent increase at Dover was negated by a 23 percent decline at Creative […]
Ad Recovery Continues to Help Bertelsmann Results
Bertelsmann has reported continuing strength in their business, with sales for the third quarter of 3.649 billion euros and operating EBIT of 265 million euros, yielding after-tax profit of 111 million euros. (In the European tradition, they simply report results for the first 9 months of the year; we subtract out and isolate the most recent quarter, since the other results have already been reported.) The company says results were “fueled by a recovery in the overall economy including an upturn in the advertising industry; long-view cost measures; and a brisk business performance both in conventional and digital media.” They […]