Scholastic reported third quarter sales from continuing operations of $425 million, down 3.5 percent, and a bigger loss from continuing operations before taxes of $41.4 million. (That loss, not counting special items, was much larger than forecast by the analyst who covers Scholastic, who was expecting just one cent a share. Sales were about $25 million below the expectation, too.) But they celebrate having “successfully sustained revenues last quarter in our market-leading children’s book and educational technology businesses” and reaffirmed guidance to investors for the fourth quarter and full year. Corporate overhead rose for the quarter, including $4.8 million in […]
Publishers
Weak Dollar Pushes Random House Results Further Down
Bertelsmann reported annual results this morning in Germany, with sales at Random House falling 6.3 percent for the year, to 1.721 billion euros, as EBIT fell even more, down 21 percent at 137 million euros. (After the first six months of the year, Random had been down almost 8 percent in sales and nearly 30 percent in EBIT.) The company says the drops are “primarily due to negative exchange rate effects,” insisting that “adjusted for these and for acquisitions, revenues remained stable.” But those sales are the lowest recorded in the past seven years (during which the company has made […]
Hastings Entertainment Q4 Earnings Decline, Book Comps Up
Hastings Entertainment reported a decline in fourth-quarter earnings, with a net income of $4.07 million or $0.41 per share, compared to $5.82 million or $0.54 per share in corresponding period one year earlier. Total revenue for the quarter declined 2.7 percent to $166.88 million, from $171.49 million a year earlier.For the twelve-month period, net earnings fell to $4.1 million or $0.39 per share from $10.2 million or $0.93 per share in the previous year, while total revenues decreased 1.6% to $538.7 million from $547.7 million last year. Comparable store revenues for books, however, rose 1.3 percent for the year ending […]
More Numbers from Lagardere
Yesterday Lagardere release their more detailed annual report, which also includes profits for fiscal 2008 (they released basic sales figures of 2.159 billion euros earlier, as we previously reported). They company says EBIT for 2008 was 236 million euros, up 3.3 percent from a year ago, with operating margins up slightly to 11.4 percent. The US comprised 22 percent of sales in 2008, up from 18 percent a year ago, making it larger than Hachette UK for the first time, which saw its share of sales drop from 24 percent a year ago to 18 percent in 2008. On that […]
Wiley's Pesce Forsees Trade Turnaround
John Wiley’s conference call with investors following yesterday’s quarterly earnings release yielded more interesting conversation than these events often produce. (It includes a discussion of possible economic models to drive open access research publishing). CEO William Pesce says that in the “very weak retail environment particularly in the US….we’re anticipating that the improvement will come or begin to come in the fourth quarter. That assumes of course that there’s nothing that happens in a significant way in terms of markets deteriorating any further.” But he added, “we’re not expecting a huge turnaround in the market in the fourth quarter but […]
Currency Holds Wiley Back; Trade Suffers
Sales at Wiley fell 13 percent in their fiscal third quarter to $374 million, with the company citing a “$47 million unfavorable foreign exchange impact” and also suffering from weakness in the US trade segment. (They say that sales fell 2 percent without the currency effects, “due to market conditions affecting the Professional/Trade business and processing delays in STMS related to journal subscription renewals.”) Income before taxes fell 16 percent to $44 million, with adjusted earnings per diluted share down 15 percent at $0.57. Wiley reduced full-year sales guidance “from mid single digit growth to low single digit growth on […]