CBS reported fourth-quarter sales after the close of the market, with sales of Simon & Schuster doing well given the economic climate, rising one percent to $245 million. Earnings suffered, however, as OIBDA declined 4 percent, at $28.3 million, and operating income was off 3 percent, at $26.1 million. The publisher took a $4.2 million “restructuring charge,” primarily due to the layoffs in December, though also including a modest charge due to the bankruptcy of Woolworth’s in the UK. For the full year, S&S had sales of $858 million, down three percent, as OIBDA of $88.2 million reflected a 9 […]
Publishers
Meyer Drives Lagardere to Finish the Year Ahead
Lagardere has announced preliminary figures for their fourth quarter and fiscal year. The pulishing unit had sales of 595 million euros for the final quarter powered by the “exceptional performance” of Stephenie Meyer in the US a “sold” sales of illustrated books in France, offsetting a “slowdown in sales” in the UK. Meyer sold 8 million books in the US in December alone, and over 28 million books in the year. Though they publish her in the UK as well, “success of Stephenie Meyer only partially compensated for the departure of James Patterson to another publisher and the non-recurrence of […]
Sales Plunge at Harper; News Corp. Takes $8.4 Billion Writedown
In a dire quarter for parent company News Corp.–which is taking a total writedown of $8.4 billion, including $2.8 billion against the $5.7 billion acquisition of the Wall Street Journal, and fell well short of analysts’ diminished expectations–publisher HarperCollins only performed poorly. Sales collapsed by 25 percent, down from $406 million a year ago to $305 million, the lowest total for this period since February 2002. The company cites “lower sales driven by the weakening retail market as well as a difficult comparison to a year ago” when they had a trio of strong bestsellers, but Harper hasn’t been below […]
Sales Flat at Rodale
As a private company, Rodale’s annual press release about their performance traditionally celebrates all the things that went well and little else. Today the company says that sales for 2008 were essentially flat, down 0.5 percent from the year before (when sales were $632 million). In the books division, they celebrate sales of “more than 1.5 million copies of Eat This, Not That! and more than 1.3 million copies of Flat Belly Diet!” The company says “Rodale Books saw a 3.5 percent increase across both trade and direct channels” and they claim that “revenues from books sold online increased 47 […]
Pearson to Finish Strong
Riding the substantial decline of the pound against the dollar and a more diversified education business than some of their peers, Pearson confirmed in a short trading update that “we will report good growth and continued progress on our financial goals for 2008, despite the worsening macroeconomic environment” and “all of our businesses achieved or exceeded our guidance for 2008.” The company expects to report earnings growth of approximately 20 percent in early March, ahead of analysts’ estimates. Penguin “performed well, in line with our expectations, in a slower holiday trading season for the overall books market.” In their dominant […]
More Big Publishing Declines at Courier Units
A “modest rise in book manufacturing sales was offset by across-the-board declines in specialty publishing segment” at Courier in their first quarter, with overall sales declining 5 percent to $59.6 million, while net income was $0.7 million, half of what it was a year ago. In the publishing segment, “the steepest declines were at Creative Homeowner in keeping with recent quarters and the persistent weakness in the nation”s housing sector.” Publishing sales of $11.5 million were down 25 percent from $15.3 million a year ago. The company says they had declines of 13 percent at Dover, 27 percent at REA […]