Publishers

Lagardere reported second quarter and half-year 2020 results on Thursday afternoon. Second quarter publishing sales were €514 million, down €70 million from a year ago (a 12 percent decline), with trends pointing up sharply in June. Month by month, the company said sales fell 39 percent in April (at €109 million); were 22 percent lower in May (€162 million); and then gained 21 percent in June (€243 million), “lifted by a large number of best-sellers in France and abroad.” For the first half of the year, that put Lagardere Publishing at €971 million, down €73 million, or 7 percent, from […]

At Quarto, for the first six months of 2020, sales fell $9.5 million to $46.9 million, down 17 percent from the same period a year ago. The adjusted operating loss doubled, to $(1.8) million, though the company’s pre-tax loss was about even, given lower interest costs following their recapitalization in January. Chief executive C.K. Lau said in the release, “The drop in revenue due to the COVID-19 pandemic has led us to initiate a number of cost management initiatives to tightly manage our cash flow.” They “expect the COVID-19 situation to continue to evolve and this prolonged uncertainty will create […]

Pearson released results for the six-months ending June 30 on Friday morning, with COVID-related impact weighing heavily on their sales. The company reported sales of £1.49 billion, down from £1.83 billion last year, a decline of 19 percent largely due to test center and school closures affecting its global assessment and international segments. North American courseware, including US higher ed, declined 14 percent, though they attributed it to the longer-term collapse in sales and conversion to lower-priced digital products (“due to the continuation of trends seen in 2019”), citing only “a modest impact from the closure of campus-based bookstores.” Adjusted […]

Scholastic reported fourth quarter and full-year results for the period ending May 31 on Thursday afternoon. As expected, school closures due to coronavirus weighed heavily on their performance for the quarter, with overall sales of $284 million, down 40 percent compared to $471 million last year. Trade sales, however, surged to $80.4 million from $55.4 million last year — led by the big release of Suzanne Collins’ The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, plus continuing sales for Dav Pilkey’s Dog Man books, and Raina Telgemeier’s Guts, but also boosted in general by the early lockdown surge in educational books for […]

McGraw Hill issued its first annual report under its new fiscal calendar, with the year ending March 31, 2020, along with its fourth quarter results. Fourth quarter billings were flat, at $241 million, and net sales were $279 million with no comparison figure available. COVID-19 had clear negative impact on the quarter: International billings were dragged down $9 million, or 24 percent; higher ed and K-12 were also impacted, due to school closures. Billings were still flat, however, because higher education sales have been shifting from Q3 to Q4. Adjusted EBITDA was a loss of $(39) million, from $(56) million, […]

Wiley announced fiscal fourth-quarter sales for the period ending April 30 of $475 million, compared to $491 million in the same period a year ago — a 3 percent decline, or 6 percent when acquisitions and $7 million in foreign exchange impact are taken into account. They incurred a big net loss of ($158) million, compared to net income of $63 million last year. As expected given global school and office shutdowns, education publishing was down 12 percent, to $84 million from $95 million, and professional learning declined 23 percent, to $66 million. The net loss reflects approximately $110 million […]