Publishers

Bloomsbury reported results for the first half of their fiscal year, ending August 31, with sales rising £10 million to £62.7 million, though adjusted profit fell to £1.5 million down £.5 million), blamed on the ending of their contract for publishing services with the Qatar Foundation. As in the previous fiscal year, Harry Potter continues to drive Bloomsbury’s results: Essentially all of the gain in sales came trade publishing, which comprised £37.3 million, and most of that from children’s books, particularly the Harry Potter Box Set and the Illustrated Edition of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (plus Sarah Maas’s A Court of Mist and Fury). The non-consumer division […]

Pearson’s third quarter trading update surprised investors who thought they had become accustomed to the education giant’s postponed recovery. The statement reads politely, “Pearson is reiterating its 2016 guidance and its 2018 goals are unchanged,” but the numbers have sales for the first three quarters of the year down  7 percent in underlying terms, and down 10 percent measured in constant exchange rates, saved a bit by the plunging British pound, which leaves actual topline numbers down only 3 percent (since two-thirds of their revenue comes in US dollars). That’s actually a little less poorly than they were doing at the […]

Scholastic reported sales for their fiscal first quarter, ending August 31, with the release of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child driving sales up to $283 million, compared to $191 million a year ago. Their traditional seasonal loss (since school was not in session) only declined modestly on the big sales gain, however, at ($63.1 million), compared to ($79.5 million) a year ago. Trade publishing sales were $116.9 million — compared to $47.3 million a year ago without a new Harry Potter book. The Potter release in Canada also boosted Scholastic’s international division, where sales rose $16.6 million to $89.7 million […]

John Wiley reported sales for their fiscal first quarter, with still-falling book sales and foreign exchange (since they have substantial sales in the UK) pulling down results. Sales of $404 million fell 4 percent, and net income of net income of $30.4 million was down 12 percent. Book sales continue to decline across the company. In the professional development group, print book sales declined $7 million to $41.5 million, with digital books gaining a modest $600,000 to $11.2 million. In education, print textbooks declined $11 million to $23.5 million, with digital books falling almost $1 million to $4.8 million. And in the research […]

With Bertelsmann’s half-year report from this morning, we now have all of the major public reporting for trade publishing companies for the first six months of the year (even though the AAP has not gotten past February so far). Below is a summary view, though for nearly every company we could append a number of special notes. The overall trend shows modest declines in revenues, as rising print sales in the US — up 5.7 percent in units, or 16.4 million books, in outlets measured by Nielsen Bookscan — could not make up for declining ebook sales. Currency exchange and M&A […]

Bertelsmann reported results for the first half of 2016 on Wednesday morning, with book publisher Penguin Random House recording sales of €1.516 billion (down €181 million, or 10.7 percent, from a year ago), including the wholly-owned RH Germany. EBITDA fell in line with sales, down 10.6 percent to €185 million (or €22 million lower than the same period a year ago.) Those declines came despite persistent strength in the US dollar, which drove the division’s big topline gains in 2015. The average US dollar exchange rate for the first half was 1.1161, compared to 1.1152 a year ago. The British pound did slide […]