Houghton Mifflin Harcourt reported second quarter sales on Thursday morning, with trade division sales flat at $37 million, supported by continuing strong sales from their culinary line, including the bestselling April release The Whole30. But that unit had lower EBITDA, of just $412,000, compared to $1.94 million a year ago, with a net loss of -$3.14 million, bigger than the $1.75 million loss a year ago. Companywide sales declined $22 million (or 5 percent) to $380 million “primarily due to the anticipated contraction” in the textbook adoption cycle. Sales would have $18 million lower without the contribution from their acquisition of Scholastic’s EdTech […]
Publishers
Simon & Schuster Continues to Profit On Lower Sales
CBS reported second quarter earnings on Wednesday afternoon, with publisher Simon & Schuster registering their fourth straight quarterly decline in sales — down $12 million, to $199 million — even as their earnings grew, with OIBDA of $27 million (and operating income of $25 million) compared to $24 million a year ago. As usual, CBS said “the revenue decline was more than offset by lower production and distribution costs.” Sales had jumped in this quarter a year ago, helped by Hillary Clinton’s Hard Choices and other big print sellers. Over the past 4 quarters, sales have declined by $55 million. […]
Indigo Improvement Continues
Canada’s Indigo reported first quarter results on Tuesday, with sales rising $4.1 million (CA) to $184.9 million, and a reduced net loss of $9 million, compared to a loss of $14 million a year ago. As in the previous year, “revenue growth was driven by the continued double digit growth of the general merchandise business” with “growth in both paper and electronics.” There was some growth in “the print business” on a same-store basis, too. The superstores had 5.3 percent same-store growth, while the smaller format store comps declined 1 percent, and online grew 18.2 percent, up to $24 million (also with double […]
Lagardere Reports Publishing Declines, Particularly For Hachette US
Lagardere reported first-half of the year results after the close of the market in France on Thursday. Sales at Lagardere Publishing were 547 million euros in the second quarter (up 37 million euros), down 3.4 percent on a like-for-like basis for the quarter but up 7.1 percent in actual results on the strength of the US dollar and pound sterling. For the first half of the year, sales were 968 million euros (also up 7.1 percent but down on a like-for-like basis), but earnings fell to just 36 million euros, down 28 percent from 50 million euros a year ago (which itself […]
For Now, Profits Rise On Lower Sales for Mondadori’s Publishing
As Italy’s Mondadori waits on today’s board review of their offer to buy the book publishing operations of rival RCS, the company reported results for the first half of 2015. Book division sales of 123 million euros were down 4.3 percent compared to 128.5 million euros a year ago, but EBITDA increased significantly, to 8.5 million euros (up 3.4 million euros), attributed to their “radical restructuring process” as they continued their “actions aimed at reducing fixed costs and cost of personnel.” They took 3.2 million euros in restructuring costs during the period. eBook sales rose 18.6 percent in the first […]
Currency Lifts Pearson
Following their big news Thursday on the sale of the FT Group to Nikkei, Pearson reported half-year 2015 results on Friday morning. (Bloomberg gets detailed background on the FT sale process, and says that Nikkei’s final bid — £100 million more than Axel Springer’s offer — topped Pearson’s own asking price of £800 million.) Pearson’s sales of £2.157 billion were up 5 percent versus $2.047 billion a year ago, and up a slimmer 1 percent on a currency neutral basis. The company stands by its earlier guidance for full-year results. Adjusted operating profit from continuing operations was down £1 million to […]