At the end of last week, a Texas District Court judge rejected shareholders’ request for a preliminary injunction blocking the proposed buyout of Hastings by National Entertainment Collectibles. The court did not find “a substantial likelihood of success on the merits” for the plaintiffs, though this ruling does not block the shareholders’ lawsuit from going forward. It simply denies any expedited discovery, and means the suit will not prevent the merger from going forward. The court recognizes that “a judgment for money damages is a potential post-merger appraisal remedy.” Ruling
Finance
Osprey Actively Seeking A Sale, Closes Exhibit A and Strange Chemistry Imprints
The Osprey Publishing Group, as part of a financial restructuring and “strategic review” of its holdings, is moving away from publishing fiction and actively seeking a sale of its non-core components — and may consider an outright sale of the whole company. The publisher will close its Exhibit A Books mystery thriller/imprint and Strange Chemistry young adult imprint immediately, “due mainly to market saturation,” according to a statement posted online. They said that those lines have “unfortunately been unable to carve out their own niches with as much success.” No further titles will be published by Exhibit A or Strange Chemistry, […]
Charting Publishers’ Performance
People were interested enough in Lagardere Publishing’s chart of their performance since 2006 – and what it might or might not say about the effect of ebooks on publishers’ financial results — that we dug in to produce similar charts for the other largest publicly reporting publishers. (Which means everyone but Macmillan.) Complications abound, of course. Everyone reports slightly different measures of profit margin, and special transactions over the years can significantly skew the results. Our first chart is a composite that aggregates the annual results of all 5 reporting companies (Hachette; Harper; Simon & Schuster; Penguin; and Random House). Results originally […]
Inside Hachette’s Books
With Hachette Book Group very much in the news lately, it’s interesting to have a deeper view of the company’s business and forward strategy — and they kindly provided just that at the end of May. No one seems to have taken note of the Lagardere investor day presentation in Paris on May 28 (while we were at BEA), but they likely will following this piece. Though most articles on HBG USA in the context of their standoff with Amazon describes them as the smallest of the Big Five, the company puts itself at No. 4. (They say they have 5.8 […]
Another Amazon Terms Dispute — With DVD Distributor
Amazon is engaged in another dispute over terms that has resulted in the etailer declining to accept pre-orders for popular product. In this case, the standoff is with Warner Home Video, and among the top titles unavailable for DVD pre-order is The Lego Movie, set for June 17 release. The NYT notes, “Amazon started refusing preorders for the Time Warner movies in mid-May. That frustrated some customers, who voiced their displeasure on its forums.” One Amazon customer posted on May 20, “Something weird seems to be going on with Warner Bros. pre-orders. Loads of them are not available anymore, and […]
Gowda Sells Remaining Books-A-Million Stake
Late Friday Books-A-Million reported to the SEC that it agreed to repurchase the remaining 304,000 common stock shares held by Harsha Gowda at $2.15 a share a day after buying back 655,596 shares for the same per share price. Despite reducing the company’s float by about 6.5 percent, BAMM shares have declined, trading between $2.02 and $2.07 a share. Gowda, who runs BlueShore Global Equity Fund, told us: “I wish Books-a-Million management the best and I see them managing the decline in physical book retail successfully. My sale was primarily to pursue other investments for my Fund.”