The grain of salt we advised on the flawed TechCrunch report of potential interest in Microsoft buying out the digital assets of Nook Media has turned into a veritable salt flat. Another site, Insider Monkey, posted an item early Monday afternoon said to come from “a highly placed source inside Microsoft” denying the likelihood of a deal. Barnes & Noble stock fell 13 percent in about 30 minutes Monday afternoon on very heavy volume. It hit a trough and by 3 PM started to recover some of the losses, off about $2.20 a share or 9.5 percent for the day, […]
Finance
After Layoffs and A Big Writedown, Cengage Talks Openly About Chapter 11
Cengage continues its slow march to the inevitable restructuring that has loomed for a while, and for the first time management has openly (and casually) talked about bankruptcy reorganization. The main questions now are who will lead that bankruptcy plan, can they organize a pre-packaged plan, and which private equity company will control what’s left? The latest step is driven by Cengage’s third quarter earnings report. In a modest “operational restructuring” they took a $12.7 million charge related to firing an unspecified number of employees. More significantly, the preliminary results of a new strategic plan and revised more realistic expectations […]
Bertelsmann Gets $1.8 Billion for RTL Shares
Bertelsmann raised 1.4 billion euros ($1.8 billion) in cash proceeds by selling a 17 percent stake and creating a public listing for their television and broadcasting company, RTL. Bertelsmann retains 75 percent of RTL’s shares. Why should publishing people pay any attention? Because that cash will be put to work buying other companies, as Bertelsmann expects to spend up to 3 billion euros on acquisitions over the next 3 years. CEO Thomas Rabe reiterated in a statement, “Our goal is to make Bertelsmann a faster growing, more digital and more international company in the years ahead.” They sold the stock at […]
Courier Acquires FastPencil
Self-publishing platform FastPencil has been acquired by printer and publisher Courier. The news was announced after the close of the market on Tuesday, and just ahead of Courier reporting second quarter earnings on Wednesday morning. The terms were not disclosed for now, but for Courier — with roughly $260 million in annual sales — it’s likely that the price would be considered material and will be disclosed in due time. FastPencil is a self-publishing company and provider of software tools to enable self-publishing–and recently worked in partnership with Nook on their new set of Nook Press content creation, collaboration and […]
Cleared In Canada, Penguin Random House Merger Waits On One More Approval
Late Friday afternoon the Canadian Competition Bureau and the Department of Heritage cleared the Penguin Random House merger “without conditions,” as was the case in earlier approvals by the EU, Australia, New Zealand, and the US Department of Justice. In a joint statement Penguin and Random House said they “welcome the Canadian authorities’ decision as another important step on the way to completing the combination of their respective publishing companies.” China remains the only country left to sign off on the deal, and we understand there is no timetable available for when they might do so. As before, Pearson and […]
Spain’s Alfaguara Is In Play
Spain’s PRISA Group has officially denied recent reports in Spanish media that they have agreed to sell their literary line Alfaguara and its imprints to Random House. But at the same time, the company admits that it “has maintained and is in talks for the transmission of this asset and other Grupo Prisa assets with various partners.” PRISA says it will communicate further if and when a deal is agreed upon. Spain’s leading media company, PRISA has suffered under debt of billions of euros, made worse by the poor Spanish economy, and has already been through multiple restructurings. Book publisher […]