CEO of Barnes & Noble’s retail group Mitchell Klipper reiterates the company’s expectations for an orderly slimming of their bookstore base to the WSJ. BN forecasts that they will close about 20 stores a year for the forseeable future–meaning that “in 10 years we’ll have 450 to 500 stores,” Klipper said, compared to 689 stores right now. (They reached “peak superstores” in 2008, when the chain comprised 726 BN outlets.) One key to whether that strategy plays out as predicted is their lease portfolio, since bookstores are a real estate business as much as anything. BN has a very flexible […]
Finance
Corporate: Quarto Changes to Aurum Publishing Group In UK; “Significant” Shortfall at Quercus; McGraw-Hill Education Takes 20 Percent Stake in Area9 Aps
Following the management change at The Quarto Group (with the ouster of longtime chairman Laurence Orbach, installing Tim Chadwick in his place, and the planned ascension of Marcus Leaver to ceo), they are creating a new UK publishing group, under a new name. The Aurum Publishing Group will unite the combined lists of Frances Lincoln (now fully integrated into Quarto, after the 2011 acquistion), Aurum Press, Jacqui Small, Union Books and Apple Press under as a single corporate division — and they will now all be housed in the same building, a new office in Angel, London. Aurum Press, incidentally, […]
Bookselling Briefs: WH Smith’s Decline; BN Closes Pearson Deal
UK-based WH Smith reported headline sales results for the past 20 weeks consistent with their recent pattern: High-street sales were down 5 percent (both overall and on a same-store basis), while their network of travel stores was also down 5 percent (but only 4% on a same-store basis). But they say they “delivered a good profit performance,” and at the High-street stores “gross margin improved strongly in the period.” Note the pattern in our previously clipped stories for the past year: – WH Smith Comps Down 4% (and 5% At High Street Stores) | clipped Wednesday, November 14, 2012 – […]
Corporate: Springer Sale Delayed; Oxford University Press Acquires Nelson Thornes
The impending sale of Springer Science & Business Media, announced last fall, has been delayed indefinitely by Swedish private equity group EQT Partners, Bloomberg reports, after potential buyers “balked at the asking price” of between 3 billion and 4 billion euros. (EQT enlisted JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs to solicit potential buyers.) When EQT bought Springer in tandem with the Government of Singapore in 2009, the company was valued at 2.3 billion euros. An auction scheduled for this month has been postponed, as have IPO preparations. Oxford University Press has acquired vocational teaching resource publisher Nelson Thornes from Infinitas Learning […]
Pearson Falls On Modest Profit Warning
In a trading update ahead of their full late-February earnings report, Pearson said to expect profits slightly short of what analysts had been expecting. Forecast operating profit of approximately £935 million and adjusted earnings of approximately 84 pence per share is only nine-tenths of a pence below expectations–but Pearson generally outperforms those expectations, and the stock has fallen in London on the news, down 4.5 percent over the past two days of trading. The release itself is disarmingly pleasant and polite. Penguin “benefited from a good fourth-quarter publishing performance and traded in line with our expectations,” and “will report revenues in […]
DBW: “Clock Is Ticking” On Industry Consolidation
The morning sessions at Digital Book World closed with a conversation between Providence Equity Partners senior advisor (and former Macmillan president) Brian Napack and Michael Cader of Publishers Lunch, speaking about how private equity views the publishing business, opportunities for scale, and what recent transactions–the pending Penguin Random House merger, other recent news involving McGraw-Hill and HarperCollins, and Barnes & Noble’s investments–may mean down the line. Napack, answering a question about what will be of value, generally believes that private equity opportunities in traditional media “stem from confusion in marketplace.” With respect to the publishing industry, the recent moves are […]