Scholastic has lifted their depressed stock price with an announcement Monday of a $75 million share purchase program through a modified Dutch Auction. The offer opens on Tuesday, October 25 and is scheduled to close by November 22, and will buy back shares at an expected price of between $35 and $40 a share. (On Friday, shares had closed at $33.63 a share.) The company says it is able to finance the buyback through cash on hand. The market has responded as expected, pushing shares up by over $4 a share in the first hour of trading on Monday, though […]
Finance
Imprints: Erewhon, Golden Notebook
Kensington Publishing has acquired sci-fi/fantasy publisher Erewhon Books, which will continue as an imprint of Kensington. Publisher Sarah Guan and her team will stay with the line. (Co-founder Liz Gorinsky left Erewhon in March.) Having recently moved distributed to PGW from Workman, Erewhon’s titles will be taken over by Kensington’s distributor Penguin Random House Publisher Services next year. Kensington CEO Steve Zacharius says in the announcement, “The diverse, high-quality list Erewhon has built and the level of support they’ve been able to offer their authors as a small, but effective and passionate team is impressive. It also very much aligns […]
Acquisitions: Harper Focus Buys Cider Mill Press
HarperCollins Focus has acquired Cider Mill Press, a publisher of gift books specializing in “cookbooks, elegant wine and spirits projects, humor books, and children’s classics.” Cider Mill Press and children’s imprint Applesauce Press will become imprints under HarperCollins Focus. Cider Mill founder John Whalen Jr. will continue on with the company. John Whalen III joins HarperCollins Focus as vp, publisher of both Cider Mill Press and Applesauce Press. He was previously responsible for all operational oversight of the imprints. Laura Minchew, senior vp, group publisher for HarperCollins Focus Children’s and Gift books will oversee the Cider Mill publishing operations within […]
Bertelsmann Sees Multiple Deals In Trouble
Bertelsmann’s recent international managers’ meeting focused on plans to invest from €5 billion to €7 billion euros across the company by 2025 — but as the FT underscores, right now the company’s ambition to acquire is facing multiple obstacles. Besides the Simon & Schuster acquisition, now in doubt pending the verdict of Judge Florence Pan, a plan to merge their French television business M6 with the larger TF1 was dropped in September after a hearing before the country’s competition authority, which had “significant problems.” The same month, customer services provider Marjorel — half owned by Bertlesmann — and call center […]
Gibbs Smith Employees Purchase Second Half of Company
Independent publisher Gibbs Smith is now entirely employee-owned, after workers finalized a deal to purchase the second half of the company on August 31. In 2015, cofounders the late Gibbs and Catherine Smith sold half of the company to employees, and in the new deal the company’s employees purchased Catherine Smith’s 50 percent share via a third-party trustee. “We are excited to fulfill Gibbs and Catherine Smith’s dream of becoming a fully employee-owned company,” ceo Brad Farmer, representing the company’s executive management team, said in a release. “Being 100% ESOP owned is a dynamic change in the company’s status and is […]
Merriam-Webster Parent Britannica Hopes for IPO or Capital Raise
Britanica Group is hoping to launch an IPO “as soon as next year,” Bloomberg reports, “according to people with knowledge of the matter,” who are apparently trying to seed interest in the market. CEO Jorge Cauz confirms in an interview, “We are seeing significant increases in revenue and increases in margin. So we want to continue to grow obviously. But since the market changes so rapidly, especially after Covid, we do want to tap into the public markets to accelerate that growth.” Those knowledgable people are hoping the parent of Merriam-Webster “could be valued at more than $1 billion.” The […]