Unfortunately Barnes & Noble continues to underperform the book business as a whole, disclosing holiday sales in contrast to the industry trend. Sales for the nine weeks ending December 30 were $953 million, down 6.4 percent compared to the prior year, and down the same percentage on a same-store business. Book sales on their own were down 4.5 percent, consistent with the company’s report at the end of November that their non-book product was performing poorly and being curtailed. For the holiday period, “declines in the gift, music and DVD categories accounted for nearly half of the comparable store sales decrease.” […]
Finance
Still Selling: Abrams Drops More BNED
Investor David Abrams and Abrams Capital Management continued to pullback on their large investment in Barnes & Noble Education. Following the sale of 1.76 million shares through December 18, further SEC filings show Abrams selling off another 276,000 shares on December 14, 15, 18 and 19.
Bertram Books and Related Units Sold
Connect Group announced an agreement to sell their books division to Australian private equity firm Aurelius for £10.6 million, with up to another £1.05 later based on various contingencies. The unit comprises UK wholesaler Bertram Books, Bertram Library Services, online bookseller Wordery, and academic supplier Dawson Books, plus subsidiaries including Erasmus and Houtschild in the Netherlands and France. Managing director Justin Adams and his management team will stay with the division following the sale. Adams said in a statement, “In Aurelius I believe we have found an owner that has the financial and operational capabilities to help us on our journey to build […]
2017: The Year In Agency Mergers and Moves
Supplementing yesterday’s The Year In Mergers, Acquisitions and Finance, this year saw a number of literary agency mergers — along with some significant movement by well-known agents, and even a few marquee authors. So here is a round-up. Many of the year’s notable mergers and acquisitions among literary agencies, as well as new agency launches, happened in the UK: [Acquirer/Seller or merged properties] Curtis Brown UK > Ed Victor Ltd (Following the death of Ed Victor in June) Later in the year, Charlie Brotherstone, who had been at Ed Victor Ltd., opened his own agency, Brotherstone Creative Management. And the Raymond […]
2017: The Year In Mergers, Acquisitions and Finance
Anyone who thinks it was a quiet year for publishing mergers, acquisitions and finance doesn’t understand what happened very well. It was in fact both an active and fascinating year. First and foremost, 2017 saw one of the biggest trade publishing deals ever. We’re talking about the transaction hiding in plain sight, in which Bertelsmann acquired an additional 22 percent of Penguin Random House from Pearson, for actual cash. Remember that when Random House and Penguin merged in July 2013, it was a mammoth “deal” in that it created the world’s largest trade publishing company, but no money actually changed […]
Media-Participations to Acquire La Martiniere Group Following Goverment Approval
On Monday France’s competition authority officially “cleared” the proposed deal for media company Media-Participations (which specializes in comics and graphic novels, but also publishes magazines, has a film/tv production arm, and a digital media group focused on videogames) to acquire French book publisher La Martiniere Group (which also owns Abrams in the US). The Autorité de la concurrence “considered that the transaction would not be liable to harm competition,” noting “the limited nature of the positions held by the Média-Participations group and La Martinière Groupe in all the affected markets. It also took into consideration the significant competitive pressure that France’s principal […]