Bloomsbury continues to cash in on reading boom
Bloomsbury Publishing expects its annual profit and revenue to top market expectations, underpinned by strong sales at its consumer division that sells adult and children’s titles, the publisher of Harry Potter books said this morning.
It reported that the consensus market expectation for the year ending February 28 2022 is currently revenue of £197.1m and profit before taxation and highlighted items of £20.1m.
The independent publishing house announced that it achieved its goal announced in May 2016 that said it would create a Bloomsbury Digital Resources division, which generated £15m of sales and £5m of profit by the year ending February 2022.
“Six years later we have done exactly that. Achieving this key long-term strategic goal, building high margin, quality revenues, demonstrates the strength and successful execution of our digital strategy”, the update stated.
BDR will benefit from the addition of further digital resources from the acquisition of ABC-CLIO LLC (“ABC-CLIO”).
As previously announced, Bloomsbury completed the purchase of ABC-CLIO in December, for £17.3m in cash. ABC-CLIO is an established academic publisher of reference, nonfiction, online curriculum and professional development materials in both print and digital formats for schools, academic libraries and public libraries, primarily in the USA.
Bloomsbury deems this an “excellent strategic fit” for its new digital division, accelerating the growth of Bloomsbury’s academic publishing in North America.
It will provide preliminary results in May.