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Barnes & Noble Looks for Shareholder Support
After Ron Burkle began looking for shareholders' votes in his fight with Barnes & Noble yesterday, it was the retailer's turn today. The company issued a revised proxy statement and sent letters to shareholders this morning that urged shareholders to vote for its slate of board nominees that, in addition to founder and chairman Len Riggio, include two new candidates, David Golden and Dr. David Wilson. The letter also asks shareholders to reject a Burkle proposal that it says will weaken B&N's poison pill provisions, making an unfriendly takeover of the company possible.
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Proxy Battle Heats Up as Burkle Begins Solicitation Campaign
The proxy battle for Barnes & Noble is heating up with Ron Burkle's Yucaipa Companies filing new proxy materials urging B&N shareholders to vote for Yucaipa's slate of board candidates and to support its proposal to amend the retailer’s poison pill provision. In asking for shareholder support Burkle laid out familiar complaints against the current management, led by his assertion that since August 2009 B&N's stock price has significantly underperformed the S&P 500, the Dow Jones Specialty Retail Index and B&N's "self-selected peer group."
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Charges, Investments Lead to Loss at Barnes & Noble
Barnes & Noble's results for the first quarter ended July 31 continued the sales trends of much of the second half of fiscal 2010 with rapid growth at Barnes & Noble.com and declining sales at the retail trade stores. Sales at B&N.com increased 42%, to $145 million, with comp sales ahead 53%, while trade store sales declined 2%, to $1.03 billion. Sales from the college stores, which B&N bought last September, added $225.6 million to revenues, which B&N said reflected comp store sales increase of 2.9%. As a result, total revenue increased 21% in the quarter, to $1.40 billion, but the company posted a net loss of $62.5 million compared to net earnings of $12.2 million in the first quarter of last year.
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Canadian Sales Down in Second Quarter
Canadian book sales fell in the second quarter of 2010 compared to the same quarter last year, both in the number of books sold and the value of the sales, according to new figures from BookNet Canada. Overall, the market was down 4.1% in unit volume and 4.3% in sales in the quarter. The fiction category fared best, up 5.1% in sales, but it dipped 0.6% in units. Nonfiction was down 6% in volume and 7.1% in value. Juvenile was down 8.6% in units and 12.9% in dollars.
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B&N's Leonard Riggio Buys a Million B&N Shares
In what appears to be an effort to strengthen his voting position for a likely proxy fight, B&N founder and Chairman Leonard Riggio has excercised options to buy 990,740 shares of B&N stock for $16.8 Million, or $16.96 a share.
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Hastings Reports Books Down Slightly
Although comparable store book sales declined about 1.8% in the quarter, book and multimedia retail chain Hastings Entertainment reported that total revenues for the second quarter ended July 31 increased approximately $1.9 million, or 1.7%, to $119.1 million compared to $117.2 million for the same period in fiscal 2009. Total comparable store revenues increased 4.5% for the quarter and 4.7% for the first half of fiscal 2010.
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Six Month Bookstore Sales Dip
Bookstore sales slipped again in June, falling 0.8%, to $1.10 billion, according to preliminary estimates released this morning by the U.S. Census Bureau. After posting modest gains in the first quarter, bookstore sales were sluggish in the second period and for the first half of 2010, sales were down 0.5% compared to the first half of 2009, to $7.42 billion.
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After Court Rules for B&N, Burkle Starts Proxy Fight
The decision yesterday by judge Leo E. Strine Jr. that upheld Barnes & Noble’s poison pill provision has led disgruntled shareholder Ron Burkle to mount a proxy fight for control of the bookstore chain.
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Industry Stocks: July Performance
Helped along by a 7.1% increase in the Dow Jones Industrial Average in July, the Publishers Weekly Stock Index gained 8.4% in the month with all but three of the companies appearing on the PWSI posting an increase in their stock price.
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Reader's Digest Improves Earnings on Lower Sales
Total revenue at Reader's Digest fell 19% in the second quarter ended June 30, to $436.5 million, but the company did manage to improve EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization) to $76.8 million from $71.4 million. During the quarter, the company, which emerged from bankruptcy earlier this year, eliminated 10% of its global workforce and CEO Mary Berner said she expects to see the financial benefits of those cuts in the second half of the year. RD expects to save $34 million on an annual basis as a result of the job reductions. In breaking down sales by product line, book sales fell 8%, to $147 million in the quarter.
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Big Improvement at HarperCollins
After enduring a difficult fiscal 2009 during which the company underwent a significant restructuring and saw sales and profit fall, HarperCollins reported that total revenue for the fiscal year ended June 30 rose 11.1% to $1.27 billion and profits jumped to $88 million from $17 million in fiscal 2009. In the U.S., all divisions posted gains over fiscal 2009 with the general books group and children's division far exceeding expectations, president Brian Murray said in a statement.
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Simon & Schuster Rebounds in Second Quarter
After a difficult first quarter, sales at Simon & Schuster rose 5% to $189.7 million in the second quarter ended June 30, and earnings jumped to $15.2 million from $8.3 million. CEO Carolyn Reidy said cost saving actions, improved operating efficiencies and "good books" drove the profit improvement.
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Results Dip in Educational Development First Quarter
Revenue for the first quarter ended May 31 at Educational Development Corp. slipped from $6.4 million to $6.3 million and net income fell to $188,200 from $415,400. The decline in earnings was due in part to a one-time charge of $188,500 that EDC called a "casualty loss." According to EDC's quarterly filing, money paid to a third party to reserve travel was not used for that purpose and EDC will need to pay $188,500 in travel expenses.
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Publishers Have Uneven Recovery
Six-month reports from four publicly traded companies show that the publishing industry is performing very much like the general economy, recovering from the recession in a bumpy fashion. Even within the same company, different units are reporting different results.
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A Sliver of a Silver Lining: PW's Annual Salary Survey
Last year our annual salary survey asked "How Low Can You Go?" and the answer is 2.1%. That is the average industry raise reported in 2009, the lowest raise in at least six years and more than a full percentage point below the meager 3.3% raise earned in 2008. But the survey didn't find all bad news.
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Harlequin Profit Up as Dollar Dampens Results
A strong Canadian dollar drove sales lower at Harlequin in the second quarter, but profits still rose in the period. Parent company Torstar reported that second quarter sales at Harlequin fell 5%, to C$117.8 million ($114 million), while operating profit increased 3.5%, to C$20.4 million. Excluding the impact of foreign exchange, revenue would have increased by C$6.2 million in the quarter. Sales in Harlequin's direct-to-consumer segment and overseas division rose in the quarter, offsetting declines in the North America retail market.
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Penguin Posts Record Start
Penguin Group posted record results for the first six months of 2010, with revenue up 9%, to 493 million pounds ($764 million), and operating profit jumping 56%, to 44 million pounds ($68 million). Although favorable currency translations added to results, the majority of the increase came from gains in most parts of the world.
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Scholastic Turns A Profit
Having spent two years restructuring its operations, including eliminating 500 positions in fiscal 2009, Scholastic reported its first net income in three years in the fiscal year ended May 31, 2010, with net earnings of $56.1 million compared to a net loss of $14.3 million in fiscal 2009.
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Hardcovers Safe for Now
Despite Amazon's declaration last week that e-book unit sales topped hardcover sales in the second quarter, there is little evidence to suggest that hardcover sales are about to plunge, at least in the near term. Amazon said that while it sold 143 e-books for every 100 hardcovers, sales of hardcovers continued to grow. Data from Nielsen BookScan show that of the three major print formats, hardcover was the only format that has had an increase in unit sales so far in 2010, although the increase was small, at 0.3%.
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Weak State Budgets Slow Gains at McGraw-Hill Education
Total revenue at McGraw-Hill Education rose 1.8%, to $565 million, in the second quarter ended June 30 with gains in the higher education/professional/international segment offsetting declines in the school education group. Operating profit increased to $51.6 million compared to $21.0 million in last year’s second quarter which included a pre-tax restructuring charge of $11.6 million.
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