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Bloomsbury saw its sales and profits decline in the first six months of 2009 in what chief executive Nigel Newton said were "difficult markets". Sales dropped 25% in the UK, though Bloomsbury's specialist publishing business saw sales growth of 34%, overtaking its children's business in size for the first time.
Revenue for the first six months was £35.3m compared to £42.1m in 2008. Profit before investment income and amortisation of intangible assets was £1.2m, compared with £3.5m a year earlier. Bloomsbury said it was working against a high comparative in 2008 which saw paperback releases of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows and A Thousand Splendid Suns and said it had "enjoyed strong underlying growth".
Newton was positive about the second half of the year, which he said had "started well" with a "good set of numbers for July", and stressed that the "rebalancing" of the group with its expansion into academic and specialist publishing had made the business "less susceptible to the vicissitudes of the consumer market".
Speaking about the market conditions, Newton said: "It isn't that bad, though to call it good might be foolishly optimistic."
UK revenue fell 25% to £22.2m in the first half of the year, and profit almost halved at £1.7m. Newton said: "2009 started with The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher reaching number one on the UK paperback bestseller list. We have a strong publishing program for this year."
Bloomsbury USA grew sales from £6.4m to £8.7m, and returned a profit of £30,000 after last year's loss of £400,000. Newton said: "The US trade in general is still experiencing difficulties but a number of titles are continuing to perform well." Bloomsbury said its US arm was now managing the publishing and distribution of academic and reference titles from Bloomsbury Specialist, adding that A&C Black’s publishing programme would move to Bloomsbury USA in 2010.
Berlin Verlag made sales of £4.4m, down 28%, and made a loss of £0.5m, against a £0.5m profit made last year. Bloomsbury said the first half performance reflected the economic uncertainty in Germany.
Divisionally, Bloomsbury's adult trade business saw sales fall 20% to £16.4m, with profits down 22% to £5.2m. Children's trade sales dropped 38% to £8.7m, with profit down 19% to £2.9m. Bloomsbury's Specialist Division saw revenue rise 34% to £10.2m, with profits of £3.3m, up 38% on last year's £2.4m.
Bloomsbury finished the period with cash of £48.4m, though spent about £10m of this on the acquisitions of Tottel and the Hodder Higher Education lists after the half-year end. Newton said the group was continuing to "consider" a number of opportunities.
Newton said: "Overall the impact of the global recession on the general book market is leading to slightly reduced volumes of about 3% across the industry and continued pressure on margins. We have continued to focus on reducing our operating costs to maintain margins, and good progress is being made through a tougher book acquisition process, reductions in initial print runs, highly focused marketing, greater use of print on demand and alternative raw materials for printing."
He added: "The landscape of trade publishing is changing and there are exciting opportunities ahead as new technology allows the book to reach the consumer in electronic form. We are creating an infrastructure that will enable us to benefit from revenue streams from electronic publishing as they start to achieve critical mass in future years."