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Sales and profits fell at Bloomsbury in 2009 during a year that its chairman said "tested to the limit the fundamental ethos and strategies of business organisations". Bloomsbury said the results were "strong", with profits ahead of forecast and had been achieved in "difficult trading conditions" and against high comparatives including the paperback release of the final Harry Potter in 2008.
Sales fell from just shy of £100m to £87.2m, with adjusted pretax profit down from £12m to £7.7m. It is the second full-year of declining sales and profits after its last hardback Harry Potter release in 2007, when it made sales of £150.2m and a profit of £17.9m.
Geographicially sales dropped everywhere apart from the US; divisionally only the reference business reported a revenue rise, with sales growth of 34.5% meaning that it overtook children's as Bloomsbury's second biggest division.
In the UK sales dropped from £71m to £58.9m, with UK profits also down, from £8.2m to £6.6m. US revenue was £18.8m, against £17.3m, with US profit £0.5m, compared with £0.4m. For Continental Europe, revenue, which was generated by Berlin Verlag, was £9.6m (2008, £11.6m), leading to a loss of £0.6m compared with last year's profit of £0.2m.
Revenue in children's division was £23m down from last year's £38.3m, with profit before administrative expenses of £8.4m, against £13.7m. Adult revenue was £37.9m, down from £42m, with profit before administrative expenses up 38.3% to £11m, compared with £8m. Reference revenue increased 34.5% to £26.4m, up from £19.6m, with the contribution before administrative expenses up 24.2% to £8.6m, compared with £6.9m.
Sales were driven by an "excellent publishing programme" including River Cottage Everyday by Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall, The Suspicions of Mr Whicher by Kate Summerscale, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows, Ordinary Thunderstorms by William Boyd and The Fat Duck Cookbook by Heston Blumenthal.
Chief executive Nigel Newton said: "This is a strong set of results, ahead of consensus market forecasts achieved under difficult trading conditions, and demonstrates the strength of our portfolio." He added that trading had "been excellent in the first quarter of 2010". Newton highlighted a "strong pipeline" of releases for 2010 including the launch of newly designed edition of the Harry Potter series on 1st November.
Newton said: "The marketplace will remain rocky in 2010 and will continue to throw the unexpected at all businesses but I am confident that Bloomsbury is as well positioned as it could be to prosper in this environment with our high hit rate in trade publishing, our expansion in academic and professional publishing, our strong balance sheet and our entrepreneurial mission."
Bloomsbury's share price is currently just above its 52-week low at 113.50p. For the 2010 financial period Bloomsbury will be moving the year-end to the end of February in order to get the "maximum level of press coverage" from its results announcements, as well as enabling the company to take more time identifying returns of unsold copies after the Christmas selling season.
The company also announced that Charles Black will retire at this year's a.g.m.