AGM Statement

RNS Number : 1567M

Bloomsbury Publishing PLC

11 August 2011

 



11 August 2011

Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

("Bloomsbury" or "the Group")

Annual General Meeting Statement and Announcement of Licensing Deal

At today's AGM of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, Nigel Newton, Chief Executive, will make the following statement:

"We are pleased to announce that Bloomsbury Publishing has reached an agreement with Practical Law Company, the leading provider of legal know-how, transactional analysis and market intelligence for lawyers, to license Bloomsbury law content. The deal will provide a direct route for the Group's data to the desk tops of all major law firms and corporate and public sector legal departments dealing with English or Scots law.

This demonstrates the value of Bloomsbury's academic and professional content and is one of several key law and tax rights deals we have already completed this year which, in total, will bring in revenues in excess of £2.7 million. These deals are included within our existing forecasts and were among those we anticipated completing in our July Interim Management Statement.

This deal follows last month's acquisition of Continuum, the international academic and professional publisher, for a total cash consideration of £20.1 million. The acquisition has been a transformational deal for Bloomsbury, providing the cornerstone for its Academic and Publishing division as the company moves from primarily a consumer business to having a significant business to business and institutional element. The integration is now well underway and we are already seeing a number of operational improvements. The acquisition, as previously stated, is immediately earnings enhancing.

Bloomsbury's recent reorganisation, One Global Bloomsbury, has now been delivered. Effective from March this year, and aligning the business by service divisions as opposed to geographic territories, the reorganisation has brought the company closer together with a global vision and global book acquisition. This has resulted in a more integrated approach to sales and marketing, and fits well with the increasing globalisation of the publishing business and the growing demand for digital content.

The move to new headquarters in Bedford Square, London will be completed this month and will allow Bloomsbury staff in the UK to operate from one building. Additionally the implementation of new publishing management software, now being introduced across the business, will make the business more efficient.

Across the trade division the Company has enjoyed some notable recent successes including the winner of the Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction, Mao's Great Famine by Frank Dikötter, and the inclusion on the Man Booker Prize Longlist for Pigeon English by Stephen Kelman. Sales of Bloomsbury's editions of the 2010 Man Booker Prize winner, Howard Jacobson's The Finkler Question, have now reached  717,172 copies worldwide. In addition, following the release of the film of the final Harry Potter book, we are pleased to report a surge in sales of the seven Harry Potter books.

In July and early August we have seen a significant improvement in sales compared to the soft conditions in previous months, partly attributable to strong e-book downloads for summer holiday reading and partly to good sales of a number of Bloomsbury titles through high street retailers.

The deal announced today with Practical Law Company is another example of our ability to benefit from a significant and growing presence in the academic and professional market which will bring us more consistent and stable earnings. We continue to make strong progress on a number of important fronts: the One Global Bloomsbury reorganisation has been delivered, we have completed a transformational acquisition which provides critical mass we have been seeking in the academic and professional publishing division and we are currently negotiating a number of major licensing deals. Recent performance has been encouraging in contrast to the soft conditions we reported in our Interim Management Statement in July.

We are confident that Bloomsbury is now well structured for the exciting opportunities presented in the dynamic digital market place and in addition has significant strength to drive momentum in the academic and professional publishing market."

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Enquiries:

Pelham Bell Pottinger - Dan de Belder / Rosanne Perry     020 7861 3232

 

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