Capital Markets Day and Business Update

RNS Number : 9947D

Bloomsbury Publishing PLC

13 July 2016

Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

13 July 2016

Capital Markets Day

Bloomsbury Publishing Plc ("Bloomsbury") is holding a Capital Markets Day today for investors and analysts at its office in Bedford Square, London. This will showcase the Bloomsbury 2020 growth plan. This new digital publishing plan will target significant growth in digital revenues over the next five years, moving Bloomsbury towards being a non-consumer publisher in the B2B academic and professional information market, as well as a leading consumer publisher, building on Bloomsbury's proven success in this area to date. No new material financial information is being presented at the meeting. The presentation will subsequently be published on Bloomsbury's website, www.bloomsbury-ir.co.uk.

Business Update

The Board continues to expect trading for the financial year to be in line with our expectations. In the three months ended 31 May 2016 total revenues are up by 9% year on year driven by Children's publishing within our Consumer division. Sales for digital resources are up by 97% year on year. This quarter traditionally generates the smallest profit of any quarter in our financial year.

We are also announcing today an anticipated increase in profits in Australia of £500,000 per annum from the start of our new financial year on 1 March 2017. Bloomsbury's current sales and distribution contract in Australia ends on 31 December 2016. Agreement has now been reached on a new basis which will see Bloomsbury continuing with its existing partners in Australia and New Zealand, but taking in house responsibility for selling to head office accounts of customers which comprise about half of ANZ sales. This brings substantial savings of sales commission payable against which are set the cost of in house key account managers. We expect this to lead to an increase in profit, based on higher sales into key accounts. Field sales to accounts in Australia and New Zealand will continue to be provided by Bloomsbury's partner of the last 30 years.

Bloomsbury is pleased to announce that it has acquired eight new titles from the New York Times bestselling novelist Sarah J. Maas, in a major deal that includes six new titles in the A Court of Thorns and Roses series and two new ones in the Throne of Glass series. These series have been huge successes, with A Court of Mist and Fury recently being a number one New York Times Young Adult bestseller for more than six weeks. The combined series have had sales of over three million copies to date.

Our digital resource Drama Online has just acquired exclusive worldwide online education platform rights for the BBC's critically acclaimed film adaptations of Shakespeare's history plays The Hollow Crown: Series One and Two. They will both be streamed through our academic subscription service Drama Online later this year. Together with the forthcoming new BBC Drama Film Adaptations collection, video content is now set to double in Drama Online.

The results for the six months ending 31 August 2016 will be announced on 27 October 2016.

For further information, please contact: