Scholastic (NASDAQ:SCHL), which has the US publishing rights to the Harry Potter series, maintained full-year guidance despite a wider fiscal first quarter loss.
The loss per share of US$1.48 was not quite as bad as the US$1.51 loss analysts had been expecting, but was deeper than the US$1.05 loss per share in the same period of last year, partly reflecting the lack of a contribution from its educational technology unit, which was sold in May.
Post-tax losses of US$48.0mln deepened from losses of US$31.4mln a year earlier, while revenue edged up to US$191.2mln from US$190.5mln on a like-for-like basis, i.e. excluding the disposed of educational technology business.
The company expects full-year revenue to come in at around US$1.7bn, and for earnings per share to be positive, somewhere in the range of US$1.35 to US$1.55.
Sales of the Harry Potter remain healthy, the publisher said, while revenues were also boosted by a revised handbook for the phenomenally popular Minecraft computer game.
The strength of the US dollar hit overseas earnings, the company said.
The shares, up 17.3% year-to-date, were inactive in pre-market trading.