Children’s literature continues to be a winner for Harry Potter publisher Bloomsbury Publishing PLC (LON:BMY).
The company reported a 15% improvement in revenues to £142.6mln in the year to the end of February from £123.7mln the year before, driven by a 48% increase in revenue from its Children’s division.
Sales of the Harry Potter series in the year grew by 88%, including the ‘Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets Illustrated Edition’.
Not surprisingly, Bloomsbury is lining up more illustrated editions of books from the wildly successful Harry Potter series, with ‘Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban” the next to get the treatment; the publisher also plans an illustrated edition of the Harry Potter offshoot, ‘Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them’.
Increases in market & distribution costs and administrative expenses meant adjusted profit before tax slipped to £12.03mln from £13.03mln the previous year.
Cash generation was very strong, with the group’s net cash position rising to £15.5mln from £5.2mln a year earlier.
Bloomsbury proposed a final dividend of 5.6p, taking the full-year pay-out to 6.7p, up from 6.4p the year before.
"This has been a very strong year for Bloomsbury with excellent revenue growth in all our territories. Our children's publishing, in particular, had an exceptional year, delivering double digit revenue growth for the fourth year in a row,” said Nigel Newton, chief executive officer of Bloomsbury.
“We have also made substantial progress in delivery of our Bloomsbury 2020 digital resource strategy. We completed a new platform to host our digital resources and launched four new major resources during the year. It was particularly encouraging to see digital resource revenues exceeding expectations, increasing 50% year-on-year,” he added.
“We are well-placed for the coming year. We are launching three further major digital resources, as planned, and have an exciting publishing list from new and existing authors," Newton declared.
Shares in Bloomsbury rose 2% to 180p on the news.