Lagardère announces financial results for Q3 2017
Paris-November 9, 2017
Lagardère announced financial results for the third quarter today. See highlights below:
At Hachette Book Group: CEO Michael Pietsch said, “Thanks to energetic summer and early fall sales for numerous titles, growing downloadable audio sales, and strong performance from our third-party distribution clients, HBG’s revenues through Q3 are solidly ahead of 2016.” Bestselling books for the period include Michael Connelly’s The Late Show, James Patterson’s The Store and Haunted, Seeing Red by Sandra Brown, The Land of Stories: Worlds Collide by Chris Colfer, Al Franken’s Al Franken: Giant of the Senate, and The Identicals by Elin Hilderbrand. Orbit author N.K. Jemisin received a Hugo Award for The Obelisk Gate, the second year in a row she has taken that prize, and Grand Central Publishing has a National Book Award finalist in Fiction, Min Jin Lee’s gorgeous immigration saga Pachinko. Many of HBG lead fall titles are off to fast starts, including Sisters First by Barbara Pierce Bush and Jenna Bush Hager, Obama: An Intimate Portrait by Pete Souza, Hacks by Donna Brazile, Michael Connelly’s Two Kinds of Truth, and Joel Osteen’s Blessed in the Darkness; and we have exciting books to close out 2017 from David Baldacci, James Patterson, Neil Patrick Harris, Elin Hilderbrand, Cressida Cowell, and many others. To date this year, 143 HBG titles have hit the New York Times bestsellers list, including 28 #1 bestsellers. HBG has 125 USA Today bestsellers to date, with 9 #1s.
At Hachette Livre: For the first nine months, Hachette Livre delivered revenue of €1.665B, up 1.2% like-for-like over the same period in 2016 (up 1.5 % on a consolidated basis). The difference between these two figures reflects a €27M positive scope impact resulting from the acquisitions of Perseus Books, Brainbow, Bookouture, and IsCool Entertainment, and a €31M negative foreign exchange effect related to the depreciation of the pound sterling. Through September 30, publishing division highlights were Partworks (up 9.3%) and Hachette Book Group (up 2.2%), which offset the anticipated decline at Hachette UK due to unfavorable comparison with the hugely successful Q3 2016 publication of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. In the third quarter, Hachette Livre delivered revenues of €646M, down 2.1% like-for-like and down 4.3% consolidated.
- In France: Q3 revenue is up 6.0%, the increase mainly driven by Education and General Literature
- In the US: Q3 revenue was down 2.8%, due to a lighter release schedule compared with Q3 2016 (with successes like Nicholas Sparks’s Two by Two and James Patterson’s Woman of God).
- In the UK: revenue fell as expected (-13.5%), due to the aforementioned comparison with Q3 2016’s Harry Potter release.
- In Spain/Latin America: revenues fell as expected (-11.5%), due to unfavorable comparison with curricular reform in Q3 2016.
- Partworks: delivered bullish growth (+12.1%), led by a record number of new summer titles and good backlist sales in Japan and Spain.
- Ebooks: accounted for 7.2% of total Lagardère Publishing revenue in Q3 2017, versus 6.8% in Q3 2016.
At Lagardère: The Group delivered revenue of €1.852B in the third quarter, up 2.2% over Q3 2016 like-for-like and down 6.3% on a consolidated basis. The difference between like-for-like and consolidated figures is primarily attributed to a divestment in the Travel Retail division, and currency fluctuations in the US dollar and pound sterling. Revenue for the first nine months of 2017 totalled €5.158B, up 4.2% like-for-like and down 4.6% on a consolidated basis, with the difference attributed to the same Q3 factors and acquisitions in the Publishing division. Over the first nine months of the year, revenue growth came from good performances in the Travel Retail and Publishing divisions, and by favorable year on year comparison for the Sports and Entertainment sector.
For more details, read Lagardere’s press release.