Cobus Loots, CEO of Pan African Resources, on delivering sector-leading returns for shareholders. Watch the video here.
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Investec Securities kept its "buy" stance on Bloomsbury Publishing (BMY) with an increased target price of 183p, from 179p. With the firm having completed its exit from the German market, the broker believes the book publisher is on its way to becoming a higher quality business, targeting the digital and education markets. Investec forecasts 34% of revenues and 53% of profits to come from these sources by 2013, due to the higher margins that they offer
In the Telegraph, Questor wonders whether the publishers of the Harry Potter books, Bloomsbury, still has the magic touch. If it does, it will need to 'get with the programme' on digital platforms - so a 159 per cent increase in ebook sales last year is welcome news. Other impressive stats include a cool £12.6m of revenues from intellectual property sales (including copyright licences) while academic sales are strong. Trading at 9.5 times forward earnings Questor thinks Bloomsbury is worth a punt.
As for Future, Northland notes that the company "continues its shift from print to digital and retrenchment to the UK that now represents 75% if group revenue."
Publishers Bloomsbury (books) and Future (magazines) are both set to announce results. Northland Capital Partners expects the Harry Potter publisher to present an update on its One Global Bloomsbury strategy that focuses on publishing (trade and specialist) in the English language, and the associated acquisitions and disposals.
Nigel Newton, Chief Executive of Bloomsbury commented: "I am delighted at the way the group has performed during this extremely active time in the industry. We have a robust business, strongly adapted to the digital market place, that we have positioned to take full advantage of the continuing opportunities arising from growth of online sales and sales of ebooks. Other Bloomsbury strengths of database creation, publishing management services and rights licensing are underpinned by an extremely strong author list as we set forth in the New Year, building on our many recent successful acquisitions."
Bloomsbury is focused on maximising the enormous opportunities provided by the rise in digital publishing. In Academic & Professional, having launched a range of online services for the Irish legal and tax market in July, Bloomsbury Professional pursued its digital growth strategy in October with the launch of an online service for UK tax practitioners. Early indications are very positive for this competitively priced reference service launched for mid-tier firms. Further online services in 2012 will include a financial reporting product. In the Adult division, we announced in December that Public Library Online, our online subscription service for libraries, will be making two shelves available free throughout the UK, thanks to the generous sponsorship from Google. Public Library Online already serves 8 million people in the UK and 17 million elsewhere in Europe. In October, we acquired Absolute Press, a high quality cookery list, which includes the recent bestsellers Indian Superfood and Cooking with Kids. In the Children's & Educational division we appointed a new Publishing Director & International Editor in Chief Bloomsbury Children's Books; Rebecca McNally, in October. She was previously Publishing Director of Fiction at Macmillan Children's Books. Her role will include the expansion of Bloomsbury's illustrated children's publishing. At 31 December 2011 the Group had net cash of £7 million. We will begin to have visibility of post-Christmas returns over the next six weeks but the strong level of sales in the last quarter of 2011 combined with the significant digital contracts and strategic initiatives that the Bloomsbury management team have completed since the beginning of the financial year, mean that we expect to deliver results in line with our expectations.
Interim Management Statement 16 January 2012 Bloomsbury Publishing is issuing its Interim Management Statement in respect of the period 1 September 2011 to date. Group performance in the period ended 31 December 2011 was strong. Throughout the period we have had success across a very wide range of titles, in digital and in print, front and back list, trade and specialist, adult and children's. Our major bestsellers included River Cottage Veg Everyday! by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, which has been consistently in the top five on Amazon.co.uk for the past six weeks; Heston at Home by Heston Blumenthal; Pigeon English by Stephen Kelman and the Harry Potter box sets. Ebook sales grew significantly with the quarter ended 31 December 2011 being up 38% year on year. YouGov reported that over 1.3 million ebook readers were sold in the UK over the Christmas period and Amazon.com has said Christmas Day was the "biggest ever day for Kindle book downloads". Our books continue to win critical praise and recognition with prize winners in the period including The Wavewatcher's Companion by Gavin Pretor-Pinney, which won the Royal Society Winton Prize for Science Books and Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward, which won the 2011 National Book Award in the US. Four of our children's titles have been nominated for the 2012 Carnegie Medal and Among The Fans: From Ashes to the Arrows, a Year of Watching the Watchers by Patrick Collins was shortlisted for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year Award. We generated significant revenues from intellectual property and publishing services projects. In October we announced a long term licensing deal for the Wisden brand in India with contracted revenues for our Adult division of US$3.2 million over five years plus a royalty share. We have also recently launched the new online magazine Wisden Extra. In December, Bloomsbury Information entered into a partnership with Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH, a private independent non‐profit research institute in Germany for the development and provision of a reference and information resource in labour economics which will generate £4.3m of revenue over five years.
http://www.investegate.co.uk/Article.aspx?id=201201160700285735V
Richard Charkin, Executive Director of Bloomsbury, said: "I believe that excellence is the result of always striving to do better. Wisden India will deliver excellence in its reporting of cricket in the sub-continent and will be the independent voice of the next generation of Indian cricket fans." Anand Krishnan, Executive Chairman of FidelisWorld, said: "FidelisWorld is honored to be associated with Bloomsbury, and proud in every manner to launch Wisden into India to bring 150 years of cricketing history and tradition to the most passionate cricket fans of the world. With a clear plan and perspective Wisden will become the single true voice and the Home of Indian Cricket" Lawrence Booth, Editor of Wisden Cricketers' Almanack, said: "As a cricket journalist, I know from personal experience that no country offers the sport more variety, depth, colour and conjecture than India. The chance to marry Wisden's age-old strengths with the 21st-century home of the game was simply too good to ignore."
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc is pleased to announce it has signed a long term licensing deal with leading sports and entertainment management firm FidelisWorld FZ LLC for the rights to Wisden India. Rights will also extend to the regions of ****stan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, the Middle East and North America. A central foundation of Wisden India will be an annual book aimed squarely at the burgeoning Indian market. It will focus on all areas of the Indian game - including Test matches, One Day Internationals, the IPL and domestic cricket - while sharing the same qualities as Wisden Cricketers' Almanack. A new pool of writers is expected to include some great Indian players as well as respected journalists. Some of the most distinguished names in cricket from Sir Neville Cardus and Sir Donald Bradman to Richie Benaud and Mike Atherton have contributed to past editions of Wisden. India represents the fastest growing, most vibrant market in world cricket, home to the single largest audience of fans. Whereas Wisden commands widespread recognition and respect in India, currently it has very little product presence there. The local market for information on cricket in India is highly fragmented. Various websites, TV channels and print publications exist, but Wisden India plans to build upon Wisden's worldwide reputation to become the leading voice on Indian cricket using the latest technology. FidelisWorld aims to unify the fragmented sectors into a consolidated whole in the target market, thereby achieving synergies and building value. Wisden India will be launched in early 2012, and the first edition of the annual Wisden India book will be published in October next year to coincide with the start of the domestic season. Wisden Sri Lanka is also expected to be launched in 2012. Wisden India also plans to work with various media partners to deliver year-round content on a range of platforms, providing a barometer of the game as well as a truly independent record of Indian cricket. In addition, a Wisden India Hall of Fame will be introduced together with events at which new inductees into the Wisden India Hall of Fame will be announced. Wisden Cricketers' Almanack has been published every year since 1864 and its independence, authority and accuracy over nearly 150 years has made it recognised throughout the cricket world as the definitive recorder of the game. The team behind Wisden India will include Richard Charkin and Charlotte Atyeo of Bloomsbury together with the existing Wisden editorial and management people in the UK and senior sports marketers Navneet Sharma, CEO and Sanjay Khuller, VP Cricket of FidelisWorld. Bloomsbury will be responsible for recruiting the editorial team and has already hired sports consultants Terry Blake (the former Marketing Director of the ECB) and Alex Chamberlen (previously Head of Global Sales for Cricinfo) to advise on the venture.
GRRRR Ignore last post. http://www.investegate.co.uk/Article.aspx?id=201110100700138345P
John Barnsley, Chairman of the Independent Committee, commented: "Institutional shareholders have told us that, if the current investment strategy cannot be continued given the opposition of the Rayne family Concert Party, institutions would support an orderly wind-down by the current management team under the supervision of independent directors. The Company will be writing to shareholders shortly to table resolutions to approve the orderly wind-down and to address the composition of the Board so as to ensure its full independence as it supervises the wind-down. The Board is concerned to ensure there is no possibility of the Rayne family Concert Party having, or appearing to have, any undue influence or confidential information during the course of the implementation of the wind-down."
Bloomsbury Publishing (BMY) has a downside target of 31p given from the recent sell thrust. So reckons David Linton.
Harry Potter publisher Bloomsbury said book sales in July and August picked up from soft trading earlier in the year, with many bookworms opting to download their summer reading rather than opting for paper copies. The release of the latest Harry Potter film has stoked demand for all seven books in the series, Bloomsbury said.
Bloomsbury Publishing (BMY)'s results statement at the end of February showed signs the group might at last be coming out of its long period in the stockmarket doldrums. The shares - down from a peak of 396p in 2005 to a lowly 121p - have simply bypassed the general market recovery. The paradox is that Bloomsbury has been behind one of the most successful publishing ventures: the Harry Potter phenomenon. It helped take Bloomsbury's profits to a peak of £20 million in 2005 but by 2009 they were down to only £7.13 million. Last year saw a recovery to £8.4 million. Meanwhile, the group is being reorganised and management strengthened. A strong cash flow and a progressive dividend record add to the recovery appeal. The shares yield 4%.
Outlook The final two months of the extended financial year to 28 February 2011 are normally fairly quiet for the business which, due to seasonality, are typically loss making. However we are still seeing a lot of activity, with some of our backlist titles, including Major Pettigrew's Last Stand, by Helen Simonson performing well. For new titles, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother has gone to No 3 in The Sunday Times bestseller list. Into the new 2011 financial year, we have a novel from Orange-Prize winner, Ann Patchett, and the graphic novel of The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini coming. We are publishing four previous Booker shortlist authors: Paul Bailey, Magnus Mills, Abdulrazak Gurnah and Justin Cartwright. New books from Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and Heston Blumenthal and new authors Raymond Blanc and Paul Hollywood join our food list. With effect from 1 March 2011, Bloomsbury will undergo an organisation change. With the huge growth in digital publishing the market for books is becoming more global. Our major customers are also becoming more global, and, indeed, so is the media with whom we promote our books. The increasing demand for e-books means that acquiring world rights to books and exploiting them globally is becoming the most effective way of protecting our territorial copyrights. The Group will be divided into four Global publishing divisions: Adult; Children's & Educational; Academic & Professional; and Bloomsbury Information & Business Development. The two major supporting service divisions for this will be a single unified structure for Sales, Marketing and Rights across the Group and a Group Production function. This is a redeployment of valuable resources within the Group to position us more effectively as a global publisher in print and digital. This is a very exciting move for Bloomsbury as it provides us with a more flexible structure to capitalise on current and future changes in the market place. Nigel Newton Chief Executive 28 February 2011
Commenting on the results and prospects for Bloomsbury, Nigel Newton, Chief Executive, said: "Bloomsbury had an excellent year with a number of bestselling titles and particularly buoyant sales in the final quarter. We are also benefitting from our strong position in digital publishing which continues to experience exciting and unprecedented growth. With sales of digital devices such as the Kindle, Nook and iPad growing rapidly, 2011 will clearly be the year of the e-book. Our overall trade e-book sales are currently running at just under 10% of print sales, a proportion we expect to increase as more backlist titles are added and as the UK market gains the kind of momentum being seen in the US. We believe that digital publishing creates huge opportunities for Bloomsbury and its authors. On 1 March 2011, we will be implementing a new strategic plan for One Global Bloomsbury with Four Worldwide Publishing Divisions. "
Operating highlights · Best performance ever from Bloomsbury US · Berlin Verlag made an operating profit in the second half · Bestsellers across the Group: - Eat, Pray, Love - Elizabeth Gilbert - The Finkler Question - Howard Jacobson - winner of the 2010 Man Booker Prize - Operation Mincemeat - Ben Macintyre - Berthold Beitz - Joachim Kappner · Acquisition of Bristol Classical Press · E-book sales have grown eighteen fold in 2010 over 2009 from $131k to $2.3m · Appointment of two new Non Executive Directors in 2010 and new Group Finance Director in 2011 · Appointment of a Managing Director, Group Sales and Marketing, a Managing Director of new Children's and Educational division and a new Managing Director of Berlin Verlag · Major online initiatives including - Berg Fashion Library Online - Public Library Online in new territories - Professional Library Online - Winston Churchill Archives digitisation - Reeds Nautical Online · Conception of the strategy for One Global Bloomsbury - Four Worldwide Publishing Divisions. This will be implemented on 1 March 2011 at the start of the new financial year. A&C Black, Berlin Verlag, Berg, Bloomsbury UK and Bloomsbury USA will be replaced by four new worldwide publishing divisions for Adult; Children's and Educational; Academic and Professional; and Business Development which will be the basis of future management structure and reporting
Financial highlights The highlights for the twelve months ended 31 December 2010 include: · Revenue of £90.7m (2009: £87.2m) · Adjusted pre-tax profit pre- highlighted items* of £8.4m (2009, £7.7m) · Unadjusted pre-tax profit of £5.5m (2009, £7.1m) · Adjusted basic earnings per share (pre-highlighted items) of 8.50p (2009, 7.56p) Basic earnings per share of 4.61p (2009, 6.77p) · Profit from Bloomsbury USA of £1.3m before central cost recharges of £0.2m (2009, £0.5m before central cost recharges of £0.2m) · Net cash of £34.1m (2009, £35.0m). Strong cash inflow from operating activities of £5.1m (2009, outflow £4.3m) Second interim dividend per share of 3.91p, an increase of 7% on the 2009 final dividend of 3.65p. The intention is to announce a further dividend for the 2 month period to 28 February 2012 *Highlighted items comprise Goodwill impairment, amortisation of intangible assets, acquisition costs, aborted acquisition costs and relocation costs
http://www.investegate.co.uk/Article.aspx?id=201102280700149254B
does anyone else think we will the lows of march end, or this one general on the up???
I was contacted recently by someone calling themselves John Delfino, Acquisition Dept at JR Hoffman & Associates (www.jrhoffmanandassociates.com) offering to buy my shares in Bloomsbury (which had been split, unbeknown to me, by a factor of 7). I checked out this person and company - they do not exist at the address on their web site. They are not known by other brokers or legal firms in Montreal - the website is private registered via the Netherlands (though the IP address is locater in Florida. It is a cast iron scam - DO NOT ENTERTAIN IT.
Amazon sales alone come to £18m and still the SP drops, would have been better off buying LNG. Roll on next Saturday.
New HP film opens next Friday, maybe some improvement then.