Bloomsbury Regulatory News (BMY)

Bloomsbury Publishing Plc ("Bloomsbury")

Trading Update

18 July 2017

Bloomsbury today announces its trading results for the three months ended 31 May 2017. Total revenues are up 19% year on year (13% at constant currencies*) driven by our Consumer division. In the Non-Consumer division sales of digital resources are up by 16%. The Board expects profit for the financial year to be in line with its expectations. The first quarter traditionally generates the smallest profit of the financial year.

Top selling titles in the quarter included A Court of Wings and Fury by Sarah J. Maas, the Harry Potter series, Norse Mythology by Neil Gaiman, Tom Kerridge's Dopamine Diet and The Strange Death of Europe by Douglas Murray. Fantastically Great Women Who Changed the World by Kate Pankhurst is the biggest selling children's non-fiction title in the UK in the calendar year to 3 June (Source: Nielsen Bookscan).

The 20th anniversary of Bloomsbury's first publication of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone was celebrated on 26 June 2017. Two new books are being published in October with the British Library to accompany their Harry Potter exhibition. They are Harry Potter: A History of Magic - The Book of The Exhibition which takes readers on a journey through the subjects studied at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry and Harry Potter - A Journey Through A History of Magic, the history of magic, from alchemy to unicorns, ancient witchcraft to Hogwarts.

Output of digital resources continues well against the Bloomsbury 2020 plan. The digital resource Bloomsbury Popular Music, released earlier this year, is proving popular in academic library trials. Bloomsbury Professional Online has had a strong start to the new financial year. Our professional resource International Tax was launched in May. The law resources Practice and Procedure; Intellectual Property and Info Technology and Clinical Negligence were also launched in the first quarter. This month the Bloomsbury Design Library will be launched, following its successful showcase at the American Library Association conference in Chicago in June.

The results for the six months ending 31 August 2017 will be announced on 23 October 2017.

Note: * Changes in exchange rates year on year result in a lack of comparability between periods. Revenue growth using constant currencies enable a better understanding of the underlying performance and is calculated by applying prior year exchange rates to current year revenues.

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