US online sales grow an estimated 17.7% in May

DFA Two-Year Milestones Include: *Aligned for Operational Excellence: USPS is intensely focused on becoming the high-performing organization the public expects. *Positioned to Financially Break Even Over Next 10 Years, Despite Inflation: Just two years into the 10-year plan, projected losses for the decade have been reduced by more than half — from $160 billion to $70 billion. *Fostering Service Excellence for the American People: We have already reversed years of declining reliability and are closing in on meeting the primary objective of 95 percent on-time performance across all mail types. *Converting 125,000 Employees to Full-Time Positions: We have focused steadily on stabilizing our workforce and have converted 125,000 pre-career workers to full-time career employees since October 2020, including 50,000 conversions between April 2022 and March 2023.

Commenting on the results, Nigel Newton, Chief Executive, said: “Bloomsbury delivered excellent results in the first half with year-on-year revenue growth of 29% to £100.7 million and profit growth of 225% to £12.9 million. These are our highest ever first half sales and profits. These results demonstrate the strength and resilience of our strategy of publishing for both the consumer and academic markets, and our growth of digital revenues. Both divisions had outstanding performances. The Consumer division continued the momentum of last year with 29% revenue growth and a £5.6 million increase in profit before tax and highlighted items to £8.4 million. Bestsellers during the period included Tom Kerridge’s Outdoor Cooking, Piranesi by Susanna Clarke, A Court of Silver Flames by Sarah J. Maas, The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon and The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller. Since the period end Bloomsbury authors have won two of the most important prizes in the literary world, The Nobel Prize for Literature and The Women’s Prize, which were won by Abdulrazak Gurnah and Susanna Clarke respectively. We congratulate them both. The Non-Consumer division saw 27% growth and a £3.2 million increase in profit before tax and highlighted items to £4.6 million. Bloomsbury Digital Resources grew by 44% in addition to a very strong recovery in print sales, which grew by 34%. The focus on our online academic digital resource strategy means we are well placed to continue to benefit from the accelerated shift by academic institutions to digital products to support hybrid learning.

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