AAP September 2022 StatShot Report: Publishing Industry Down 4.5% Year-To-Date and Down 1.4% for September

Unlisted German publishing giant Bertelsmann is not considering any further large takeovers worth “billions” and has no plans to list its Penguin Random House (PRH) division, Chief Financial Officer Bernd Hirsch told newspaper Boersen-Zeitung. Bertelsmann raised its stake in PRH to 75 percent in July, giving it the option of listing the business after it purchased a PRH stake from rival Pearson . Asked whether Bertelsmann was seeking full control of PRH, Hirsch said: “We have reached our goal of gaining 75 percent control.” Buying the outstanding 25 percent stake, which is still owned by Pearson, would depend on whether Pearson approached Bertelsmann over the matter, Hirsch said. Asked whether Bertelsmann would consider listing PRH, Hirsch said: “We have the IPO option. But this is not a scenario which we are thinking about.” The progress already being made to transform Bertelsmann into a digital publishing company has reduced the need to raise funds via the stock market to finance further strategic change. “If you think in a five-year timespan, the financing need is no longer of a magnitude where large projects need to be financed via an initial public offering,” Hirsch told the paper. Bertelsmann is also not considering a sale of its Printing Group, Hirsch added.

The New York Times Company announced first-quarter 2021 diluted earnings per share from continuing operations of $.24 compared with $.20 in the same period of 2020. Operating profit increased to $51.7 million in the first quarter of 2021 from $27.3 million in the same period of 2020, as higher digital-only subscription revenues and, to a lesser extent, higher digital advertising revenues more than offset lower print advertising, print subscription and other revenues.

Dotdash Meredith is eliminating the print editions of six of the former Meredith Corp.’s most iconic magazines, including InStyle, Entertainment Weekly, Eating Well and People en Espanol, according to a report yesterday first published by the Wall Street Journal. The Journal said it obtained an internal memo from Dotdash CEO Neil Vogel in which Vogel told employees that the move would eliminate about 200 jobs, which represent less than 5% of Dotdash Meredith’s total staff. The other magazines being shut down are Health and Parents. “We have said from the beginning, buying Meredith was about buying brands, not magazines or websites,” Vogel said in the memo. “It is not news to anyone that there has been a pronounced shift in readership and advertising from print to digital, and as a result, for a few important brands, print is no longer serving the brand’s core purpose.”