26 October 2023
Read the full report here
Academic & Professional revenue of £36.4 million (2022: £36.5 million) and profit before taxation and highlighted items1 of £5.9 million (2022: £7.3 million)
Strategy
Bloomsbury’s long-term growth strategy is aimed at continuing our success in investing in high-value intellectual property and building digital channels, increasing quality revenues and earnings. To achieve this, we are focused on the following long-term strategic objectives:
- Non-Consumer
- Goal: Grow Bloomsbury’s portfolio in Non-Consumer publishing. Non-Consumer publishing is characterised by higher, more predictable margins and greater digital and global opportunities.
Achieved – H1 2023/24: delivered £47.3 million revenue, growing both Academic & Professional and Special Interest revenue
- Goal: BDR target is to achieve 40% organic revenue growth over the five years to 2027/28, to reach approximately £37 million turnover.
Achieved – On track to deliver new BDR target.
Academic & Professional
Academic & Professional revenues were £36.4 million (2022: £36.5 million) and profit before taxation and highlighted items was £5.9 million (2022: £7.3 million). Profit before taxation was £3.7 million (2022: £4.9 million). Digital sales accelerated, with ebook revenue growth of 23%.
The Academic & Professional profit margin was 16%, in line with 2022/23 full year margin. This reflects a normalised level of staff investment including the cost of living increases in the second half of last year. Last year’s first half margin of 20% benefitted from positive exchange rate movements as well as lower staffing.
Our BDR growth strategy is to build high margin, high quality, repeatable digital revenue from our market leading Academic and Professional IP. We consolidated last year’s exceptional 69% growth in the first half of the year and increased subscription revenue to 47% of the total (2022: 45%). Subscriptions to our high margin BDR products deliver repeatable revenue, with renewal rates maintained at over 90%.
Our strategy and acquisitions mean that we have been well placed to capitalise on the market growth to date as Academic Institutions pivoted at pace to digital learning, including in the US, where Academic Institutions received one-off benefits of additional government funding to support this. Notwithstanding the evolving funding environment for Academic Institutions, including the normalisation of funding in the US after the additional government support during the pandemic, we are confident in demand from the structural shift to digital learning and our BDR growth target of further 40% organic revenue growth over the five years to 2027/28, to reach approximately £37 million of sales.
Since the period end, Bloomsbury author Jon Fosse won The Nobel Prize in Literature. We are proud to publish six collections of his plays in the UK and US, making him the eighth Nobel Prize winner on Bloomsbury’s Methuen Drama list, joining Peter Handke, Dario Fo, Toni Morrison, Wole Soyinka, Luigi Pirandello, John Galsworthy and George Bernard Shaw.