Revenues up at Penguin Random House in 2014

1 April 2015 Books+Publishing

Penguin Random House (PRH) has delivered ‘a strong performance in its first full year after the merger’, majority owner Bertelsmann has reported. The publisher’s revenues were up 25.2% to €3.3 billion (A$4.7 billion) in 2014, compared to €2.7 billion (A$3.8 billion) in 2013, with operating EBITDA up 24.5% to €452 million (A$637 million) (€363 million / A$512 million in 2013). Bertelsmann has attributed this growth ‘primarily’ to ‘portfolio effects’; during the reporting period PRH acquired the Spanish- and Portuguese-language publishing activities of Santillana Ediciones Generales, including the Brazilian publisher Objetiva, establishing it ‘as the market leader in Spanish-speaking Latin America’. Growth was also driven by a number of bestsellers, ‘especially in the field of children’s books, as well as tie-ins to popular movies and TV series and the outstanding performance of its US division’. PRH’s biggest sellers in 2014 were John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars, which sold more than 10 million copies in print and ebook; book tie-ins to the movie Frozen, which sold more than 17 million copies; movie tie-ins for Gone Girl (Gillian Flynn), Unbroken (Laura Hillenbrand) and The Lego Movie, and television tie-ins for A Song of Ice and Fire (George R R Martin) and Outlander (Diana Gabaldon). Penguin Random House UK ‘experienced a solid year despite a difficult market environment’, said Bertelsmann.

Category: International news