Bloomsbury Publishing – Despite its falling profits are the Harry Potter publisher’s shares worth tucking away after yesterday’s 20% price collapse?

23.05.2025

Yesterday morning Bloomsbury Publishing (LON:BMY) declared its results for the year to end-February 2025 – they were disappointing.

In reaction, the group’s shares fell by 20%, from 651p to close at 520p.

The group is a leading independent publishing house, established in 1986, with authors who have won the Nobel, Pulitzer and Booker Prizes, and is the originating publisher and custodian of the Harry Potter series.

It has offices in London, New York, New Delhi, Oxford and Sydney.

The Results

Bloomsbury achieved revenue growth of 5% to £361.0m (£342.7m), while profit before taxation and highlighted items was £42.1m (£48.8m).

The actual pre-tax profit was £32.5m (£41.5m), with highlighted items of £9.6m (£7.3m) consisting of the amortisation of acquired intangible assets of £8.4m (£4.9m), the one-off legal and other professional fees relating to acquisitions, integration and restructuring costs of £1.2m (£2.4m). 

Earnings per share fell 21.5% to 30.71p (39.11p), while its total dividend for the year was 5% better at 15.43p (14.69p) per share.

After the £64.8m acquisition of Rowman & Littlefield the group’s net cash position fell from £65.8m to just £17.0m.

Will ‘Bloomsbury 2030’ work?

In May last year the group announced the ‘Bloomsbury 2030’ vision focused on its growth, its portfolio and its people.

There has been a long-time resilience of demand for Bloomsbury titles and the excellent sales of its digital products demonstrate the strength of its long-term growth strategy, the publishing judgement of its editors, the reach of its sales and marketing and value of its content.

The group is now progressing with key infrastructure changes as part of the Bloomsbury 2030 vision to support growth and profitability. 

Hopefully, it will not take until 2030 to show shareholders the benefits of the group recovery.

Current Trading and Outlook

The group’s Management stated that it remained cognisant of the uncertain macroeconomic backdrop, however, it also declared that books remain exempt from US tariffs.

The company guided that trading for 2025/26 is expected to be broadly in line with the current consensus expectation – looking for £349.2m of revenues and, before highlighted items, its pre-tax profits should be around £45.1m.

“The Board is confident in the resilience created through the portfolio of portfolios strategy.

We continue to execute our Bloomsbury 2030 vision focused on our growth, portfolio and people. Our authors, customers, consistent performance, and the scale and resilience of our business continue to underpin the confidence we have in the future.”

Broker Comment

Analysts at Peel Hunt, rate the group’s shares as a Buy.

Yesterday they were quoted as saying:

"There were limited surprises from the results today, following the March trading update.

The company benefits from its ‘portfolio of portfolios,’ and despite the prolonged softness in the academic publishing market, Consumer continued to deliver.

Upcoming catalysts such as Sarah J. Maas’s new book and the Harry Potter TV series could further drive Consumer performance, which we believe are not yet reflected in market expectations.

The shares trade on 16x FY26E PE."

In My View

Having followed this company since its float way back in 1994, I remain impressed by its quality of titles, its spread of literary content and its potential to straighten itself out and progress forward again.

The group’s shares, which peaked at 766p last October, have been down to 500p in early dealings this morning, they have since climbed back up to 524p, before resting at 515p as I write.