Closing the year

We should start seeing more and more press releases from publishers as the either finish up analysis of last fiscal year or close the year at the end of this month. Of particular interest for those companies ending their year in June or reporting first quarter/ half reports is the effect of the bankruptcy from Borders.

It hit the industry back in February and while some panic ensued, the next few months should provide us with some more information on what it really meant for the industry.

The original filings can be found on Scribd. There's one report up that identifies the top debts owed. Which is a rich primary source to use against press releases and reports.

Let's get it started with John Wiley-

Publishers Weekly released this earnings overview today. (Thanks Iris!)

PW's article identifies two points in the earning report that identifies the disruption from Borders:

Wiley took a $9 million bad debt charge to account for Borders’s bankruptcy

Sales in the consumer category fell 7%, to $32 million, due in large part to the Borders disruption (Wiley had expected Borders to account for 5% of sales before shipments to the chain were stopped in December)

While some more in-depth research and reading is necesary to see how Borders affected the bottom line* for the company as a whole, it might be worth it if we can use this along with other companies to see where Border's bankruptcy caused the most damage.


*For example, the consumer market of the professional/ trade group dropped 7% to $32 million, but the whole of the professional/ trade division posted a 2% growth to $437.1 million which is less than half of earnings from the Scientific/Technical/Medical/Scholarly which posted sales of $998.9 million. So, in the words of Hungrybear9562, what does it mean?