OUP posts 3.3% turnover rise

Oxford University Press has annualreport.oup.com/">reported turnover up 3.3% at £847.4m for the year ending 31st March 2017. The publisher’s trading surplus rose 14% to £124m.

Those results are calculated on a like-for-like basis at constant currency rates. With the effects of foreign exchange and the weakened pound factored in, headline growth stood at a full 11%, with the trading surplus up by 24%.

The improved results (last year OUP’s turnover rose just 1.7%, while profit dropped 8% to £102m) were attributed to good underlying growth across both the academic and educational businesses, and particularly a return to double-digit growth (11%) in emerging markets overall, fuelled by strong school sales.

The academic division saw turnover rise 2.4%, with the academic books business showing an unspecified “return to growth”. Turnover grew in the US and in Dictionaries.

OUP's ELT figures were not broken out on their own, but the education divisions together (ELT plus schools) achieved a combined turnover rise of 3.7%, supported by curriculum change in several key markets including the UK and Australia. The publisher said its ELT businesses in Argentina, Mexico, Vietnam and the CAMENA region all grew well, but there were reduced sales across Europe.  

Among emerging markets, the countries showing particularly strong growth rates were China and India.

C.e.o. Nigel Portwood described it as “a good year right across the business, despite challenging market conditions”, telling The Bookseller that the period had been “better than expected”.  

“We really are pleased,” he said. “It’s hard to compare with our competitors, but we think overall we’ve done very well. Our team did a great job.”

Digital innovation was an important focus for the year, with OUP launching its new academic platform (via Silverchair Information Services), set to host all its academic online content, as well as developing an assessment platform for the ELT business, and working with Emerge Education on EdTech initiatives.

Meanwhile Portwood said OUP was focused hard on reflecting market requirements, for example in the shift to user-driven library purchasing. “Now we know libraries aren’t purchasing unless they get requests, we are monitoring searches on our database and searches for our content on Google, to say to libraries, ‘Your students are looking for this content, we think you should purchase'. We’re focused on usage, on collecting usage statistics and demonstrating that our content is being used by researchers in the academic space.”

Open Access remains "at the top of the conversation in academic publishing”, Portwood noted. "OUP has done a good job – 16% of all articles are Open Access and we have over 40 Open Access journals. There are many players in the market also and we have to stay focused.”

Efficiency of operation also helped OUP’s 2016 figures, Portwood said. In the previous financial year, OUP made around 140 redundancies, but the 12 months to end March 2017 saw an “incredibly small” number of roles going at OUP, with the overall headcount flat year-on-year and no further reductions expected, Portwood said.

While the OUP c.e.o. noted that it was too early to know what the impact of Brexit will be, other than in the currency fluctuations, he observed: “You are always worried about the macro situation. Generally, the world economy seems to be improving, but volatility doesn’t seem to have gone away."