CUPA reports revenues of over £1bn as operating profit reaches £203m

Cambridge University Press & Assessment (CUPA) reported revenues of £1.025bn for the year ended 31st July 2024, after the group’s revenues hit £1bn for the first time last year.

Operating profit was up to £203m from £140m the previous year. This also included a £34m credit benefit, as the Universities Superannuation Scheme (USS) pension scheme returned to surplus.

Three years after the merger between Cambridge University Press and Cambridge Assessment, the group now reaches more than 100 million learners every year.

CUPA saw 125 million downloads of book chapters and research papers between 2023 and 2024 and more than 11 million grades were issued by the group’s exam boards throughout the year.

Peter Phillips, chief executive of CUPA, said: "Our global network of thousands of Cambridge schools is sharing ideas and innovations between teachers to make curricula more relevant. Our work with partner organisations is drawing together experts to educate refugees, especially girls and displaced children. We are also leading on the cross-disciplinary conversations around artificial intelligence, law and governance through our new open-access Cambridge Forum academic journals."

He added: "As new technologies emerge and mature, such as generative AI or digital assessment, Cambridge has been implementing applications to help our customers, harnessing opportunities to respond to the needs of learners, teachers and researchers."

Managing director Mandy Hill added: “Our ambition is to become a fully open-access journal publisher: 63% of new journal research content is now open access and 40 more journals have ’flipped’ to an open-access model this year. Cambridge’s transformative agreements are enabling a transition for journals from a ‘pay to read’ to a ‘pay to publish’ world.”