OUP turnover falls as pandemic hits

Oxford University Press recorded turnover of £754.5m in the 12 months to the end of March 2021, a 10.7% decrease on the previous year (£844.9m) and a decline of 8.6% at constant exchange rates.

The press saw its trading surplus drop to £70.5m, down 35% on the year before (£108.1m). Its annual transfer to the rest of the university was £42.9m, down from £53.6m last year.

In its annual report chief executive oficer Nigel Portwood said: “Print sales declined by 22% mainly because of the effects of the pandemic, but digital-only sales grew by 13% as we continued to offer more digital products both to support people during the pandemic, and as part of our priority to increase our overall digital business.

“Financial performance across the divisions varied widely. Academic achieved impressive growth as the demand for high-quality research content increased, particularly in digital formats. The education and ELT (English Language Teaching) divisions both suffered sales declines owing to generally lower opportunities for digital substitution and a greater exposure to less resilient emerging markets. Nevertheless, we saw strong performances in several markets, especially the UK and China.”

The report said the academic division added more than 2,000 works to Oxford Scholarship Online, while Open Access publishing continued to flourish, with a 32% increase in articles published in 2020. The ELT division created over 1,000 new digital course components, reflecting the dramatic switch to remote learning during the pandemic, and it was able to bring together 53,000 English language teachers online as part of its largest annual event, the ELT Online Conference.

In the education division nearly 10 million users visited its Owl learning platform over the course of the year. In response to the disruption from the pandemic, OUP made many of its resources available for free. For example, NHS employees were given access to more than 1,000 books in Oxford Medicine Online and OUP released a children’s e-book, Everybody Worries, to help children navigate through the pandemic.

Commenting on the year, Portwood said: “Covid-19 had a significant impact on the press’ global business throughout 2020/21 but our colleagues responded tremendously to meet both the challenges and opportunities that they faced. I would highlight the extraordinary increase in the use of our digital services, and I am delighted that we were able to continue to support learners, teachers, and researchers in ways that suited them and at a time when supporting education and research was so critically important.”