S&S UK records 'very strong' 2017

Simon & Schuster UK saw profit before tax boom by more than half last year, in what UK c.e.o. Ian Chapman described as a "very, very strong year" for the company.

According to results newly filed at Companies House, pre-tax profit for the year to 31st December rose from £3.76m in 2016 to £5.9m, a rise of 56%. In 2015, S&S UK recorded a loss of £132,000.

Turnover rose to £44.8m (£42.2m in 2016), attributed to the boosted sales of its US distributed product, along with top performing titles such as Hilary Clinton’s What Happened, and poet Rupi Kaur’s The Sun and Her Flowers. Clinton’s exploration of the US presidential race has shifted 90,340 copies across all editions via Nielsen BookScan's TCM, while Kaur’s collection became the first ever poetry book to go to the Paperback Non-Fiction number one, and has sold 71,346 copies.

“There was also a reduction in the level of returns, as a result of strategically selling through more profitable channels,” Chapman wrote in the Companies House report. The increased profit also demonstrated "continued improvements around costs", he noted. In terms of future risks, the report cited inflation, consumer confidence and “increasingly, exchange rates” as the most significant.

Of 2017, Chapman told The Bookseller: "We had a very very strong year. Maddie Ziegler (The Maddie Diaries) was on the bestseller list for 18 weeks, while [Rupi Kaur's] Milk and Honey continued, with our distributed line." He also picked out authors Philippa Gregory and Santa Montefiore as performing strongly for the publisher last year, while picture books went "from strength to strength", boosted by the 10th anniversary of Aliens Love Underpants by Claire Freedman and Ben Cort. Sales through third party distributors did well, as did S&S's own US distribution, led by a "stunning" performance from Ray Dalio's Principles: Life and Work.

Chapman added: “The results are brilliant and we are building on this for this year."

Via Nielsen BookScan's TCM, S&S UK has generated £15.7m in sales for the first nine months of 2018, a slight dip from the £15.9m it had totalled at the same point in 2017. However earlier this month Bob Woodward’s portrait of President Trump’s White House, Fear, became the publisher’s first UK number one in two years, and its sales are not reflected in these figures.

Parent company CBS said S&S as a whole saw revenues up $1m year-on-year to $207m for the second quarter of 2018 (ending 30th June), with operating income up 7% to $31m. Meanwhile audio helped S&S to grow sales in the third quarter, up 1% year-on-year from $226m to $228m. Results were not broken down by region.