S&S revenues up for first quarter by $4m

Simon & Schuster has seen revenues for the first quarter rise $4m, driven by higher print sales, against the same period last year.

Parent company CBS revealed its first quarter results on Thursday afternoon (2nd May), which was its best-ever quarterly revenue. S&S was up from $160m in the first quarter of 2018 (for the period ending 31st March) to $164m for this year, a rise of 3% which was attributed to higher print book sales, in CBS’ statement.

Publishing operating income also saw a boost from $16m to $17m, an increase of 6%, “mainly as a result of the higher revenues”.

Bestselling titles for the first quarter of 2019 included YA novel Five Feet Apart by Rachael Lippincott and Supermarket, the debut of Bobby Hall, who is also an American rapper and singer known as Logic (both titles also published by S&S UK).

Joe Ianniello, president and acting chief executive officer of the CBS Corporation, said of the results: "CBS has once again grown across all of our key financial metrics, while continuing to invest in our future as a global multiplatform premium content company.”

In February it was revealed that S&S' worldwide revenues for 2018 had dipped marginally to $825m from $830m in 2017, due to lower print sales in the fourth quarter of 2018, with a small rise in operating income from reduced production costs, CBS said at the time.