Welbeck on course for 'fantastic growth' says Leaver

The Welbeck Publishing Group is "on course to significantly surpass" its 2021 revenue in 2022 following a dip in turnover partly owing to the pandemic.

Marcus Leaver, executive co-director of the Welbeck Publishing Group, has said the company is on course to “record a really healthy profit” in 2022. It comes as the business, which is less than three years old, has announced its first full financial results for the year ending 31st December 2020.

The first complete year of trading has reported a gross profit of £5.5m, and turnover of £12.3m — a 5% downturn on 2019’s £13m, a result attributed to the impact of Covid-19 and the transformation to a trade publisher. 

“Given the pandemic hit in the second year of Welbeck’s formation we are fairly happy with the numbers,” Leaver told The Bookseller. “Turnover [is] down only 5% as we transitioned from a coedition driven publisher to a trade publisher -—softness in the coedition business was nearly mitigated fully by a healthy and growing trade business.

“In 2022 we are already on course to significantly surpass our 2021 revenue and record a really healthy profit. We’re pleased obviously, as everyone is, to have 2021 in the rear view mirror but we’re pretty happy about how things are shaping up moving forward.”

On the dip in turnover, the company's financial statement reads: "Althought these results were below expectations due to the impact of Covid-19, the directors are pleased to report that earnings before interest, tax, depreciation, amortisation and exceptional adminstrative expenses are positive at £0.1m. Despite the pandemic, the directors expect a return to normal levels of trading in 2021 and beyond."

As part of a raft of pandemic contingency measures, the publisher took on a £2.5m Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan provided by the company's bank, HSBC. “We invested for the future rather than battening down the hatches,” Leaver explains. “I’d rather not have the loan but we’re paying it off and it’s allowed us to stick to our business plan”.

The business plan involves serious expansion. Over the summer, the group announced a partnership with Australian online book retailer Booktopia to establish a standalone subsidiary to publish its titles directly into the Australia and New Zealand market which is expected to be fully operational by January 2022. It will be headed by former Bonnier Books Sydney general manager Bernadette Agius.

The group will also partner with Mosquito Books of Barcelona in 2022 to create a global English language imprint, Orange Mosquito. Under the publishing collaboration with the Spanish children's publisher, Welbeck will produce and sell around 20 books for children and young adults per year.

Other new start-ups within the group include the children’s gift business and a narrative non-fiction list. Welbeck Balance, a list dedicated to mind, body and spirit is also predicted to “show excellent growth”, particularly as titles exploring mental health continue to sell well. 

Leaver envisages growth both internationally and domestically. “We’ve seen fantastic growth in the UK, Canada, the US and we'll continue to grow everywhere as all our differing product lines become more established. Our trade sales teams have done incredibly well. The trick for us is to keep moving forward,” he said. “We’ve made investments in fiction which are beginning to bear fruit."

Titles that are flourishing for fiction, a 2020 venture for Welbeck — which has previously not published fiction — include The Duchess and The Governess by Wendy Holden, with good sales anticipated for Freya North’s Little Wing, publishing in January. The press also had success with Jessie Cave’s debut novel, Sunset which was a Sunday Times top ten bestseller and a Times and Waterstones number one bestseller. 

“We’ve got something for all the different customers we have,” Leaver said. "Some titles that do well in supermarkets, some in high street retailers. I think what I've always tried to do is have a strategy for all those different places, rather than one market.”

Looking ahead, Leaver said a priority for Welbeck is to “keep listening to the end consumer and the retailer — listen to to what they have to say, because things change all the time". He added: "It won’t be like how it was pre-pandemic, and certainly won’t be the same in five years — things change all the time.

“Ultimately, we’re trying to make books that customers want and sell lot of them — that's all we’re trying to do.”