Wiley Posts Strong Growth in Domestic, Foreign Markets
Jim Milliot -- Publishers Weekly, 8/16/1999
Domestic revenues rose 10% to $278.8 million at John Wiley & Sons for the fiscal year ended April 30, 1999, while international revenues rose 7.5% to $229.6 million, according to the company's 10-K filing with the SEC. International sales represented 45% of Wiley's total revenues of $508 million during the last fiscal year.
The fastest growing segment in the year at 14% was the professional/trade unit, which benefited from strong frontlist and backlist sales as well as increased sales from online accounts. Subject areas that had a particularly good year included accounting, computers, business and psychology. Wiley is looking for another strong year for the professional/trade group in fiscal 2000 with long-term growth being driven by increasing demand from professionals for "need-to-know information."
The 7% growth in the STM segment was led by increased journal sales worldwide as well as increased sales of encyclopedias. Wiley publishes more than 400 journals, which accounted for approximately 37% of company revenues in fiscal '99. Wiley reported that it will build its STM program through a combination of acquisitions and organic growth in fiscal 2000. Two objectives in the year are improving the profitability of the STM book program and delivering more information over the Internet.
Worldwide college sales were led by an 8% increase in the domestic college division to $98 million due primarily to a strong frontlist. Long-term trends that Wiley's college operations are exploiting include selling more college products into the adult education market and experimenting with different distance-learning programs. Wiley has also increased its sales to for-profit universities.
During the year, Wiley paid a total of $10.4 million for a number of small companies, including Chronimed Publishing, Hewin International, the Huthig Publishing Group's scientific book and journals program and the German Materials Science Society book program. Shortly after the fiscal year, the company paid Pearson $58 million for 55 college texts (revenues of $18 million) and $82 million to purchase Jossey-Bass (revenues of $33 million), also from Pearson.
In addition to paying $140 million for two acquisitions in early fiscal 2000, Wiley said that it plans to increase its capital expenditures by 20% in the current year to fund product development -- including electronic media products -- as well as to finance computer equipment upgrades to support higher business volumes.
