Boosted by the contributions from several acquisitions, revenues at John Wiley & Sons increased 15% to $158.4 million for the third quarter ended January 31, 2000, while net income jumped 25% to $16.7 million.
The largest gain in the quarter came in Wiley's domestic professional/trade segment where revenues rose 33%, due primarily to the purchase of Jossey-Bass. The purchase of 55 higher education titles from Pearson, combined with strong frontlist sales, pushed sales up 25% in the company's domestic college division. The domestic STM group had a modest sales gain in the quarter. The recent acquisitions, strong local product and improvement in many Asian countries helped increase sales in Wiley's international operations.
The Internet continues to play an important role in Wiley's growth. During the quarter, the professional/trade division launched the Wiley Virtual CPA Exam Review, an interactive multimedia course on the Web based on Wiley's Delaney CPA Examination Review. In addition, online sales in the professional/trade division are growing "exponentially," Wiley reported. In the STM segment, Wiley InterScience continues to add subscribers, while the company's college group is redesigning its 300 Web sites to generate content from existing databases as well as to link them to portals. Wiley also plans to have 20 e-books ready for the college market within a year, including nine for the fall.
For the first nine months of the year, Wiley posted a 33% increase in net income to $44.2 million, on a 16% revenue gain to $445.7 million.
