PW: Wiley Posts Strong Gains In Sales, Earnings

A combination of acquisitions and organic growth boosted sales at John Wiley & Sons to $594.8 million in the fiscal year ended April 30, 2000, a 17% increase over fiscal 1999. Net income rose 32% in the year, to $52.4 million, while operating earnings increased 40%, to $89.0 million, giving Wiley a 15% operating margin a year ahead of its strategic plan.

The biggest growth came in Wiley's domestic professional/trade segment, which had a 36% revenue increase, led by the acquisitions of Jossey-Bass and the J.K. Lasser guides. Growth in sales through online accounts and a good response to Wiley's frontlist also lifted sales. Domestic college revenues rose 30%, driven by a strong frontlist and the purchase of 60 titles from Pearson. Domestic STM revenues were up 5%. Wiley's international division reported strong results "across the board." Healthy gains in Wiley's European STM journals were somewhat offset by the strong dollar, while its Canadian and Australian businesses showed strong performances. Results in Asia improved "significantly" as the Asian economy strengthened, Wiley reported.

Wiley president Will Pesce called the fiscal 20o0 results "outstanding," not only from a financial perspective but from a strategic standpoint, particularly in growing Web-related revenues. Pesce noted that Wiley is "enthusiastic about our ability to drive Web-enabled revenue growth by making Wiley's deep reservoir of must-have content more easily available to our customers."

Among Wiley's various initiatives have been two agreements in the distance-learning area. In its most recent deal, Wiley's college division entered into an alliance with Caliber Learning Network to create a series of online business courses. Wiley will use several business authors to create a pilot group of six courses targeted to pre-MBA students and business foundation programs. Using Caliber's WebCORE technology, lectures will be streamed directly to the desktop of users at home, school or work.

In addition, Wiley has expanded its Web-based Wiley InterScience service by adding an online version of the Wiley Encyclopedia of Electrical and Electronic Engineering. The encyclopedia is the first of what the company hopes will be about 30 reference works added to InterScience during 2001.