Academic, Library Sales Up at Thomson

Revenue at Thomson Learning rose 8% in the second quarter ended June 30, to $428 million, reported parent company Thomson Corp. The increase was led by a 9% gain in its academic group, including an 8% rise in sales in the higher education division and good gains in its international operations. Helped by improved state funding, sales in the library refererence division, Gale, rose 6%, driven primarily by higher sales of online products.

Sales in Thomson's legal and regulatory segment rose 8%, to $833 million. Sales were strong at the division's Westlaw subsidiary, which reported an 8% rise in North American sales and a 22% increase in international sales. While sales of print products increased slightly in the quarter, executives said, sales of books will be down for the full year as more business moves to electronic products.

Revenue in the company's scientific and health-care segment rose 10%, to $200 million. At the end of the quarter, Thomson announced that it had reached an agreement to acquire Information Holdings Inc. for $441 million. IHI is a provider of information products and services to intellectual property and life sciences markets, and had sales of $81 million last year. Its businesses include MicroPatent, Master Data Center and IDRAC. IHI will become part of the scientific and health-care group, which historically has been Thomson's smallest segment.

Thomson reported that total revenue in the quarter rose 9%, to $1.87 billion, and net income jumped 67%, to $192 million. Excluding currency fluctuations, sales in the period were up 7%. For the first six months of 2004, earnings rose 41%, to $229 million, on a sales increase of 9%, to $3.55 billion.