Hachette Book Group Drives Gains at Lagardère

-- Publishers Weekly, 11/5/2009 7:51:00 AM

Lagardère Publishing was the lone bright spot for parent company Lagardère SCA for the nine month period ended September 30 with total revenue up 8.3%, to  €1.69 million, or a rise of 8.8% on a like-for-like basis. Sales rose 5.1% in the third quarter on a like-for-like basis. Sales of all of  Lagardère fell 3.7% in the nine months.

In the publishing segment, U.S.-based Hachette Book Group continued to post good results, with third quarter sales up 15% with strong sales of Senator Edward Kennedy’s True Compass, Uwem Akpan’s Say You're One Of Them, and Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers, augmenting sales of Stephenie Meyer titles as growth in that series, which began to explode last July, slowed somewhat this summer. Additional titles that have contributed to the upward trend for HBG include Paul Young’s The Shack, James Patterson’s Swimsuit, and Nicholas Sparks’ The Last Song. In other areas, the company reported that sales increased in the U.K., but fell in Spain due to lower sales to the education market.

For the remainder of the year, Lagardère noted that its publishing division, unlike its other segments, “faces a particularly challenging fourth-quarter comparative,” explaining that in the final quarter of 2008 the Twilight series drove a 6% sales increase for the entire publishing group. While sales for the division still look good, the pace of the sales growth is likely to slow considerably, the company said.