Penguin Random House’s financial results for 2025 showed the pluses and minuses of being a global publishing giant.
Total sales at the company inched ahead 1.3% to just under €5 billion ($5.75 billion at current exchange rates), but its profits fell 4.7% to €704 million. Parent company Bertelsmann attributed the earnings decline primarily to “growth-related expenses in the U.S. core business along with negative exchange rate effects”—primarily a weaker U.S. dollar.
In his letter to employees, global CEO Nihar Malaviya noted that “profitability continued to be impacted by rising costs that all of us are feeling in our day-to-day lives, along with certain currency effects.”
But, he continued, PRH’s “global footprint” provides “valuable insights and lessons from many different marketplaces, enabling us to adapt, innovate, and lead in a way that no other publisher can match.” He noted that the marketing and publicity teams in the U.S. recently launched a new initiative called “From Launch to Longevity,” which intends to “shift resources more dynamically, inspired by changes that were first made by PRH Australia.”
In its annual report, Bertelsmann dug deeper into the investments PRH is making, stressing that a “core priority remains the responsible deployment of advanced AI-driven technologies to increase commercial capability and operational efficiency, while rigorously safeguarding authors’ copyrights and intellectual property.”
To that end, PRH’s data-driven marketing platform BookBoost “progressed toward a fully integrated, cross-channel system, enhancing discoverability and sales across Penguin Random House titles.” In addition, Bertelmann said, “proprietary machine-learning tools were expanded to improve demand forecasting, automate print quantities and order flows, and enable data-driven pricing across print and digital formats.” In all, PRH spent €246 million on investments last year.
One off those investments was the June €99 million purchase of Wonderbly, the U.K.-based publisher of personalized gift books. If Wonderbly’s sales were included for the full year it would have contributed €92 million to PRH.
In looking at global book publishing trends, Bertelsmann said revenues from printed books fell slightly in the U.S. and moderately in Germany. In the U.K., revenues from printed books were stable, while moderate growth was recorded in the Spanish-speaking regions. E-book sales were stable in the U. S. and the U.K., while digital audiobook sales grew slightly in the U.S., and moderately in the U.K.
The U.S. remained, by far, PRH’s largest market, accounting for 57.7% of total revenue (about $3.3 billion). In addition to longtime bestsellers The Let Them Theory by Mel Robbins and Atomic Habits by James Clear, Bertelsmann pointed to Dan Brown’s The Secret of Secrets and SenLinYu’s debut novel Alchemised as important contributors in the U.S.
Penguin Random House Publishing Service, the company’s distribution arm, and the audio publishing division also made positive contributions, Bertelsmann said.
“Looking ahead, I remain optimistic about our industry and Penguin Random House,” Malaviya wrote in his letter. After attending the London Book Fair, he added, “I am confident that the year ahead will be one that brings learnings, growth, and most of all, many different kinds of stories worth celebrating together.”
