Acquisitions plus solid sales performances for its frontlist titles and Christian publishing group resulted in a 6% increase in sales at HarperCollins for its second quarter ended December 31, 2025.
Sales rose to $633 million from $595 million, but the publisher’s earnings fell 2%, to $99 million from $101 million, due to a $16 million one-time write-off primarily related to inventory at HC’s international operations, parent company News Corp reported. HC's recent acquisitions included the French and German operations of Crunchyroll and in November 2024 it acquired the German guidebook publisher Grafe und Unzer.
Key titles in the quarter included Wicked: The Official Visual Companion, John Kennedy’s How to Test Negative for Stupid, Mitch Albom’s Twice, and Ree Drummond’s The Pioneer Woman Cooks – The Essential Recipes.
Sales of print titles had a good quarter, but sales of digital audiobooks softened, resulting in an overall increase of 2% for digital sales, despite a 7% increase in e-book sales. Digital sales represented 20% of HC’s consumer revenues for the quarter compared to 21% for the prior year period.
For the first six months of HC fiscal year that ends June 30, 2026, sales rose 2%, to $1.68 billion, but EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization) declined 14%, to $157 million.
Despite the mixed performance, Robert Thomson, CEO of News Corp, remained upbeat. “We have mounting optimism for the second half of the year,” he said. In particular, Thomson pointed to the success of Heated Rivalry, noting that “ice hockey stereotypes are melting away as players pursue each other and a puck.”
He said he also expects another boost in sales in the Bridgerton series with the return of the show to Netflix, and he has high hopes for the first book by Pope Leo XIV, Peace Be With You, due out from HarperOne later this month.
As has become his custom, Thomson used the quarterly conference call with analysts to provide his thoughts on the content industry’s battle with AI developers. Noting that Anthropic is on the hook for a $1.5 billion settlement for using pirated books to create its large language models, Thomson said HC and HC’s authors “expect to receive our fair share of that payout starting later this calendar year.”
Moving forward, he said HC has “a collection of unique works written by authors that cannot in any way be used without our permission and their permission. And we certainly look forward to making the most of that. And the fact is that we already have AI deals, and negotiations are advanced for other AI deals.”
He then continued: “What is the point of acquiring cutting-edge semiconductors if they are being deployed to repurpose formless, fatless, feckless content sets? What is the point of spending billions on energy generation when that energy is powering the prosaic, not the profound? We do believe an increasing number of insightful AI creators understand this content contradiction and will indeed pay a premium for our premium content. AI companies must provide meaningful services with reliable, relevant, contemporary information, not biased bilge or retrospective rubbish.”
