Santillana is a textbook and general-interest publishing group in Spain and Latin America with an international presence in 22 countries. Since March 2000, Santillana has been part of PRISA, which provides education, news and information, and entertainment as the largest media group in the Spanish and Portuguese-speaking markets. Santillana celebrated its 50th anniversary In January 2011, and published 7,741 new titles that year, adding to its catalog of 36,278.
Key company developments in 2012 & 2013
Financial:
Total revenue reached 2.66 billion EUR (-2.2%) and EBIDTA was 427 million EUR (-2.3%).The Group showed a net loss of 255 million EUR after having 305 million EUR for goodwill impairments and intangible assets. Education, the core business of the company, showed a strong growth in Latin America. Revenues (734 million EUR) grew by 1.8% with Latin America up by +5.4%. By country, the North and Latin American market contributes strong growth rates: Mexico (+17.6%), Ecuador (+23.3%), Puerto Rico (+35.4%), Dominican Republic (+43.3%), the U.S. (+41%), Argentina (+20.6%), Central America (+27.3%), Colombia (+3.4%), Peru (+129.4%), Bolivia (+16.1%), Uruguay (+22.2%), Chile (+16.5%), and Brazil (-17.0%). Spain saw a revenue fall of 8.9% mainly due to General Editions and a lower educational campaign. EBIDTA reached 184 million EUR (+8.2%). This figure included a negative contribution of 12 million EUR as a consequence of launching new educational systems at the operating profit level. The book and educational businesses cover 29% of corporate revenues in 2011.
Ownership, Mergers & Acquisition, Internal Organization:
In July 2012, Juan Luis Cebrián was appointed Chairman of the Group following Ignacio Polanco. Since April 2011, Cebrián was executive chairman of the press division and CEO of El País. Ignacio Santillana became the new chairman of Santillana in December 2012.
Accumulated profit in the education segment included capital gains of 168 million EUR generated by the sale of 25% of Grupo Santillana de Ediciones to the private equity fund DLJ South America, completed in April 2010.
Digital:
Santillana is making a transition from print to digital with services such as Libroweb, Libromedia and Libroclik. In October 2012, Santillana opened an online store to sell digital books, followed by the launch of its first children’s apps. Thus, Santillana reported the launch of Edusfera, an online store for students, teachers and parents offering 2,000 digital educational resources from the publisher’s digital catalog for students aged 3 to 18. Since November 2012, Santillana offers e-books in Spanish to Euorpean readers at the Amazon Kindle Store.
Prisa Ediciones, Santillana’s trade publishing division, announced to expand its digital catalog (both new and backlist) as the only way to cope with the broad phenomenon of piracy in Spain.
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