Sales at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt’s trade publishing division fell 7% in the third quarter. In the period, ended September 30, net income dropped to $164,000, from $3.5 million, compared to the third quarter of 2014. Sales declined to $43.3 million, from $46.3 million. Adjusted EBITDA fell to $3.8 million, from $7.2 million a year ago.
HMH attributed the decline to strong prior year sales of titles such as The Giver and What If? partially offset by strong sales of frontlist cookbooks such as The Whole 30, The Real Paleo Diet Cookbook and Cake My Day.
For the first nine months of 2015 revenue in the trade segment fell by about 1%, to $114.5 million, and adjusted EBITDA dropped to $3.1 million, from $7.8 million.
Revenues for all of HMH, which includes the publisher's larger education group, rose 4.3% in the quarter, to $575 million, and net income increased 22.4%, to $131.0 million. The sales increase includes $82 million from the educational publishing segment that HMH bought from Scholastic this summer.
The company said that, given softer than expected demand for textbooks in adoption states, it was lowering its revenue expectations for the full year. Sales are now expected to increase by 3%, to 6%, a total that includes the contribution from the Scholastic purchase.
In a note on acquisitions in the quarter, HMH reported that it paid about $500,000 for the assets of MeeGenuis, the e-book subscription service for children up to eight years old.
