Total sales inched up 1% at John Wiley in the second quarter ended October 31, to $447 million, although net income declined to $50.8 million from $53.7 million. Excluding the impact of foreign exchange, sales dipped 0.4%. The global education business is performing below expectations and as a result Wiley lowered its revenue guidance for the full fiscal year from a mid-single digit increase to a low single digital increase while maintaining an earnings per share forecast of $3.15 per share to $3.20 per share.
In the global education segment revenue was flat at $84 million as sales in the Americas were even at $65 million due to lower enrollments at for-profit schools and the impact of textbook rental programs. Sales in its Asia-Pacific segment rose 7%, but sales to EMEA territories fell 6%. Nontraditional and digital revenue rose 10% in the quarter, Wiley said, to $27 million.
Sales in the professional/trade category declined 1%, to $111.7 million, hurt by the liquidation sales at Borders and the soft global economy. Wiley’s consumer segment had the worst quarter, with sales down 10% as cooking and travel titles had weak sales. In its other categories, business sales were up 3%, thanks to solid growth in digital sales, while technology sales increased 7% and professional education sales rose 3%. Architecture and psychology sales fell 4% and 8%, respectively. Professional/trade e-book sales jumped 145%, to $9 million, and Wiley noted that gross margins in P/T improved due to the digital migration and change in product mix.
In its largest segment, scientific/technical/medical/scientific, sales rose 3% in the quarter to $251 million. Journal subscriptions and reprint growth offset a decline in book sales and other publishing income.
For the first six months of fiscal 2012, total revenue was up 3%, to $877.0 million and net income rose 4%, to $101.6 million.
Wiley also announced that along with McGraw-Hill Companies, Cengage Learning, Pearson Education, and Elsevier, it entered into a settlement with the online tutoring site Student of Fortune, Inc. (www.studentoffortune.com) to resolve claims for copyright and trademark infringement. Each publisher discovered unauthorized digital copies of its learning materials, including full textbooks and instructor solutions manuals, that had been uploaded by third parties and sold to users on the Student of Fortune site.
