The morning after announcing that it was exploring the sale of the consumer assets in its Professional/Trade segment, John Wiley reported that sales in the P/T category fell 6% in the third quarter ended January 31 (5% excluding foreign currency exchange) with declines in the consumer and business lines the major factors in the drop. Sales in both categories fell by 10%. For the entire company, revenue rose 1% in the quarter, to $451.1 million, while net income increased 38%, to $62.9 million.

Within the P/T segment, Wiley said that the decline in consumer sales was due largely to the collapse of Borders with sales in cooking, travel and business particularly soft. Sales in the technology segment rose 2%, and increased 7% in professional education and 4% in psychology. Architecture sales fell 3%. E-book revenue doubled to $9 million. Wiley noted that the recently acquired Inscape Holdings will become part of P/T.

During the quarter Wiley released several enhanced e-books, including Bloomberg Visual Guide to Municipal Bonds and Bloomberg Visual Guide to Candelstick Consulting.

In its other segments, Wiley said revenue in the Scientific/Technical/Medical/Scholarly group rose 3%, to $245.5 million where higher journal subscription revenue, digital book and reference sales and advertising were partially offset by lower journal reprint revenue. Global education sales rose 2%, to $97.7 million. Non-traditional and digital revenue actually fell in the quarter, dropping 3% due to what Wiley said was a decline in for-profit college enrollment which led to lower WileyPlus sales. Revenue in North America was up 4%, but down internationally.

For the nine month period, total sales were up 2%, to $1.32 billion, and net income rose 15%, to $164.5 million. The company said that based on results for the first nine months it still expects revenue for the fiscal year to grow in the low single-digit range, excluding foreign exchange (FX) and earnings per share to be between $3.15 to $3.20, including FX and excluding the unusual tax benefits.”