Despite a 4.2% decrease in sales and the decision to close its Russian operation at a cost of £1 million, Dorling Kindersley executive chairman Peter Kindersley was in an optimistic mood when he announced the results for the first six months of fiscal 1999, ended December 31, 1998. Reporting a 16% rise in pretax profits to £4.7 million, Kindersley said that the changes initiated over the last year had put DK back on track and that the company was positioned to capitalize on its experience of making knowledge and learning accessible and entertaining.
Sales in the U.K. rose 1% to £29.3 million in the six-month period, hurt by the failure of the mass market business in Funfax, while sales in the U.S. fell 4% to $58.9 million. DK attributed the drop in U.S. revenues primarily to a decline of 17% in its Family Library operation. There was also a reduction in international licensing income across a number of markets, but cooperation with established institutions produced two bestselling reference titles, DK Illustrated Oxford Dictionary and the Royal Horticultural Society's A-Z Encyclopedia of Garden Plants.
In addition to putting more emphasis on education, DK has several other initiatives in the works that the company feels will help results in the second half of the fiscal year, including DK's appointment as the official publisher for Britain's Millennium Dome, the continued success of its Eyewitness Travel Guides and the company's new online bookstore. DK is undoubtedly pinning much of its future hopes on the forthcoming series of Star Wars titles, due to tie-in with the spring release of the film.
