Bloomsbury Publishing Plc ($BMY)

Good morning, everyone, and a very warm welcome to this live session here at Hudson Sandler and Charterhouse Square in London and also to all of our viewers online of the London Stock Exchange video. I'm very pleased to greet you. I'm Nigel Newton, Founder and Chief Executive of Bloomsbury, and I am joined by Keith Underwood, Chief Financial and Operating Officer, recently appointed by us. So if I can move on to the first slide, please, of highlights. We make the point that our portfolio of portfolios has been a resilient model through consumer and academic publishing. This makes us very rare, if not unique, in our industry and is the basis of the good numbers that we're able to report to you today because like our shareholders on the public markets, we are not dependent on one type of revenue stream. We're exposed to both the consumer on the high street and the main street and at the same time, to the huge institutional buying power of tens of billions of dollars worldwide in academic libraries. Profits are up 7% to GBP 44.9 million, and that is great because it's been the basis of the dividend being up 5%. We shall point out on a slide some of you are familiar with the 31-year unbroken track record of Bloomsbury dividend growth. We have an AI licensing agreement that we announced in July that I'm very pleased to tell you is ongoing in financial year '26-'27. Completely separately from that, we announced in December a partnership with Google on a number of tools that are being implemented throughout Bloomsbury to all 1,250 of our colleagues. We are creating the Bloomsbury brain that will ultimately read in its secured off from the Internet walled garden, a database of every word that we've ever published that we can utilize in so many different ways to make future decisions based on the evidence of the past, what to publish, how much to pay for books, how many copies to print the books and many other things. We have streamlined and simplified our operating structure, which will have an effect on our financial performance and a good one. You have 2 choices really in a business of a matrix structure or a vertical structure. And though the matrix has served us very well, we've moved from the one to the other with all kinds of changes in how we sell. For example, in America, we sold through a third party, MacMillan Publishing Services. We've now recruited a dynamic team of our own key account managers selling direct for the first time to our very big customers over there. This new structure will benefit us enormously. As you will see, we have a very strong consumer front list in the year ahead, including remarkably not 1, but 2 new Sarah J. Maas novels. The Board has strong confidence in delivering a record profit in line with recently upgraded expectations for the year '26-'27. And the Board is strengthened with the appointment not only of Keith Underwood, but of my colleague, Jenny Ridout, who is the Managing Director of Bloomsbury Academic and Professional, now including with responsibility for sales, marketing and publicity in the new structure, following the footsteps of previous leaders of Bloomsbury Academic being on the plc Board, Richard Charkin and later Jonathan Glasspool. We also have a third appointment as a Non-executive Director, Chris Blatchford, a very brilliant man with considerable expertise as a Chief Technology Officer. He had -- was at 800 data scientists reporting to him at our academic competitor, Elsevier within RELX, and presently holds this high office for Kingfisher plc. And we are very pleased indeed to have his expertise, which is granular and tactical as well as strategic at a time when the world is becoming increasingly digital and Bloomsbury want to be at the forefront of all change that will benefit us. You didn't have long to wait for that -- it looks like an urban landscape of skyscrapers leading to this big jump in the dividend just announced. Next slide, please.

Well, good morning, everyone. I am really pleased to be here and delighted to be presenting robust results for Bloomsbury and a really, really strong outlook. Bloomsbury's investment case is one of strong shareholder returns, as you can see from the earlier slide, derived from a diversified portfolio across Academic and Consumer publishing, across print and digital and from an increasingly international footprint. Organic growth has been supplemented by 34 carefully selected and skillfully integrated acquisitions with the most recent one being the GBP 65 million acquisition of Rowman & Littlefield, which was conducted in May 2024. In terms of the highlights, we're reporting robust results. FY '26 profit is GBP 44.9 million. That's a margin of 13.8%, which is up 210 basis points from 11.7% in the previous year. And as we'll come on to show, that growth has been driven by digital sales within our Academic and Professional business. As expected, total revenue is down year-on-year given the strong comparative that we had in the Consumer division in the prior year. EPS is up 8% to 44.57p, and we've continued, as Nigel said, our outstanding track record of unbroken dividend growth. We have a strong balance sheet, as you can see. Total net assets are broadly flat at GBP 216 million. And within working capital, we've worked really hard to basically reduce our finished stock balances by over 20% to GBP 35 million, and we've continued to drive operational efficiencies from new distribution partners. Our net cash position has improved from GBP 17 million to GBP 29 million, and that consists of cash of GBP 44 million and a net debt or a debt balance of GBP 15 million. And this slide just bridges that cash flow movement. The closing net cash balance of GBP 29 million, well, that will draw down, as you've seen in previous years, that will draw down in the first half of the year and then build up in the second half, particularly given the second half weighting of our consumer list. And our capital allocation priorities are very much focused on internal investment to drive organic growth, debt reduction, dividends and where appropriate, bolt-on acquisitions.

Consumer. The Consumer division had, as you recall, an extremely strong comparative, but achieved revenue growth -- sorry, revenue of GBP 218 million and a profit of GBP 20.5 million with a margin of 9%. On the next slide, you can see the great diversification of our consumer portfolio continuing to shine through with a real breadth of critical and commercial success across many different genres. In Romantasy, Sarah J. Maas returned to the bestseller list in 2025 with the release of the paperback of the House of Flame and Shadow and her fans are thrilled that she is now releasing 2 books in the A Court of Thorns and Roses series in the year ahead. In the U.S., Renée Watson won the Newbery Medal for the New York Times Best Seller, All the Blues in the Sky. J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series remains in the top 10. The TV serialization of Harry Potter will be launched at Christmas, helping to introduce the series to a whole new generation of children over the coming years. In non-fiction, Gillian Anderson's Want in paperback was in the top 10 on the Sunday Times bestseller list for 22 weeks, including 9 weeks in the #1 spot. In Children's, our best-selling author, Katherine Rundell announced a long-term film deal with Walt Disney Studios, which will significantly boost her already best-selling creature -- Impossible Creatures series, the next volume of which is due out in August. We have also had continued success in fantasy from Samantha Shannon, and in cookery from Poppy O'Toole, both of whom have new books coming in this year or two.

Down to Academic and Professional. Academic and Professional had a strong year with revenues of GBP 108 million and profits doubling to GBP 25 million. Growth was driven, as you can see, by digital sales, which included the AI licensing deal, which was announced earlier in the year. Print revenues during the year were stable. And year-on-year, all revenue streams, that's print, digital and other increased in the second half. And I'm very pleased to say that in the financial year-to-date, we've seen really good growth in all territories. As I say, Academic & Professional has benefited from the AI licensing agreement, and we are pleased to say that this is ongoing into '26, '27 as more authors opt in and more titles are added to that framework deal. The integration of Rowman & Littlefield is now substantially complete and significant progress is being made on digitalizing the high-quality portfolio that we were able to bring in as a result of that deal. We've also expanded our business in Asia, opening a base in Singapore to further capitalize on the growth in the student population in the region, building upon the success of our established offices in Australia and also in India.

So the upcoming year has an array of potential best sellers, as you can see behind me, from our incredibly strong, stable, our portfolio, if you like, of great general authors from Sarah Maas, Gillian Anderson, Samantha Shannon, Katherine Rundell, J.K. Rowling, Peter Frankopan, An Patchett, Louise Kennedy, Dan Jones, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, and Poppy O'Toole. In addition, Stephen Graham, who you know the great actor in the series of Adolescence has compiled a book of letters called Letters to Our Sons, which we feel privileged to be publishing. Looking to our innovative publishing of the Harry Potter series, we are publishing Pocket Potters with a book per character and the next of the illustrated editions quite separately, which is nicely timed to benefit from the huge opportunity of the HBO series launching at Christmas. Moving to the next slide of summary and outlook. You can see that the Bloomsbury portfolio of portfolios strategy has created a resilient and successful business model. The major reorganization of our company, which we announced in April is already providing greater agility, and we will be in great shape to harness growth opportunities. We have, as you have seen, a strong publishing list for the year ahead with exciting major releases and in particular, what we call there the 2 major events of the new Sarah Maas titles and of the new movies in the HBO TV series. In addition, there are further TV releases to come. Netflix are making a second series of the 3 Body Problem, the Trilogy, which did so well for us a couple of years ago and our wonderful late author, Anthony Bourdain, Netflix have made a very powerful series about Tony as a young man when he's deciding what to do with his life and falls into cookery where he rises to the eminence that he did and that he was able to write up in Kitchen Confidential that was a complete worldwide bestseller. So the film to look out for in the summer is called Tony. Putting all of these factors together, the Board has strong confidence in delivering a record profit in this new financial year 2026-2027, in line with recently upgraded expectations. [Presentation]

Well, thank you very much. Do you have any questions?

Will Larwood from Berenberg. Firstly, just on the AI licensing, obviously, benefit in '27 from additional authors opting in. I was just wondering if you could quantify how many authors have sort of opted in, how much -- give us an indication of how much further runway there is for AI licensing deal? And then secondly, on academic, you talked about it sort of getting back to growth. Just wondering if you could share some more information, any more color on what you mean exactly by back to growth market conditions versus the go-to-market strategy that you put in place? And then finally, just in terms of the Harry Potter HBO series, obviously, you got Pocket Potters coming out and the illustrated sixth book. What else you are doing in terms of the strategy around pre-release? Are you looking at resleeving the books, et cetera?

I'll take the first and the third, if I remember them and Keith, you can kindly take the middle. So what was the first question?

About further runway in academic wise.

So it was a wonderful exercise contacting all of our academic authors to see if they wish to be part of this or not, some of whom we haven't been in contact with for a long time. And so even some new books eventuated from that. We haven't identified the number. It's still ongoing. But we've been very pleased. And I think that if you imagine if you were given a choice whether to have your life work, trained on by AI, you might find your view changed almost month by month, and academics are no exception as we all get to grips with the extraordinary power and benefits of AI as well as the much publicized fears and potential negative aspects of it. The one thing that is absolutely clear is that the better trained the AI models are, the better the answers that the whole world is going to receive will be. Now there's a reason why AI companies have focused on academic content, one of which is that most academic monographs and other works are peer reviewed by up to 5 or 6 leading academics in that field. So this is really gold standard information that they're training on. Second question.

I take the second. So in terms of the growth in A&P revenues, I think when -- in the first half presentations, when I think I was the other side of the table, actually, we ended up reporting on the challenges in the first half of the year. Second half of the year, we've seen, as we reported good growth, good growth across all territories, across all formats, which has been particularly encouraging. And that growth has continued into the opening part of this year, where we've again seen growth in all territories. So really encouraging that from our existing customer base and also from new customers with big deals coming in. So that's -- I mean, we're early on in the financial year, but certainly very encouraging. And in terms of the year itself, we also saw year-on-year growth in BDR as well during the year. So yes, encouraging signs, but it's obviously early in the year.

You can do the third as a bonus.

Remind me, Will, number 3.

Strategy around HBO release of Harry Potter for Christmas, just sort of what else...

Okay. So we'll have to wait and see exactly what we're going to do. So that's a work in progress. But suffice it to say that when the Warner Bros. films came out starting from about 2000, Bloomsbury really capitalized on that moment and opened up the market from what, I think, then would have been called ABC1 market to a C2D3 market reaching literally hundreds of thousands of new customers who were new to the series, only alerted to it really by the movies rather than the books and largely reached through supermarkets and mass merchandising retailers. By far, our largest customer when the movies came out was Tesco. And if you're doing things right, Tesco should be your largest customer for any product. So watch this space. Alistair?

Three from me. Keith, obviously, it's sort of quite early in your tenure, but any sort of initial reflections on sort of what surprised you for better or worse, if anything at all? Secondly, obviously, we've touched on the HBO sort of series around Harry Potter. But with Sarah J. Maas, I think she mentioned, I think, midway through the podcast, she just managed to get all of her TV and movie rights back. Anything you're sort of hearing on the grapevine on when they might get used? And then lastly, just to sort of expand on the topic of AI licensing. Any more talks with other providers that you might be in? And any sort of learnings from the first deal that might be useful as and when you go through that process?

Well, I won't take the first question about Keith's first impressions.

Yes, happy to take that, actually. I mean, look, it's been a really eventful start, really energizing start. I joined the business seeing that growth trajectory that you've all seen and that you've all benefited from and just really energized to join a business that's got that sort of mindset, that ability to really develop, nurture new talent and then bring that to market. That's what I wanted to join for. I also saw huge potential within the business as well. And I think on being on the inside of that, that's been absolutely reaffirmed in what we've been able to do and the plans we've been able to set forth for the future years. I mean, really quickly on, we've been able to move at pace with the restructure within the business. That's -- as we've reported, that's going to increase the agility of the business. It's going to increase accountability as we move to a vertical structure. And really, it's going to improve financial performance going forward. So I would say from my side, that's a good first step and a good start. I'm also really excited about the tech deployment as well that we can do within the business. Nigel mentioned the Bloomsbury brain. I think that's hugely interesting in terms of what that can do for our ability to drive semantic search across our titles, bringing that out for internal promotional opportunities, but also driving external demand across our customer base. I think that's a real opportunity. Internally as well, the way in which we can deploy are, I mean, obvious use case in terms of sales demand forecasting, guidance notes in terms of cost management and also stock management and print runs as well. I mean the use cases are really obvious, very clear and high value. So that potential just is massively energizing. It's also -- I mean, I observe it from the outside and have now been nearly 4 months in. It's a great management team, and we move at pace to capture opportunities. So I'm delighted to be a part of the team.

And we're thrilled to have Keith with us, and he was instrumental in our restructure only months into his arrival. Alastair, your second question was about HBO film rights.

[Audio Gap] I think she talked about having right back...

There is no news to report, and it's her news to report, and she'll do so when she's ready. But suffice it to say that when she does, I think it will be the most extraordinarily successful streaming series of that one can possibly imagine other than Harry Potter. And your third question was about AI licensing. Well, we are in contact with all of the LLMs that you've heard of. And I think it would be true to say that they've got their acts together in varying degrees. And of course, many of them have no interest in licensing content whatsoever. Why pay for what you can steal. So Bloomsbury were very much part of the campaign by the Publishers Association and the Society of Authors at the London Book Fair called Don't Steal this Book to encourage the U.K. government to not create a so-called commercial research exception that would have been a backdoor for LLMs to get content legally without paying for it. Fortunately, at the moment, what they're doing is illegal. You will all be aware of the $1.5 billion settlement in the Anthropic versus Bartz case in the San Francisco Northern District Court, which is just going through the final stage of validation, assuming that all goes according to plan, $1.5 billion will be divided among many authors, publishers and of course, the lawyers. Bloomsbury will be a substantial beneficiary and that is something that we haven't taken into account in anything that we've said because you don't do you until it's happened. But that is the first of -- or not the first, but it's one of many cases. The American Association of Publishers announced further law cases only 2 weeks ago against other household names in the LLM area. So I think it's -- I think it will become increasingly clear that licensing content is cheaper for LLMs than stealing it. And we are only dealing with people who are good faith actors. And moreover, once you have a contract, you have guardrails in place to safeguard the amount of your content that can be used, which isn't very much and the citations that are required and a whole host of things that lead to the kind of organized marketplace that perhaps we saw some time ago when the Napster moment was ended and then paid for streaming became the force that it is now with Spotify and many other players. So we hope for increased order in the AI training market. That's a fourth question.

[Audio Gap]

Not at the moment. No. And nor is there much interest in that. I would be interested to know that the take-up in other publishers who've done it. And I believe I mentioned earlier the benefits of academic content with their peer-reviewed gold status is considerable.

Just to add that, Alistair, if I may as well. I mean, having done a series of these deals at other organizations and coming in observing the partnership that's been set up with the provider. I mean it's an impressive partnership. The breadth of it as well is really impressive. And yes, I'm optimistic more.

[Audio Gap] Secondly, just on Asia. Can you give an update in terms of where you are with that and any green shoots -- early green shoots? And then just a final one. Can you help us understand -- I mean, the first Sarah J Maas book is coming out in October. So how early do you see the demand in the preorders in terms of size and magnitude?

So in terms of the authors opting in was your first question and how that works. So authors opt in generally. What we've got though is the way in which the framework deal works is it's on a title-by-title batch basis. You asked about Asia. Really early days at the moment in terms of Asia. We're seeing good cut through in terms of the market. A lot of interesting conversations ongoing, particularly in the Academic & Professional market as well where the teams are growing well. It's an area of real opportunity for us as I look at the market growth. I mean we've already talked about the huge explosion in terms of student numbers, that area we want to move into. And actually, in terms of Academic & Professional more generally, we're looking at building out the content proposition, building out the format base and the territorial footprint as well. And certainly, the Singapore base provides us with a really good opportunity to do that. Sara J. Maas preorders, Nigel, did you want to take that?

Extraordinary. They're very high. Virtually, if we start with America, which is our biggest market, virtually every major retailer, including non-book outlets that sell some books, mass merchandise retailers see this as one of the biggest products that they will sell this holiday season in the case of the first book in October and then following rapidly on in January. So if preorders are -- there are 2 kinds of preorders actually. There are those placed by customers direct with retailers, people ordering, getting in their early order of the new books on, say, the Barnes & Noble website or whatever it may be, those are higher than we've ever seen before. But secondly, there's the orders of the retailers themselves. And we have all of those in now or not all of them, but almost all of them because we need them to fix the very considerable print runs that we will have for these books. And I can say that I've never seen quite such robust support from the entire retail base in America as we are seeing with these 2 books. In addition, the same thing is being replicated quite spectacularly in English language markets all over the world. So I think it's going to be extraordinary.

Can I just follow up on the first question? On the AI deal, if it's book by book, then in theory, for future releases, can we assume there could be a benefit flowing after FY '27 into '28 because...

You should definitely assume that. So there's nothing for us to confirm to you evidentially. But the permission that we sought from our authors was for their full body of work. We didn't -- we neither named a specific title by them if they had more than one title and nor did we name a specific LLM. It's just was an invitation to participate in AI licensing. So you're absolutely right in asking that because every year, we have a big front list of academic titles coming out. And so I think you can look to this as a revenue stream for years to come. Good. Have I missed any? And by the way, there are 10 things to know about Bloomsbury. I'm sure that subliminally, you've absorbed all of them. So it remains only for me to thank you all very much for coming to thank you for your questions and to also thank our online viewers for their presence today. And thank you all very much.

Thank you.