Business
Scholastic Reports Fiscal 2023 Third Quarter Results
Continued Growth in Children's Books, Led by Book Fairs, Despite Challenging Bookselling Market Over $53M Returned to Shareholders in Quarter; Board
About this update from Scholastic Corporation
[{"type":"text","content":"Continued Growth in Children's Books, Led by Book Fairs, Despite Challenging Bookselling Market\nOver $53M Returned to Shareholders in Quarter; Board Authorizes Additional $50M for Share Repurchases\nNEW YORK, March 23, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Scholastic Corporation (NASDAQ: SCHL), the global children's publishing, education and media company, today reported financial results for the Company's fiscal third quarter ended February 28, 2023.\n\n \n \n \n \n \n \n\n \nPeter Warwick, President and Chief Executive Officer, said, \"Scholastic navigated short-term headwinds in domestic and international markets, which contributed to modest sales declines and higher losses in our seasonally small third quarter. The Company used its strong balance sheet to return over $53 million to shareholders through our dividend and expanded open-market share repurchases, while continuing to invest in strategic growth opportunities. Scholastic remains committed to deploying its capital to drive long-term growth and sustained value for its shareholders and other stakeholders.\n\"The Children's Books segment sustained growth and outperformed the overall retail children's book market in Q3, as Book Fairs continued to perform strongly. Investments in innovation and improved fair experience since the pandemic drove both higher fair count and revenue per fair. Book Clubs results came in lower, reflecting the timing of shipments a year ago. Multiple Scholastic titles again made bestseller lists, but Trade sales declined, as major book retailers slowed their ordering.\n\"In Education Solutions results declined partly reflecting ongoing purchasing delays by school and district administrators, who continue to focus on managing staffing shortages. As we actively manage the sales pipeline, we continue to invest in new go-to-market capabilities to advance our literacy platform strategy. We also announced key new products and collaborations last quarter that will contribute to segment results over the long term.\n\"With tougher market conditions expected to continue into Q4, we have updated our fiscal 2023 outlook. We have quickly adjusted short-term spending, in line with our revised top-line outlook, and focused on initiatives to improve margins. Critically, the long-term outlook for the importance of children's books and of solutions to raise literacy rates remains...