Earnings Labs

Scholastic Corporation (SCHL)

Q3 2013 Earnings Call· Thu, Mar 21, 2013

$40.71

-0.49%

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Scholastic's Third Quarter Fiscal Year 2013 Earnings Call. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, today's call is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Gil Dickoff, Senior Vice President, Treasury and Investor Relations. Sir, you may begin.

Gil Dickoff

Analyst

Thank you, operator, and good morning, everybody. Before we begin, I'd like to point out that the slides for this presentation are available for simultaneous viewing on our Investor Relations website. That's at investor.scholastic.com. I'd also like to note that this presentation contains certain forward-looking statements, which are subject to the various risks and uncertainties, including the condition of the children's book and educational markets and materials markets and acceptance of the company's products in those markets, and other risks and factors identified from time to time in the company's filings with the SEC. Actual results could differ materially from those currently anticipated. Our comments today include references to certain non-GAAP financial measures as defined in Regulation G. The reconciliation of these non-GAAP financial measures with the relevant GAAP financial information and other information required by Regulation G is provided in the company's earnings release, which is posted on the Investor Relations website. Now I'd like to introduce Dick Robinson, the Chairman, CEO and President of Scholastic, to begin our presentation.

Richard Robinson

Analyst

Thank you, Gil. Good morning, and thank you for joining our Fiscal 2013 Third Quarter Analyst and Investor Conference Call. For this morning's prepared comments, I'm joined by Maureen O'Connell, CFO and CAO. We knew that fiscal 2013 would be challenging and in the third quarter, the trends we experienced earlier this year continued. Our third quarter revenue was $380.5 million compared to $467 million a year ago, and the great majority of this decline was due to lower sales of The Hunger Games trilogy versus last year when we benefited from extraordinarily strong book revenues in advance of the film released in March. While we expect the trade sales to decline this year when compared to last year's phenomenal performance, third quarter Hunger Games resulted in some delays in customer purchases -- sorry, third quarter Hunger Games sales were much lower than our expectations, particularly in the U.S., Canada and Australia. While our fairs business grew modestly as a result of our growing fair count, in Book Club, sales declined by 21% versus last year due to a decrease in revenue per order. We still see strong engagement from our teacher customers who continue to value Book Clubs to find the best books for their classroom and to bring reading excitement to their students. Teachers are actually placing more orders, but they are using our online ordering system to find less expensive titles, thereby reducing the total value of their orders. At the same time, we are seeing a positive trend among parents who are ordering online. These parents are placing larger orders than parents using our paper ordering system. Our clubs business is in transition as it becomes an online business. Our research shows that we can offer teachers more opportunities to grow their order size and build…

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Our first question is from Drew Crum of Stifel. Andrew E. Crum - Stifel, Nicolaus & Co., Inc., Research Division: So I want to -- I have a couple of questions on the clubs business. You mentioned the revenue per order being lower, which seems to be a consistent theme the last couple of quarters. Can you talk about what you're doing to address that? And then as it relates to Storia, are there any metrics you can share with us to give us a sense as to how that business is tracking and how you're performing against your target to hit 20% to 25% of your revenue from ebooks?

Richard Robinson

Analyst

Thanks, Drew. On Storia, we're on -- our plan for the year -- we're not -- we haven't said exactly what the revenues are in that plan. We don't -- we will not do that at this point. But we're meeting all of the metrics in terms of downloads, registrations from downloads, expected revenue from ordering by parents and teachers of Storia. At the moment, Storia is -- we're introducing in classrooms, we're focusing on building its connection to schools and teachers. We're seeing teachers using it for supplementary use for free ebooks into their classroom. But we're seeing a trend toward their wanting to order classroom books through Storia for classroom use. On the home side, parents are engaged with Storia. They're getting it through the clubs and fairs. Primarily, much of the response is coming from iPad, but we're also getting a good response through its recent availability on Kindle Fire. We've built up a tremendous number of new titles, including a lot of enriched titles. So we're feeling very good about the progress of Storia so far by all of the metrics that we established for the first year, and we expect it to grow considerably in the following year. In respect to Book Clubs, I'll ask Judy to talk about what we're doing to reverse some of the trends in revenue per order, but one of the things that we pointed out in the call here was that the parents who are ordering online are really ordering quite a lot more than the parents who are using our paper systems, and we think that's a very promising trend for the future. So Judy, would you talk a little bit about the -- what we're doing relative to the revenue per order issue on clubs?

Judith A. Newman

Analyst

Sure. Drew, as we're really successfully transitioning Book Clubs online, we're seeing 2 kind of patterns, which Dick referenced. One is that teachers are using the system much more efficiently to find inexpensive books and to redeem their points and so on. So we have a really clear opportunity there to manage that much better, what we show teachers, how we present higher-priced items and kind of really controlling the promotion. So as they're moving online, and about 83% of them are ordering online these days, we're able to monitor that and gate that to control what they're redeeming for free and the lower-priced items that they're getting. At the same time, the great news is that as parents are moving online, we're seeing much higher revenue per parent order, significantly higher than print. And as we've been talking about for the past several quarters, we will be able to get real clear information on the individual parents, what their kids need, what books they are buying. And we're able to much better customize our marketing to them on an ongoing basis. So we're seeing early results of that, revenues much higher by the parents. And as more and more of them come on, we will be able to increase that revenue there with better product offerings and more customized ways to drive higher revenue per parent. So it's sort of good news, and it's all rolling up under this transition of the print business to digital. Andrew E. Crum - Stifel, Nicolaus & Co., Inc., Research Division: Okay. And just shifting gears to the trade business. Dick, can you talk about -- you mentioned The Hunger Games sales being weaker than you anticipated. I think we all thought that, that piece of your business would be down year-on-year, but it sounds like sales came in a little lower than you had anticipated. What do you attribute that to? And as you look to fiscal '14, can you talk to any promotions or events or new content you'll have around the theatrical release of Catching Fire?

Richard Robinson

Analyst

Well, we're building a -- we're bringing out a new paperback for Catching Fire and we're bringing out a wonderful new paperback box set. So we're doing lots of things relative to the November '13 release of Catching Fire movie, and we're beginning to ramp up our promotion marketing over the summer for that movie. The principal falloff in sales right now, Drew, has been on the ebooks side, which the print side continues to do all right. There's a sufficient inventory in the stores but not a great deal of it, and people are still buying the print versions. But the ebook version, which is more of a, as we know from the industry, more of a hit-driven thing where people get excited and order right around the time of the movie. That's fallen off more than the print side has fallen.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] I'm showing no further questions at this time. I would like to turn the conference back over to Mr. Robinson for closing remarks.

Richard Robinson

Analyst

Well, thank you, all, for your support. We'll continue to work hard to reverse some of the trends that we've seen in the third quarter. We're expecting a phenomenally strong 2014 in respect to our educational programs. I should say that our print products in general, as well as the combination of print and digital products, are really working very, very well, including our Trade Publishing, which is achieving good success in its front list and back list exclusive of The Hunger Games. Thanks for your support. We'll talk to you again in July. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference. Thanks for your participation. Have a wonderful day.