Scholastic shares fall after it reports big drop in ‘hunger games’ sales

Scholastic Shares Fall After It Reports Big Drop In ‘Hunger Games’ Sales You will be redirected back to your article in seconds Skip to main content March 21, 2013 7:25am SERVICES TO SHARE

THIS PAGE. The stock price is down more than 13% this morning following the release of disappointing financials for the quarter that ended in February — including sales of _The Hunger Games_

trilogy that CEO Richard Robinson says were “significantly lower than our expectations.” Scholastic ended the period with a $20.1M loss, vs a $10.3M loss in the period last year, on

revenues of $380.5M, -18.5%. The revenue figure was short of analysts’ expectation for $384.2M. The drop from last year was largely due to “lower sales of the _Hunger Games_ trilogy vs last

year, when we benefited from an extraordinarily strong book revenues in advance of the film release in March,” Robinson told analysts this morning. The publisher also says that it was hurt

by local school systems that shifted spending from books to professional development and training materials and digital products including iPads. As a result of the setbacks, Scholastic

lowered its forecast for the fiscal year that ends in May. It now expects revenues of as much as $1.8M, down 5.3% from its previous guidance, with per-share earnings from continuing

operations of as much as $1.30, -18.8% from the earlier prediction. This is the second time it has cut the outlook for the  fiscal year. Comments JavaScript is required to load the comments.

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