Scholastic Shares Fall After It Reports Big Drop In ‘Hunger Games’ Sales

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.