Bloomsbury Bets on Harry Potter and Sarah J. Maas to Lift Second-Half Results
First-half sales and profit fell, but Bloomsbury says major releases and digital resources support its full-year expectations.
Bloomsbury’s weaker first half has put the timing of its biggest releases at the center of the investment case for the year. The publisher says sales of new Sarah J. Maas novels and renewed interest in Harry Potter could push most of its profit into the second half, supporting expectations for a record full-year result.
The figures behind the market’s initial reaction were less encouraging. The FTSE 250 group fell as much as eight per cent on Thursday morning to 616p after reporting first-half revenue of £152m, down five per cent, and pre-tax profit of £9m, half the £18m recorded a year earlier.
Founder and executive chairman Nigel Newton argued that the half-year comparison says little about the company’s full-year prospects. “Precisely when you schedule your big bestsellers and other releases determines whether that money goes in the first half or the second half,” he told City AM. “But it’s entirely immaterial to the main point, which is that we will have a record year.”
That confidence rests in part on the shape of Bloomsbury’s publishing calendar. The company said it earns most of its profit in the second half and remains on track to meet market expectations of adjusted profit of £49.9m and revenue of £354m. Those figures are expectations, not reported outcomes; the second half will show whether the release schedule translates into the projected annual performance.
Harry Potter returns to the release calendar
A central event is HBO’s new television adaptation of Harry Potter, with its first episode scheduled for Christmas Day. Bloomsbury expects the series to renew attention in the books, beginning with a new tie-in edition of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. The publisher said several major supermarkets have already ordered the edition, according to information it shared with investors.
Newton, who signed author JK Rowling in 1996, described the Christmas release date as an “incredible masterstroke” by HBO. He said the timing “will turn this Christmas into the Harry Potter Christmas” and forecast that Bloomsbury’s new edition would become a “huge bestseller” ahead of the show.
The commercial mechanism is familiar: a prominent screen adaptation can bring a long-running book series back into public conversation, while a new edition gives retailers a current product to stock. But the scale and duration of any sales effect will depend on audience interest, retail demand and how much purchasing represents new readership rather than sales brought forward from later periods. The source figures provide no forecast for the tie-in edition’s sales, so its contribution to the full-year target remains uncertain.
Maas titles add another second-half test
Bloomsbury also plans to publish two new novels by fantasy author Sarah J. Maas, one in October and another in January. Maas has sold more than 75m copies worldwide. Newton said her last book, published in 2024, made her the world’s biggest-selling author at the time, and suggested her fan base had grown since then.
That history gives Bloomsbury a strong reason to expect significant demand, though past sales do not establish how the new titles will perform. The October and January publication dates also place the books in different reporting periods, making release timing part of the company’s explanation for why first-half results can look weak even when management expects a stronger year.
Newton pointed to the academic digital resources business as another source of support, describing the profits from other parts of Bloomsbury as “robust.” This matters because the company’s outlook does not rely solely on a single television adaptation or a pair of bestselling novels. Still, the article gives no segment-level figures to show how much the academic arm contributes or how it has performed against the prior period.
Leadership transition is on a longer timetable
The near-term publishing outlook sits alongside a planned change in leadership. Newton has said Bloomsbury will appoint a new chief executive in two years. He expects to become non-executive chairman three years into that person’s tenure, setting out a gradual handover rather than an immediate departure.
He said making the plan public answers questions about what comes next, while reflecting the company’s deliberate pace: “We’re a slow company. We do everything slowly and deliberately, and not in a flurry of instantaneousness.” For the business, that timetable gives employees and commercial partners a clearer view of the transition, while leaving execution and the choice of successor as future matters.
For now, the financial question is whether a release-heavy second half can close the gap between first-half results and the full-year expectations of £49.9m in adjusted profit and £354m in revenue. Harry Potter’s television debut, supermarket orders for the new edition, demand for Maas’s novels and the contribution from digital resources are the factors to watch as that test unfolds.
