Dorling Kindersley Holdings Plc, publisher of reference books and CD-ROMs has faced a difficult six months, especially in its multimedia division where it is planning further staff cuts. The company saw pre-tax profits fall by 40% at 4.1m pounds, while revenue was up slightly by 3.5% to 90.1m pounds. The operating profit in the period stood at 4.7m pounds, showing a fall of 2.1m pounds compared to the same period last year, which it said was largely due to trading difficulties in the multimedia retailing market and the adverse impact of a strong pound. The DK Multimedia division saw a drop in revenue of 27% to 9.5m pounds (10% of total revenue) from 13.4m pounds (15% of total revenue) last time. In the US revenue fell 27.2% to 3.8m pounds, in the UK it fell 2.2% to 3.8m pounds and was down by 51.9% in the rest of the world to 1.9m pounds. The division cut its staff by 48 to 254 in the six months to December and plans to shed another 100 in the first half of the calendar year, taking the head count close to half what it was in the middle of last year. DK Multimedia will focus more heavily on educational CD-ROM titles which is a growing sector and saw a 15% increase in sales during the half through the company’s family learning division. Educational titles accounted for 32% of DK Multimedia’s sales. Dorling Kindersley bought Acacia Interactive, producer of curriculum based educational CD-ROMs, in September of last year and it now plans to supplement these titles with its own. In the period Dorling Kindersley sold 653,000 English language CD-ROMs, up from 604,000 for the same six months last time of which the most successful was the Eyewitness Encyclopedia, selling 61,000 copies. In the foreign language licensing market, the company shipped 50 new versions, signed 26 new deals and entered three new markets. The company’s publishing partners sold 200,000 foreign language units.
