Friday, February 20, 2015

Mondadori Offers to Buy RCS Media's Book Division

Publishers Lunch


When Mondadori Editore spun off their book publishing and distribution units as a separate company as of January 1, the company indicated it would help them to pursue "partnership and merger opportunities" to grow. With little delay, on Wednesday Mondadori made a non-binding offer to acquire competitor RCS Libri (a unit of RCS Media Group). Reuters reports that people with knowledge of the offer say the deal could be worth between 125 million and 150 million euros.

Mondadori recorded book sales of €334 million in fiscal 2013, down from €414 million in 2010 -- and for the first 9 months of 2014, they had sales of €239 million and EBITDA of €35.8 million. The new publishing subsidiary was given a book value of €99.4 million. (Mondadori's parent company is controlled by Fininvest, the financial holding company for Silvia Berlsuconi's family.)

For the same 9 months of 2014, Rizzoli's books division had sales of €155 million, with EBITDA of just €1.3 million. Their education division recorded sales of €70.4 million, with Italian trade book sales of €68.7 million. Rizzoli International, which includes their US publishing unit, had sales of €16.2 million so far this year.

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