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Old 11-21-2012, 06:43 AM   #1
fjtorres
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Merger Mania: Consolidation continues

Wall Street journal report (access likely to expire soon) indicates News Corp is looking to buy Simon & Shuster from CBS to merge it with HarperCollins (and, likely, WSJ):
http://online.wsj.com/article_email/...DEyNDAyWj.html

Quote:
The conversations come about a month after the owners of two publishing rivals, Random House and Penguin Group, agreed to merge their books businesses into a publishing powerhouse.

News Corp. made a last-minute expression of interest in buying PearsonPSON.LN -1.34% PLC's Penguin but never made a formal offer. Instead, Penguin agreed to combine with Bertelsmann SE & Co.'s Random House.

For book publishing, an industry dominated by a half-dozen big companies, consolidation is viewed in part as a way to weather the transition to digital media. Combining forces can allow publishers to gain more heft in negotiating terms with retailers, including Amazon.com Inc., industry executives say.
Quote:
Simon & Schuster, which was founded in 1924 and publishes about 2,000 titles annually, had $1.6 billion in revenue and $90 million in earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization in 2011, according to CBS regulatory filings.
Quote:
A combination of HarperCollins and Simon & Schuster could create the second-largest publisher in the U.S. market. Random House and Penguin have a combined 28% to 30% of the market, while HarperCollins and Simon & Schuster together account for 18% to 20% of it, according to Albert N. Greco Institute for Publishing Research Inc.
Alternate sources:
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/new...r-talks-393507

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/1...n_2168044.html

That leaves MacMillan and Hachette on the outside looking in, but I suspect Murdock will be talking to Hachette next. That will let HCSS+H match the Random Penguin in market share and cost-cutting efficiency. (read: personel reductions.)
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Old 11-23-2012, 01:26 PM   #2
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This is one of the downsides of a neo-liberal economy. They won't stop till they acquire a quasi-monopoly and then we are screwed.
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Old 11-23-2012, 02:15 PM   #3
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I don't think this has *anything* to do with economic philosophies of any stripe.
(It isn't even particularly greedy of them.)

It has *everything* to do with the fact that a least a quarter of the consumer book market is moving to digital distribution, thereby undercutting the economies of scale of the batch-print model. Worse, the majority of that 25% of the consumer market moving to digital is the part consumed by avid readers and the 75% that is staying with print is mostly composed of casual readers and occasional buyers. Less sales and less predictable ones. (Not that consumer pbook sales have ever been terribly predictable in the BPH world.)

The result is excess pbook capacity so, barring bailouts from idiot politicians the BPHs *have* to consolidate pbook market share to maintain facility utilization rates, or rework their workflows and internal processes to maintain pbook profitability at lower print run levels. There are signs they are doing both (HarperCollins, for example, recently announced they would be closing their last warehouses in the US and would be outsourcing the storage of unsold books to a third party).

The plain reality is that the consumer market for pbooks is shrinking (less than the growth of ebooks, mind you, so profitability is holding up in the short term) and will continue to shrink in the long term. Now, your typical multinational is *not* going to bleed to death in the name of protecting "culture" regardless of anybody's economic religion. Instead, they'll get out while the getting is good.
Which they are; the exit strategy is clear: merge and spinoff, preferably with an IPO if you can find takers for the stock.
And in the confusion of the merger they'll shed all the excess capacity, aka, dead wood.

Last edited by fjtorres; 11-23-2012 at 02:18 PM.
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Old 11-24-2012, 11:53 AM   #4
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It has *everything* to do with the fact that a least a quarter of the consumer book market is moving to digital distribution.... The result is excess pbook capacity.
The companies don't need to merge in order to cut back on paper book costs.

Or, to put it another way: Executives aren't going to risk losing control of a company and/or their jobs to hide the costs of closing a few printing facilities and warehouses.

Not to mention that some publishers have already outsourced book manufacturing. Random House, for example, is the largest publisher in the world, and only has 5,300 employees. Obviously they've automated and/or outsourced a lot of book production.


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Originally Posted by fjtorres
....the exit strategy is clear: merge and spinoff, preferably with an IPO if you can find takers for the stock.
We're talking about the publishers, not Barnes & Noble.

News already decided to split its business into publishing (news, books, magazines) and broadcast/media (BSkyB, Fox News, the movie studio etc) back in June. It's highly unlikely they will split off the book publishers any time soon.
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Old 11-24-2012, 01:06 PM   #5
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News already decided to split its business into publishing (news, books, magazines) and broadcast/media (BSkyB, Fox News, the movie studio etc) back in June. It's highly unlikely they will split off the book publishers any time soon.
Oh, it's not the book publishers that are going to be spun off, it is the entire traditional publishing business. That is why they did the split in june. Between degrading economic value and the political heat, publishing isn't worth it to the Murdocks any more.

The handwriting's been on the wall since spring. The growth parts of News Corp are all going into one company and the stagnant/at-risk parts (books, newspapers, and magazines) are going into the other. Merging HC with S&S adds near-term value (in the form of the increased visibility and "market power") to the publishing company to make the IPO-to-come more attractive.

The News Corp part of the deal is clear; they're pumping up the publishing corp prior to dumping it and recovering as much value as they can.

The open question is for CBS: what to do with their (no longer so) Big Publishing House. Do they get out now, ride their existing bet, or throw more money into the pot. With Murdock out shopping, either CBS takes his money or they watch him buy up somebody else. Either way, their share of the market isn't going to be all that big compared to the Random Penguin. It's time to get big or get out.

This has happened before; big multinationals dumping a high-visibility subsidiary in the midst of a tech-driven disruption. Most recently, the big music studios. It used to be that every media conglomerate *had* to have an inhouse music studio. Nowadays? Hardly any of them does. Those companies are all about fast growth and big revenue, not propping up an at-risk business model.

Last edited by fjtorres; 11-24-2012 at 01:10 PM.
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Old 11-26-2012, 05:55 PM   #6
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This has happened before; big multinationals dumping a high-visibility subsidiary in the midst of a tech-driven disruption. Most recently, the big music studios. It used to be that every media conglomerate *had* to have an inhouse music studio. Nowadays? Hardly any of them does. Those companies are all about fast growth and big revenue, not propping up an at-risk business model.
Many people complain about the drive for maximum profit. But do they take the job offered at $50,000 over the one offered at $75,000? Would they open an account in a bank that gave 2% interest rather than one that gave 20%.

When a company becomes an investment rather than a family tradition or a labor of love...

I'd dump the music companies, if I owned any...unless they got me more hot chicks than the higher profits would.
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Old 11-26-2012, 06:08 PM   #7
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Many people complain about the drive for maximum profit. But do they take the job offered at $50,000 over the one offered at $75,000? Would they open an account in a bank that gave 2% interest rather than one that gave 20%.

When a company becomes an investment rather than a family tradition or a labor of love...
Uh-huh.
The problem is that publishing is *supposed* to be a "special snowflake" and those companies are *only* supposed to work to promote "culture" and crush Amazon.

It is only when their practices hit a little too close to home that folks take note of the man behind the curtain.

It's all about whose ox is getting gored.
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Old 11-26-2012, 08:55 PM   #8
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Uh-huh.
The problem is that publishing is *supposed* to be a "special snowflake" and those companies are *only* supposed to work to promote "culture" and crush Amazon.
I thought Heracles crushed them already. Or was that just their queen. Or maybe he crushed the unions. I know that he had something to do with labor.
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Old 11-26-2012, 09:09 PM   #9
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I thought Heracles crushed them already. Or was that just their queen. Or maybe he crushed the unions. I know that he had something to do with labor.
Herakles cheated the Queen to get her girdle. Ninth labor.
Theseus defeated the Amazon army attacking Athens.
In those days, nobody took you seriously until you had faced off against Amazon(s).
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Old 11-27-2012, 09:02 PM   #10
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Herakles cheated the Queen to get her girdle. Ninth labor.
Theseus defeated the Amazon army attacking Athens.
In those days, nobody took you seriously until you had faced off against Amazon(s).
Didn't that Prometheus dude go all Robin Hood and start distributing stolen Kindle Fires?
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