Penguin Group Announces Record 2008

Penguin Group, the international publishing company, today announced record profits of £93m for 2008, representing growth of 26% over the previous year. The company achieved a profit margin of 10.3%, meeting its commitment to a double digit margin in 2008. Sales rose 7% to £903m. This exceptional performance was achieved in spite of one of the most challenging retail environments in recent times.

The strengthening of the dollar in the course of the year boosted both the sales and the profits of the company in sterling terms but, even on an underlying basis, sales were up by 3% and profits showed growth of 4%. These numbers were all struck after a profit charge to reflect liquidity issues in the UK at the Woolworths Group.

These strong Penguin results were part of an excellent overall Pearson performance in 2008, Penguin Group Chairman and Chief Executive, John Makinson, said: "We are hugely proud of Penguin's performance in 2008.

In the UK, Penguin's performance was driven by outstanding bestseller performance with 67 titles in the Bookscan top ten versus 52 last year. Sebastian Faulks' Devil May Care, which became Penguin's fastest selling fiction hardback in its history, and Marian Keyes' This Charming Man were two of the biggest selling hardback novels across the industry in 2008 (3rd and 14th respectively on Bookscan). Penguin continued to dominate women's fiction with top ten successes from Jane Green, Lizzie Noble, Jane Fallon, Julia Llewellyn, Lesley Pearse and Adele Parks.

On the non-fiction side, Jamie's Ministry of Food sold well over half a million copies through Bookscan, making him the second biggest publishing franchise of the last decade in the UK (after JK Rowling). Penguin published books that both anticipated the current economic situation (The Black Swan – a top ten bestseller) and that explain its origins, (JK Galbraith's The Great Crash which featured in Amazon's top 20 and sold almost 20,000 copies in 2008 despite being published in 1969, and more recently, Niall Ferguson's The Ascent of Money).

Penguin Classics had its best ever year with year on year growth of 15%. Revenue driving backlist initiatives included twenty new exclusive hardbacks for Waterstone's, a luxurious three-volume new translation of The Arabian Nights and a third series of Great Ideas. 2008 also saw the publication of Penguin Classics in Mandarin Chinese and Korean.

Penguin accounted for more than 12% of the children's publishing market.

The Brands and Licensing division had a stand-out year with fantastic performances from their media franchises including In the Night Garden (5.8 million copies shipped to date), Peppa Pig (2.3 million copies), Doctor Who (4.7 million copies) and Top Gear (669,000 copies). Ladybird's Baby Touch series sold more than 1.3 million copies around the world.

Puffin's successes included Eoin Colfer's Artemis Fowl which spent six weeks at number one and Cathy Cassidy's Gingersnaps, both outstripping sales of their previous titles, and Charlie Higson's fifth Young Bond novel, By Royal Command.