Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, the company behind the Harry Potter series, has acquired West Sussex-based Tottel Publishing for £9.9 million in cash.
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, the company behind the Harry Potter series, has acquired West Sussex-based Tottel Publishing for £9.9 million in cash.
Academic publisher Tottel was acquired by Matrix Private Equity Partners (MPEP) in 2004 and has earned a fourfold return on MPEP’s investment and an IRR of 37 per cent. Mike Walker, partner at MPEP, said: “Tottel is a simple, honest growth story.”
As a part of the takeover, MPEP acquired 500 – 600 publishing titles from legal publisher LexisNexis. Added Walker: “The titles were considered uneconomic to LexisNexis, but we saw the potential. The management team filled the gaps in the product range and ruthlessly brought older editions up to date. Within 12 months, we were issuing 100 titles a year, which is a good number for a small publisher.”
“When we took over the company in 2004, it was generating revenues of £3.4 million, in 2008 it was up to £6 million.”
The company followed a simple plan. “It was a seamless growth process. The funding was generated internally and we didn’t make any further acquisitions. It really was a matter of delivering a strategy that we all agreed on.”
After the plan yielded all that it would, the company decided to develop its web presence. “We took the view that if we tried to improve the online capability on our own, we wouldn’t add value. We started to look for potential acquirers, so that the company could be integrated into an existing online business.”
This is where Bloomsbury stepped in. Nigel Newton, chief executive of Bloomsbury, said: “The acquisition of Tottel is an important step in the development of our academic and specialist publishing activities, with the added benefits that come from developing a robust presence in the professional sector.”
Newton added: “Subscription-based businesses such as this are fundamentally sound, and these particular markets have significant online potential, which we can help to unlock.”
Bloomsbury reported a turnover of £99.9 million in 2008, with pre-tax profits of £11.6 million.
