Bookseller: OUP accounts 1992 (original) (raw)

Cost control increases profits for OUP

Digest of OUP's annual report and accounts, in The Bookseller Company News, Cheapside, October 1992

Oxford University Press reported sales of £52 million in the year to end March 1992, an increase of nearly 10 per cent. Pretax profit, which had dropped the previous year under the impact of the Gulf War and the disruption of moving the OUP distribution centre, rose from £11.7 million to £17.2 million. The press commented that "academic spending has been curtailed almost everywhere so that most divisions found it difficult to achieve their sales budgets", but added that margins were improved and costs well controlled - hence the substantial increase in pretax profit.

The press published 2,773 titles during the year, which was similar to the total in 1991; the number of books contracted for publication increased slightly. Its publishing programme is becoming increasingly international, with the spread of English as the lingua franca of the academic world, and the press has accordingly appointed commissioning editors in Japan and Russia.

The ELT division, whose most important market is in western Europe, introduced a number of changes, the most important of which was the establishment of a new company in Spain. OUP España now has 58 employees and offices in eight major cities as well as a central office in Madrid. The company has also taken over marketing, sales and warehouse organisation, so as to increase representation in schools and bookshops and to provide more information on what has become the OUP's largest single national market for ELT material. The press commented, however, that the creation of the company "had significant effects on the results, since sales were affected by the uncertainty, and the old distributors returned a large amount of unsold stock".

No such misfortune (however temporary) attended the educational division, which had a "remarkably successful" year, in common with other leading educational publishers. The introduction of the National Curriculum made enhanced expenditure on school books absolutely necessary, and this was helped by the government's special allocation of £15 million for three years. And the Oxford Children's Encyclopedia (£125 in the UK) sold over 30,000 sets worldwide in seven months.

Arts and reference books faced more difficult trading, with the effects of the recession in the trade market for dictionaries and reference books, and of cuts in library budgets. Nevertheless, the press' strong publishing programme in English monolingual dictionaries held its own and the bilingual dictionary programme progressed through further collaboration with Hachette to produce a range of French dictionaries and the acquisition of the partially completed Cassell's Spanish Dictionary. Both are scheduled for publication next year.

Of the science, medical and journal division, the press reported discreetly that journals had a "year of consolidation which produced much more satisfactory financial results". The electronic publishing department continued with its investment programme to produce an "eclectic but outstanding forward list of publications".

OUP (USA) achieved significant sales growth in academic reference, children's books, academic humanities, academic science and medicine. "The breadth of this publishing programme has, so far, allowed the press to weather the recession better than most publishers", the company commented, while pointing out that many negative factors in the market place, such as reduced library budgets, higher returns, an increase in used textbooks, and shorter shelf life for new trade titles, persist.

Click for Bookseller OUP accounts digest, 1995.

Click for related files:
The Waldock Report, OU's own 1970 investigation into OUP's pre-tax-exempt status
CUP's tax-exemption Chapter 15 of M. H. Black's Cambridge University Press 1584-1984.
Oxbridge accounts reveal assets of £2 billion Sunday Times, 16/11/97
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A Message from India Oxford Times, 30/3/01, including admission that OUP's 1999 'donations' were bogus.

Click for OUP Accounts Index - OUP's 'Charitable status' - Oxford College Accounts - Oxford Cuttings Library - Literary Law Library - Student Law Library - Malcolm v. Oxford I - Malcolm v. Oxford II - website history - SITE INDEX.