LONDON (ShareCast) - (Sharecast News) - Bloomsbury Publishing said in a trading update on Wednesday that it expected revenue to be "comfortably ahead" and profit "materially ahead" of market expectations for the year ending 28 February.
Those consensus market expectations currently stood at £197.1m for revenue, and £20.1m for profit before tax and highlighted items.

The London-listed book publisher said trading was "strong" in the consumer division, for both adult and children's publishing, adding that a "major milestone" had been reached by its Bloomsbury Digital Resources (BDR) division.

"We are delighted to announce that on 18 January, we achieved the goal announced in May 2016 that we would create the BDR division which would generate £15m of sales and £5m of profit by the year ending 28 February 2022," the board said in its statement.

"Six years later we have done exactly that.

"Achieving this key long-term strategic goal, building high margin, quality revenues, demonstrates the strength and successful execution of our digital strategy."

Bloomsbury said BDR would benefit from the addition of further digital resources from the acquisition of ABC-CLIO.

As it had previously announced, Bloomsbury completed the purchase of ABC-CLIO on 16 December for £17.3m in cash.

"ABC-CLIO is an established academic publisher of reference, nonfiction, online curriculum and professional development materials in both print and digital formats for schools, academic libraries and public libraries, primarily in the United States," Bloomsbury said.

"This acquisition is an excellent strategic fit with BDR and significantly accelerates the growth of Bloomsbury's academic publishing in North America."

Bloomsbury said it would provide a further update on trading with its preliminary results for the year ending 28 February, in May.

At 0900 GMT, shares in Bloomsbury Publishing were up 7.73% at 355.5p.

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