Shogakukan Publishing in the Red for Second Straight Year

At the general meeting of stockholders held at the head office in Tokyo on May 27, Shogakukan reported a decrease in sales of 7.7%, resulting in an income loss of 117,721,000,000 yen over the last five years. From a profit standpoint, business operations and administration have posted base losses for the current period, putting the company in the red for the second straight year.

In terms of publications by genre, sales of "pure book" were 14,114,000,000 yen, down 6%, while sales of DVDs and combined package products were 5,250,000,000 yen, down 3%. "Illustrated reference works," chosen because they met the various conditions of marketing and consignments, resulted in the printing of 540,000 copies of hit works.

Although sales costs, administrative expenses, and operating costs decreased by 13,600,000,000 yen over the previous year, in terms of profits business operations still posted a loss of 3,791,000,000 yen (compared to losses of approximately 7,500,000,000 yen the previous year) while administrative losses were 1,802,000,000 yen (totaling approximately 6,300,000,000 yen in losses).