Those who remember the days of the Scholastic (NASDAQ:SCHL) Book Fair might be surprised to hear that, for a while, they weren’t a thing. Part due to COVID-19 restrictions and part interest in general, the events fell out of fashion. Now they’re back, and investors are applauding all the way to an 11% gain at one point in Friday afternoon trading.
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Though the retail environment in general has been a bit sour of late, parents are still finding a bit of disposable income on hand to let the kids buy a few books now and then. The in-school availability of the Scholastic Book Fair made for a perfect combination of captive audience and interested parties that produced excellent sales. That gave earnings a shot in the arm as well. Scholastic reported earnings of $2.26 per share on revenue of $528.3 million. That proved a mixed outcome; it beat consensus earnings expectations of $1.70, but fell short of the expected $541.76 million in revenue.
Scholastic then spiked the ball by approving a $100 million stock buyback plan. Its U.K division, meanwhile, also rolled out a special product to tie into the upcoming release of “The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes” set to arrive in November. The new product is a complete collection of all four Hunger Games titles with some new artwork and a few extras to catch the kids’ attention, and hopefully drive both attendance and readership in the once-powerhouse brand.
A look at the last five days of trading for Scholastic stock shows the good news came at the right time. Scholastic had been on a downward slope for most of the last five days, until the good news about the book fairs hit this morning. Then, share prices spiked nicely, and held on to most of those gains throughout the trading day. It did lose some ground, but the losses were comparatively minor.
