Harry Potter publisher Bloomsbury unveiled a 74 percent drop in 2006 profit on Tuesday and said it was hunting for acquisitions to fill the void left by the boy wizard when his final adventure is released in July.
Bloomsbury's reliance on J.K. Rowling's smash children's book series was underscored as the company posted a steep fall in profit in a year of no major new Harry Potter releases.
The British publisher - whose authors include Margaret Atwood, William Boyd and Joanna Trollope - saw its pretax profit in the year to end-December fall to 5.2 million pounds ($10.26 million) from 20.1 million. The final Harry Potter novel, "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" is due to hit bookstores on July 21.
Speculation has been rife that author J.K. Rowling, who became the world's first billion-dollar author on the back of the success of the Harry Potter books and movies, may kill Harry off at the end of book seven. Bloomsbury, which has enjoyed phenomenal success with Harry Potter, said that it was interested in businesses that complement its existing activities and also broaden its involvement in media.
Bloomsbury's 2006 group turnover dropped 31.5 percent to 74.8 million pounds from 109.1 million. "We have made 10 already and we are looking for further and bigger acquisitions that complete our core strengths in either adults, childrens' or reference publishing," Bloomsbury Chairman Nigel Newton told Reuters in an interview.
Any deals would most likely occur in the company's core markets of the UK, Germany and the United States, he added, with funding depending on the nature and size of the businesses involved.
Bloomsbury said it had seen a good start to the current year with a strong pipeline of new books by Khaled Hosseini, author of "The Kite Runner", and Rowling's "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows." Bloomsbury authors with new books on the way include Michael Ondaatje, Joanna Trollope, Celia Rees and Anthony Bourdain.
A December profit warning, which has left shares in the company trailing the FTSE Media Index by around 30 percent over the past three months was due to tough pre-Christmas trading, the company not completing budgeted reference rights sales by the year-end and the sharp fall in revenue.
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