Santillana

Company Information & Key Figures

About

Santillana is a textbook and general-interest publishing group in Spain and Latin America with an international presence in 22 countries. Since March 2000, Santillana is part of PRISA, the largest media group in the Spanish and Portuguese-speaking markets, providing education, news and information, and entertainment. In January 2011, Santillana celebrated its 50th anniversary.

In 2014, the general interest publishing division was sold to Penguin Random House at 72mEUR, with Santillana now focusing on the educational publishing activities alone.

Santillana’s parent company, PRISA, „is the world’s leading Spanish and Portuguese-language media group in the creation and distribution of content in the fields of culture, education, news and information, and entertainment“ (company statement), with a presence in 23 countries, reaching millions of users through its global brands EL PAÍS, 40 Principales, and Santillana, focusing notably on general-interest press, commercial TV, music and spoken-word radio, as well as educational publishing.

Strongly challenged by the fall-out from the 2008 financial crisis, Prisa had accumulated a significant debt of over 3bnEUR, which the company is currently engaged in restructuring and repaying. In 2014 Prisa executed with Telefónica de Contenidos, S.A.U. a sale purchase agreement of all the shares of DTS held by Prisa, representing a 56% of the share capital of DTS, for an amount of 750mEUR.

Analysis & Key Developments

Financial

Santillana closed fiscal 2017 with an increased performance. Therefore the company’s revenues accounted for 656mEUR, up 3,63% or 23mEUR compared to the results from 2016. The strong growth mainly related to high year cycle in Brazil for the institutional sales, offsetting lower sales in Peru, due to the absence of an institutional campaign and the lack of education novelties in Spain. Besides Santillana’s adjusted EBITDA accounted for 187,1mEUR in 2017 (2016: 180,2mEUR). Moreover, Santillana contributed 56% of PRISA’s revenues in 2017. (AR 2017) Although PRISA announced at the end of 2015 a possible divestment of Santillana, the group has pointed out in May 2017 that it rejected offers received by interested parties. (El País 26.05.2017)

Internal organization

Acquisitions and growth initiatives in publishing

• In 2017 Santillana launched Escuela de Autor in Spain, which offers modular materials adapted to new ways of understanding education and teaching in the classroom.
• Besides, the company launched SET VEINTIUNO, a program that provides resources and services, including a web portal, ePortfolio’s and notebooks for the students and teachers.
• During the year 2017, Santillana and signed an agreement with Marshall Cavendish for the marketing of its Singapore mathematics methodology in certain territories.
• Also in 2017, as part of its institutional co-publishing ventures, Santillana started a collaboration with the Royal Spanish Academy on the Pan-Hispanic Dictionary of Legal Spanish (Diccionario Panhispánico del español jurídico) (FYR 2018)

International

The breakdown of revenue by geographical area of Santillana in 2017 can be summarized as follows: Spain 18%, Brazil 31%, Mexico 13% and other countries 38%.

In 2017 the sales of books by geographic region were divided as follows: Spain and Portugal 121,5mEUR, Brazil 199,8mEUR, Mexico 83,6mEUR, Venezuela 3,9mEUR, Argentina 50,4mEUR, Chile 26,5mEUR, Peru 22,7mEUR, Colombia 32,5mEUR and rest of America 106,4mEUR. (AR 2018)

Digital

In 2017, 23% of Santillana’s revenues were generated by the sales of digital goods. (AR 2018)