Potter works magic on Bloomsbury

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Bloomsbury Publishing, the company behind the best-selling Harry Potter books, yesterday revealed the success of the young wizard's adventures had bumped up profits by nearly 10 per cent and given it a war chest of £25m in cash to spend on acquisitions.

Turnover was up 8 per cent to £24.5m. Pre-tax profits before goodwill were up 9.8 per cent to £3.1m.

Nigel Newton, chairman of the company, is still waiting for the manuscript for the fifth Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, to arrive from the author JK Rowling.

The fourth book, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, sold 370,000 copies on its first day of UK publication. The Potter series has sold about 140 million copies worldwide.

Mr Newton said he hoped the release of the second Harry Potter film, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, on 15 November will boost sales of existing books. The first film, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, was the second-best selling film of last year.

Analysts, however, believe the effects, on sales, of adapting the books to the big screen will start to wane. "The market is pushing to see when the next Harry Potter [book] will come," Adrian Kearsey, at Beeson Gregory said. "But it takes a number of months to get to the publishing stage and I can see it falling in to next year. Sales will be helped by the film, but not to the same extent they were buoyed last year."

Bloomsbury, which also publishes the Who's Who reference work, announced on Monday it had bought Peter Collin Publishing, its fourth acquisition this year. Mr Newton is planning further acquisitions to build its reference division. Mr Newton yesterday launched the business reference book, Business: The Ultimate Resource, which he hopes will be a flagship title in its reference division.

"Our autumn programme is the strongest fiction programme we have ever had," Mr Newton said. "We are immensely proud to be the publisher that discovered Harry Potter, but we do publish 450 other books and have a well diversified portfolio across adult fiction, non-fiction and reference books."

The dividend has been increased 10 per cent to 1.65p.