Scholastic Q4 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

Scholastic (NASDAQ: SCHL ) held its fourth-quarter earnings conference call on Thursday. Below is the complete transcript from the call. This transcript is brought to you APIs. For real-time access to our entire catalog, please visit for a consultation.

1 million. The company completed sale-leaseback transactions, unlocking $400 million, and returned over $285 million to shareholders through repurchases and dividends. Strategic initiatives included strengthening the Children's Book Group and enhancing Book Fairs, which saw a 5% growth due to increased fair count and revenue per fair. Scholastic's Entertainment division showed promising growth with new projects, while Education faced revenue declines but expects stabilization in fiscal 2027.

For fiscal 2027, Scholastic projects a 2% to 4% revenue growth and adjusted EBITDA between $135 million and $145 million, driven by strong publishing pipelines and continued cost discipline. Full Transcript OPERATOR Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to Scholastic's fourth quarter fiscal year 2026 results. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode.

After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. To participate, you will need to press star 11 on your telephone. You will then hear a message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw the question, please press star 11 again.

Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Jeffrey Mathews, Executive Vice President, Chief Growth Officer and President, Scholastic Education. Please go ahead, sir. Jeffrey Mathews, Interim President, Scholastic Education Hello and welcome everyone to Scholastic's fiscal 2026 fourth quarter earnings call.

Today on the call I'm joined by Peter Warwick, our President and Chief Executive Officer, and Haji Glover, our Chief Financial Officer. com, which you may download now if you have not already done so. We would like to point out that certain statements made today will be forward-looking. These forward-looking statements, by their nature, are subject to various risks and uncertainties, and actual results may differ materially from those currently anticipated.

In addition, we will be discussing some non-GAAP financial measures as defined in Regulation G. The reconciliation of those measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures may be found in the company's earnings release and accompanying financial tables filed this afternoon on a Form 8-K. The earnings release has also been posted to our investor relations website. We encourage you to review the disclaimers in the release and investor presentation, and to review the risk factors disclosed in the company's annual and quarterly reports filed with the SEC.

com. Now I'd like to turn the call over to Peter Warwick to begin this afternoon's presentation. Peter Warwick, CEO Thank you, Jeff, and good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining us.

Fiscal 2026 was an important year for Scholastic. It demonstrated the earnings power of the more focused company we've been building and the progress we've made evolving a trusted century-old company to scale its impact and create long-term value for our shareholders and all stakeholders. This progress reflects a multi-year transformation of Scholastic's governance, organization, strategy, and balance sheet.

Last year we refreshed our board, strengthened our management team, reorganized to unlock efficiencies and create more integrated growth platforms, sharpened accountability across the company, and took major steps to make our balance sheet more efficient and enhance our shareholder returns. First, let me begin with a review of our key GAAP and non-GAAP financial metrics. 2 million, approximately in line with the prior-year period. 8 million a year ago.

5 million, up 4% in line with our guidance on a comparable basis reflecting the full-year impact of the sale-leaseback transactions which we closed last December. In both periods, adjusted EBITDA grew 15% year over year. In the fourth quarter, adjusted EBITDA also increased year over year. On that same basis, higher results were achieved despite lower revenue which reflected comparisons against a strong prior-year quarter in Trade and continuing funding volatility in Education.

This achievement demonstrates the operating leverage in the Scholastic model. Last quarter, Book Fairs continued to perform well, Entertainment returned to growth, and Education showed improving trends even as headwinds continued. As we simplified the business and sharpened execution, disciplined cost management across the company supported stronger underlying profitability. Together these performance trends reinforce our confidence in our long-term strategy.

Fiscal 2026 was also a major year for capital deployment and balance sheet optimization. The sale-leaseback transactions unlocked over $400 million in net proceeds from our real estate assets, and we used that increased liquidity to accelerate shareholder returns through open-market repurchases, a modified Dutch auction tender offer, and dividends. During the year we returned over $285 million to shareholders, substantially accelerated by the sale-leaseback transactions and subsequent repurchase activity, while establishing a long-t