Lagardère's publishing division posted €728 million in second-quarter sales, flat year-on-year, even as the wider group lifted its half-year profit by nearly 20 per cent. The Paris-based conglomerate released its H1 2026 results on July 29, 2026.

Publishing — the engine room of Lagardère's business, home to Hachette Livre imprints across France, the United Kingdom and the United States — turned in €1.343 billion for the first half of 2026, down 0.4 per cent from €1.349 billion in the same period a year earlier. Strip out currency effects and acquisitions, and the picture brightens slightly: on a like-for-like basis (a measure that holds constant the number of markets and businesses being compared), publishing revenue was up 1.3 per cent. Investing.com

The group as a whole did considerably better. Total revenue reached €4.44 billion in the first six months of 2026, against €4.35 billion a year earlier — a 2.0 per cent rise on a reported basis and 2.7 per cent like-for-like. Net profit climbed 19.1 per cent year-on-year. RTTNews

The company also paid down debt. Net debt fell by €201 million over the half-year. Investing.com

For the second quarter alone, group revenue was €2,399 million, up 1.1 per cent on a reported basis and 1.8 per cent like-for-like. A year earlier, Q2 2025 group revenue had stood at €2,373 million, with growth of 2.7 per cent reported and 2.1 per cent like-for-like at that time — meaning the top line has kept advancing, though at a slower pace than the year before.

What the numbers capture is a publishing arm holding steady while the group's other divisions — notably travel retail, which runs airport bookshops, newsstands and duty-free shops — carry more of the growth. Publishing remains the single largest contributor to Lagardère's revenue, so flat sales there weigh on the overall trajectory even as profit rises.

Arnaud Lagardère chairs and leads the company his father founded. His personal holding vehicle, Lagardère Capital & Management, has held a stake in the group for two decades. Back in March 2005, that vehicle raised its ownership from 5.45 per cent to 7.16 per cent of the company's capital, buying 2,417,000 shares at market price through an investment bank. Lagardère

None of the figures released on July 29 carry forward into a sales forecast. Lagardère reports full quarterly results with comparison figures and like-for-like adjustments, leaving the market to read the trend — publishing steady, group growing, debt shrinking.