A new chapter for Quarto

New chief executive Marcus Leaver, who had been earmarked by Mr Orbach to succeed him even before the boardroom coup, wants to make the company leaner and meaner by taking "best practice" skills from various parts of the business and applying them to the rest. Other facets of his strategic plan include reducing net debt aggressively from its present $81m through selective disposals and by focusing operations on potential growth areas such as children's books. Importantly, another long-awaited intention is to drag more of Quarto's content into the digital age, so it can be accessed and discovered by the tablet computers and other devices of the modern reader, with a marketing push to match. Lat year, digital revenues grew 29 per cent to $2.7m, but are still a tiny proportion of the total.

Mr Leaver cautions 2013 will be the year of dirty work that "will allow us to grow the business in 2014 and beyond". So analysts at new house broker Peel Hunt are looking for flat pre-tax profits of $11.5m and EPS of 42¢ in 2013. A $2.5m rise in one-off costs last year, mainly for restructuring, led to the sharp dip in reported profits in our table. However, adjust for exceptional items and underlying operating profits were pretty flat at $16.6m.