Academic publishing expansion: Following on from its impressive results last week, Bloomsbury has today announced the acquisition of the academic publishing assets of US publisher Rowman & Littlefield, significantly expanding and strengthening the group’s academic publishing business to create a truly leading market position in areas such as arts, humanities and social sciences. We believe this is highly attractive strategically, providing the opportunity for BMY to deploy the content into its digital resources platform, alongside cost synergy potential. Attractive financials: The acquisition involves an eventual purchase price of c.£65m – the business being acquired having generated revenue of £28m and PBT of c.£5m in CY23 – with the purchase being financed from existing cash resources and a new debt facility. The deal is expected to be accretive in the current year, and significantly accretive in FY26 onwards. Reflecting the synergy opportunities, management have increased the BDR revenue target for FY28 to £41m, from £37m. Although Bloomsbury is likely to sustain a FY net cash position, we would now expect a hiatus on further M&A as the business is integrated into the wider group. Accelerating on the road to 2030: On our forecasts, we increase revenues by c.10% longer-term as the acquisition impact annualises, which leads to a c.12% increase in earnings, underpinning our target price increase. Bloomsbury now trades at <8x CY25E EBITDA with a PE of <14x – with an increasingly resilient revenue trajectory, we see this as notably undervalued for such a scarce, high quality equity.