SFN Companies Inc. said Thursday it agreed to sell its Silver Burdett elementary/high school textbook publishing unit for about $125 million in cash to Gulf & Western Industries Inc.
John R. Purcell, chairman and president of Glenview-based SFN, said the planned sale would eliminate some overlap and duplicative development costs between Silver Burdett Co. and its other elementary/high school textbook publishing unit, the larger and more profitable Scott, Foresman & Co.
”We`re going with one real fine horse instead of with two,” he said.
SFN`s educational publishing business also includes South-Western Publishing, a producer of business and economics textbooks for high schools and colleges.
Gulf & Western, a New York-based conglomerate with major publishing interests, said the Silver Burdett acquisition would fill gaps in its elementary/high school product line.”
A Gulf & Western spokesman said the acquisition would make the company`s Prentice-Hall unit one of the sales leaders in the U.S. elementary/high school market. SFN is likely to lose its No. 1 position in that market after it divests Silver Burdett.
SFN acquired Silver Burdett in 1974. The unit, based in Morristown, N.J., had sales of about $100 million in 1985. Purcell said Silver Burdett was
”marginally profitable” in 1985 after several years of losses.
Purcell said SFN would be getting an ”excellent price” for Silver Burdett. He said the planned sale ”was not prompted by financial or balance- sheet considerations.”
In February, 1985, SFN went private in a $447.3 million leveraged buyout by an investor group that included SFN management, the E.M. Warburg, Pincus & Co. investment firm and Hallmark Cards Inc. Since the buyout, SFN has sold a Florida television station for $185 million and New York Law Publishing Co. for $20.5 million. It also has made relatively small acquisitions of minority interests in two California TV stations.
On Wednesday, Prentice-Hall said it planned to sell two business training program companies, Naperville-based Deltak Inc. and Resource Systems International of Nashville, for $100 million to National Education Corp. of Newport Beach, Calif.