Harcourt Brace Stock Leaps in Heavy Trading

Heavy trading pushed Harcourt Brace Jovanovich stock up $1 a share to $7.25 on Wednesday, with 850,900 shares--three times the Orlando-based company’s average daily volume of 335,400 shares--changing hands. The stock traded as high as $8 during the day.

Analysts were unable to explain the jump in HBJ’s stock price, but HBJ Vice Chairman Robert Edgell last week sparked rumors that the company was willing to sell its six entertainment and theme parks for $2.5 billion. Edgell also suggested that HBJ Chairman William Jovanovich is “fed up” with HBJ’s parks division.

However, John Bernardi, HBJ’s chief financial officer, told Dow Jones News Service on Wednesday that “the theme parks are not for sale.” Bernardi also said that HBJ has no news announcements scheduled on the fate of its parks division.

$2.5-Billion Question

HBJ acquired three Sea World aquatic parks in San Diego, Ohio and Orlando, Fla., in 1976 for $51 million. It will open a new, $140-million Sea World in San Antonio in April. HBJ also operates Boardwalk & Baseball and Florida Cypress Gardens, both in Orlando.

In an interview last week, Edgell said that “in my opinion, (Jovanovich) is fed up with the theme park business.” Edgell, who is leading a leveraged buyout of HBJ’s trade magazine publishing business, suggested that “if a Japanese firm came along with $2.5 billion, they could buy” the parks.

Analysts have described that $2.5-billion figure as ridiculous. J. Kendrick Noble Jr., an analyst with Paine Webber, suggested that the parks would likely be worth between $750 million and $1 billion.

Serious Accidents

Edgell, however, last week defended the $2.5-billion figure as “a number that I think is the right number.” Jovanovich may be tiring of the controversy that Sea World has generated with its ongoing attempts to capture or buy additional killer whales for its parks. During the past two months, Sea World has acknowledged that killer whale trainers at the San Diego park have been involved in as many as 14 accidents, some of them serious.

In the wake of those accidents, Jovanovich personally ordered whale trainers out of Sea World tanks around the country.

Jovanovich’s “first love is publishing,” according to Edgell. “He’s an educator. He would much rather be developing textbooks and magazines” than dealing with the parks.