Harry Potter publisher Bloomsbury cheered the market today with news that 2007 trading beat expectations.

The company, which has been working to plug the gap left after the release of the boy wizard's final adventure, saw its shares jump after saying results will be ahead of current market consensus - £16.2m pre-tax profit for full-year 2007.

"Sales were strong in the UK and Germany and significant progress was made in our specialist publishing," said the publisher of novels, cookery and reference books.

Bloomsbury has been pouring energy into its German and US businesses in a bid to spread its risks in the post-Potter era. Chairman Nigel Newton recently flagged up Germany as one of the "real highlights" of a "storming autumn".

Updating the market today, Bloomsbury highlighted success for several books.

The company said 2008 was off to a good start with the recommendation of Khaled Hosseini's A Thousand Splendid Suns on the Richard and Judy show last week.

"We had a good finish to the year from a number of titles including the Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns, Cranford, The River Cottage Fish Book and continued re-orders from the Harry Potter series," it said in a trading statement.

Newton, who founded Bloomsbury 21 years ago, struck gold by signing up JK Rowling when no other house would touch her books about Harry Potter. More recently he has been at pains to assure the financial community his business can maintain growth despite the hugely successful wizard series coming to an end with The Deathly Hallows. Shares in the publisher almost halved over the course of last year as the seven-book run finished.

Today they were up 6p, or 3.9%, at 160p.