Pearson Full Year Above Expectations

Pearson announced this morning in their routine trading update that the company continues to perform well and that they expect to produce record profits for the full year (2007). The elaborate that the company has seen both sales growth and margin improvement leading to strong case generation and improvements in capital employeed.

Management has noted that education is having continues to perform well competitively and that they will have their best year ever in this segment. Their other groups, FT Group, FT Publishing and Penguin also performed well due to growth in advertising, subscriptions and publishing program.

As a result of this operating performance they expect to report at or above the top end of market expectations even taking into account the weakened US dollar.

Scardino:

"This is another excellent performance across all our businesses and on all our financial measures. We have produced another record year and our third consecutive year of underlying earnings growth in the mid-teens or higher. Over this period we have changed the shape of Pearson, invested in our future growth and made the company more efficient and more resilient. Those moves make us confident that we will sustain our financial and competitive progress in 2008."

Press Release
Reuters