Pearson 1st Half Hit by Writedown; Backs 2015 Guidance

By Ian Walker

LONDON--Publisher and education specialist Pearson PLC (PSON.LN) Friday reported a widened first-half pretax loss after booking a 70 million pound ($108.61 million) balance sheet write-down, but raised its dividend and backed its full-year guidance.

Pearson added that last year's figures were boosted by GBP196 million following the sale of Mergermarket.

It didn't give any information on its search for a new chairman following the announcement in April that Glen Moreno, is stepping down this year after nearly a decade in the role.

For the half year ended June 30 Pearson made a pretax loss of GBP115 million, compared with a loss of GBP36 million a year earlier, on sales of GBP2.16 billion and GBP2.05 billion respectively. Stripping out exceptional and other one-off items, the adjusted operating profit was GBP72 million compared with GBP73 million, while adjusted earnings per share were 4.4 pence, compared with 4.7 pence.

The company backed its previous guidance of 75 pence to 80 pence adjusted earnings per share for the full year and raised the interim dividend 6% to 18 pence.

"Overall, we're competing well, enabling us to reaffirm our full year guidance and increase the interim dividend," Chief Executive John Fallon said.

On Thursday Pearson finally sold its FT Group division after years of rumors and nearly 60 years of ownership. FT Group, includes the Financial Times newspaper, website FT.com, a non-controlling 50% stake in the Economist publication group and a joint venture with Russian business newspaper Vedomosti.

For years, Pearson--which generates about 60% of its sales in North America and three-quarters of its revenue from education--has rejected talk it would sell its celebrated salmon-colored business news focused paper.

The Financial Times grew its circulation in 2014 by 10% year-over-year to almost 720,000 across print and online. Digital subscriptions rose 21% to almost 504,000--70% of the FT's total paying audience.

(Simon Zekaria contributed to this article.)

Write to Ian Walker at [e-mail]; @IanWalk40289749

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