Pearson 2007 Guidance

Pearson reaffirmed their guidance for 2007 and said the strong performance they had in 2006 was continuing into the early part of 2007. Strong adoption results and uptake from their new electronic online learning and assessment programs in Higher Ed and good performance from Penguin were largely responsible for the results. In summary their press release presented the following information:

• School to achieve underlying sales growth in the 4-6% range with margins improving;
• Higher Education sales to grow in the 3-5% range with stable margins;
• Professional revenues to be broadly level with margins improving;
• Penguin margins to improve further, as our publishing investment and efficiency programmes continue to bear fruit;
• Financial Times Group profit to grow strongly with our cost measures, integration actions and revenue diversification pushing margins into double digits at FT Publishing. IDC revenues to grow in the 6-9% range with net income growth in the high single-digits to low double-digits (headline growth under US GAAP).

Scardino is confident of "another good year for Pearson" so on the back of a record breaking year in 2006 the question will be how much they exceed the results of 2006.

Also of note, shareholders at the AGM approved a buy back program.

Press Release
Reuters