Pearson’s Profit Falls On Penguin Woes, FTSE International Stake Sale

Wall Street Journal

July 27, 2012

By Lilly Vitorovich

Publisher Pearson PLC (PSO) Friday posted a fall in first-half profit, hurt by soft trading at Penguin Books and the loss of earnings following the sale of its stake in stock and bond index company FTSE International Ltd., but reiterated that it expects sales and profit growth for the year.

U.K.-based Pearson, which has extensive educational publishing operations, booked a 28% drop in net profit to 43 million pounds ($67.6 million) in the first six months of 2012 from GBP60 million a year earlier, despite a 6.9% rise in sales to GBP2.58 billion, slightly ahead of market expectations of GBP2.55 billion.

Heading into the second-half of the year, Pearson said it sees “good trading momentum in North America, International and the FT Group offsetting weakness in Professional Education and Penguin.”

Pearson is a major player in the education industry in North America, publishing school textbooks and producing educational software for teachers and pupils, but the business is coming under pressure from digital schoolbooks and online learning, while its classic and fictional book publishing business is being undercut by e-books, read by commuters on tablet computers.

http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20120727-701872.html