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MARKET COMMENT
By
Colchester, Essex -- This is the time of year when companies get their last chance to tell the market how trading is going before they go into the quiet period. That is the period between the end of their financial year and actually announcing results. Today it was the turn of Pearson (LSE: PSON), the £13.4b media conglomerate. Its financial year ends on December 31st, but it won't release results until March 5th, 2001. Rather boringly for news writers, but reassuringly for investors, it said everything is pretty much on track to deliver substantial revenue and operating profit growth. Like so many companies these days Pearson is evolving and it is no longer just the publisher of the Financial Times. This little table shows what its businesses are. Pearson Education is the biggest division by far, and is growing well from it textbooks and online programmes. It recently bought NCS which will increase its US profits and, together with its US Schools and Higher Education businesses, make the company a beneficiary of the strong US dollar. The FT Group is doing well and it says circulation has risen 11% to 483,000 worldwide. Much of Pearson's investment has gone into FT.com and that site is now registering 1.7m unique users a month. Last week's White Paper on broadcasting will undoubtedly be studied closely by its TV division, where the full benefits of this year's restructuring to create RTL will start to flow through. With so much going on, the presentations Pearson will be making to investors about NCS and the Learning Network at the end of January will be welcomed. Let's hope they use the Internet to let private investors get the details at the same time as the professionals. Where Next? Pearson's discussion boardDivision Sales Operating Profits
£m
Pearson
Education 1,725 257
FT Group 687 150
Penguin Group 565 65
Pearson
Television 355 68
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