Pearson plc (PSON) Q1 2026 Earnings Call

Investor webinar replay

Replay transcript excerpt

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Pearson's 2026 Q1 Trading Update. We will begin with a brief update on our first quarter performance, followed by an open Q&A session. If you'd like to ask a question, press star 1. To withdraw your question, press star 2. For operator assistance, press star 0. And with that, I'll hand over to Omar. Thank you, Alex. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. I'm here in London with our CFO, Sally Johnson. Many of you will already have seen our Q&A results announced this morning, and so I'll just pick out a few key points, and then we'll open it up for Q&A. First, we're encouraged by the good stuff of 2026, reporting revenue growth of 4%. I'm pleased with the momentum that we're seeing in our business, driven by continued strong execution from all our teams. We remain confident in achieving our guidance for 2026, and we reconfirm our medium-term outlook. Looking at performance by business unit. Assessments and qualifications declined 1% as we had expected, and this is on track to return to growth in Q2 and beyond. Supported by new business such as the Standards and Testing Agency in the UK, and recently extended or awarded contracts including ATCA and Google CLAC. Virtual learning delivered another standout result with 21% revenue growth, driven by another excellent enrollment performance, which accelerated from the fall semester. It was further encouraged by preliminary market share data, which indicates that we're gaining share in the market. Higher education delivered 2% growth, with another solid performance in our core US core courseware business, which continues to deliver sustained growth. We expect higher education revenue growth for the year to be higher than 2025, with improvements in the K-12 channel a...