Pearson plc (PSON) Q3 2025 Earnings Call

Investor webinar replay

Replay transcript excerpt

Good morning everyone and welcome to Pearson's 2025 nine-month trading update. There will be two ways to submit your questions today. If you'd like to ask your questions personally, please use the numbers that are displayed on screen. These lines will be open following the prepared remarks. Alternatively, please type your questions into the questions tab at the top right of the screen and we will address them in turn at the end. And with that, I'll hand over to Omar. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today for our 2025 nine month trading update. I'm here in London with our CFO, Sally Johnson. And as always, I appreciate your time and interest in Pearson's journey as we continue to renew this company by executing against the three key priorities that we set out at the start of the year. You'll have seen this morning's announcement already, so I'll just pick out a few points on our progress and then we'll open it up for Q&A. Firstly, on our financial performance. Sales growth accelerated a 4% in Q3, and I'm pleased with the broad-based execution across our teams that they're showing, and in particular, the way that we're navigating the market headwinds that are outlined at our interim results. When we look at the business units, virtual learning delivered a really standout result in the back-to-school period with 17% sales growth, driven by excellent enrollment performance, reflecting improvements in our digital marketing approach, enrollment process, and career offering. Assessment and qualifications growth accelerated to 4% in Q3, with Pearson VUE returning to growth as expected, driven by new contract launches. These were offset in part by ongoing headwinds in federal hiring and spending that continues to affect PDRI. In enterprise learning and sk...