Pearson gets boost from push into AI

Pearson has reported a 5 per cent rise in underlying sales in the third quarter of the year as it began to see the commercial benefit from its foray into artificial intelligence.
The educational publisher pointed to double-digit year-on-year billing growth in its higher education products that contain AI study tools. The division as a whole returned to growth in the third quarter with sales up 4 per cent, though they were flat for the year to date.
It said it was on track to meet full-year expectations and was in the process of scaling AI across its products and services. In the year to date, sales across all divisions were up by 3 per cent year-on-year. Shares in the company were rose 28½p, or 2.7 per cent, to £11.
Its strong performance in its higher education division has defied a wider slowdown in the sector, thanks to falling numbers of international students in the UK and enrollment declines in the US, though that has reversed slightly in recent years.
“There’s been a little bit of enrolment growth in the US, so that’s useful,” Omar Abbosh, Pearson’s chief executive, said. “There has also been an incredible focus by our team on the product and improving the quality of the product and using AI to help learners achieve the outcomes that they want. The learners like that and so that obviously helps our business.”
The publisher recently signed a multi-year deal with ServiceNow, an American software company, to expand further into workforce learning. Sales in the division rose by 6 per cent year on year in the third quarter of the year.
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Overall, sales in all the company’s divisions rose in the three months to the end of September compared to the same period last year, something it has not managed to achieve for more than five years.
The smallest rise was in its English language learning business, where sales grew by 2 per cent year on year.
The largest rise in sales — along with workforce skills — was in its assessments and qualifications division, where sales grew 6 per cent. There were particularly strong increases in its UK and international qualifications sector, where sales were up by 7 per cent for the nine-month period to the end of September.