Pearson (LON:PSON) Interview Transcript

Well the full year results are confirmation that Pearson has had another good year. But why was this? And what were the stand-out performances for you?

Marjorie Scardino:

Why is that? Well I think there are three dynamics that have really been at work at Pearson's this year and a few years before this that have changed our fortunes. One is digital. The ubiquity of digital across Pearson, not only in how we make things, but how we sell them and how we deliver them to our customers. Another is the business mix. We are just far more focused on businesses that have a lot to do with each other, and that are consistent. So, we are a large education business and the FT and Penguin certainly play into that very nicely.

And thirdly, emerging markets, our exposure to emerging markets, emerging markets are now about 10% of all of Pearson's revenue and growing at more than 20% a year. And those are markets where we have not only great demographic characteristics but we can use our scale. We can take things that we've made in one country and move them to another country.

All three of those pieces together have given us fundamentally different financial characteristics, which make us far more resilient and far stronger, no matter what the environment is.

And Robin, from a financial standpoint how good a year was it?

Robin Freestone

Well it was really a very good year indeed. I know that we've had a few good years, but even by our own performances this was really quite exceptional. And I think if you look down the main performance measures all of them really went the right way, and that's quite rare to see every number going in the right direction.

So,…

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