British publishing firm, Pearson, has made upbeat predictions for its performance throughout 2005, stating that pretax loss for the first half of the year was lower than expected, leading to confidence in the company achieving “strong growth” in 2005 as a whole.
Pearson, who publishes the Financial Times and Penguin books, recorded a pretax loss of £9 million in the six months to 30 June, compared to a loss of £16 million previously.
The company saw sales revenues rise to £1.6 billion from £1.5 billion, with losses per share of 1.9p, compared to 2.8p a year earlier.
Commenting on the results, Pearson chief executive, Marjorie Scardino, said: “We are very pleased with the start we’ve made on 2005. We still have the majority of the year’s trading ahead of us, but the first-half momentum supports our confidence that we will meet our financial goals.”
The company’s flagship newspaper, the Financial Times, saw advertising revenues increase by 5% year on year, continuing the improvement enjoyed in April (see Financial Times Looking To Break Even).
Underlying sales of the newspaper rose by 10%, while operating profit rose to £33 million from £7 million in 2004. The company states that there has been “good growth” in all of its businesses, with the education business buoyed by a strong market, pushing Pearson Education sales up 14%, while Higher Education sales rose by 5%.
The publisher’s books division, Penguin, made what the company described as a “solid start” to the year, meeting expectations and showing good growth in the UK.
Elsewhere, Penguin’s American operations continued to make what Pearson said was “good progress”, but continued to struggle against a weak mass market for books.
All of Pearson’s businesses are revealed to be trading in line with expectations and although most of its profits are generated in the second half of the year, Pearson said it continued to forecast ‘strong’ growth in 2005 and beyond (see Financial Times Expected To Break Even By Year End).
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