Pearson H1 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

Quartr
Provided by Quartr
August 1, 2025

Key Takeaways

  • Positive Sentiment: Pearson’s core strategy is unchanged, with AI and demographic trends “playing out exactly as expected,” and the company is building medium-term growth engines like its accelerated Enterprise business.
  • Positive Sentiment: In H1 2025, sales rose 2% and adjusted operating profit increased 2% on an underlying basis, fully in line with the guidance set at February prelims.
  • Positive Sentiment: The full-year 2025 outlook is reiterated, with growth expected to be H2-weighted as new Assessments & Qualifications contracts, virtual school enrolments, and the ramp-up of Pearson VUE Test Prep come online.
  • Negative Sentiment: Adverse FX movements (a £0.09 shift in USD/GBP) are expected to cut adjusted operating profit by about £45 million, lowering full-year profit to approximately £611 million.
  • Positive Sentiment: The £225 million acquisition of eDynamic Learning enhances Pearson’s early careers strategy with high-margin career and technical education content, supporting its medium-term growth trajectory.
AI Generated. May Contain Errors.
Earnings Conference Call
Pearson H1 2025
00:00 / 00:00

There are 10 speakers on the call.

Speaker 3

Good morning everyone and welcome to Pearson's 2025 interim results. Today we will host a presentation followed by a Q and A session. There will be two ways to submit your questions. If you'd like to ask your question personally, please use the numbers that are displayed on screen. These lines will be open following the main presentation. 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. With that, I'll hand over to Omar.

Speaker 7

Thank you, Alex. Good morning. It's a pleasure to be with you again today. I've been looking forward to it as well as hearing from Sally and me. We'll be joined later today by our colleagues Art, Tom, Vishaal, Sharon, and Tony for Q and A. We are very aware that the external world has changed significantly since our prelims in February. I wanted to first provide a view of the market dynamics that are relevant for our business and our perspective on these. I'll then move on to an update of the strategic and operational progress that we've made so far this year before handing over to Sally, who will give you an overview of our interim financial results. Then we'll open up as usual for your questions. Before we get going, let me first outline the key takeaways.

Speaker 7

Firstly, our strategy remains unchanged and is now well established across the organization. The two seismic trends of demographics and AI that we outlined this time last year are playing out exactly as expected. In a world where AI is decreasing the half life of skills, we have a vital role to play in shaping the future of learning. We're building medium-term growth engines for the company, for example, by gaining momentum in our enterprise business while in parallel innovating to ensure our products and services continue to lead the way in the world of learning. Secondly, our execution is going to plan and I'll share some proof points with you today. Thirdly, when you put together our strategic clarity and the progress we're making with our execution focus, it only strengthens my conviction in Pearson's medium-term trajectory.

Speaker 7

We're also on track to deliver a full-year financial performance in line with the expectations we set out in February, with phasing playing out precisely as anticipated. I now want to step back for a moment and consider the environment we're operating in. You all know very well it's been evolving quickly, offering both opportunities and market dynamics to address. I'd like to highlight two overarching points. Firstly, each of these dynamics influences only a small segment of our business and we understand them deeply, which is a source of strategic advantage. Secondly, our diversified portfolio means that we benefit from market growth overall while being resilient to subsegment trends. I'd like to start with the U.S. federal government. Our only material direct exposure is through PDRI, which faces some near-term pressure from hiring freezes, which we expect to continue into the second half of the year.

Speaker 7

However, PDRI's focus on merit-based hiring aligns exactly with the goals of the new administration, and its long-term relationship with the Office for Personnel Management positions us well for future opportunities with the Department of Ed. Our core offerings are well aligned with the Administration's priorities on outcomes and accountability, and we're ready to support mandates to upskill and develop a future-ready and AI-embedded workforce. While some disruption cannot be ruled out as changes are implemented, we have seen no meaningful impact on our businesses so far, and we are prepared to move quickly to take advantage of emerging opportunities. For a bit of context, federal funding accounts for a relatively small proportion of total funding for K-12 and Higher Education, and the latter includes grants for research universities where Pearson's exposure is small.

Speaker 7

On migration, the market backdrop is materially unchanged and is baked into our Pearson Test of English guidance for the year. The medium-term outlook for Pearson Test of English and English Language Learning as a whole is undiminished, supported by demographics and our team's strong operational track record of taking market share beyond English Language Learning. International mobility has minimal impact, including in the U.S. where less than 2% of university students are international. Overall, we remain resilient and are well positioned to take advantage of potential opportunities. Now I want to move back to our strategic framework that I shared with you last July, which hopefully you're familiar with, and that includes our why, our what, and our how. First, our purpose has never been more relevant. Every day we see people advancing their lives through learning, demonstrating the power of education and skill development.

Speaker 7

Yet at the system level, our recent research highlights the huge costs of persistent and widespread skill gaps at key career and learning transition points. These have a very real economic impact, totaling over $1 trillion a year in the U.S. and £96 billion a year in the UK. This represents a massive opportunity to ensure that learning keeps pace with the rapidly changing demands of the workforce and supports economic growth. Second, our what. We are a global leader in assessments and verification, and we're implementing our strategy to drive performance in our core businesses, realizing execution synergies, expanding into larger and faster-growing adjacent markets, and building scale in our medium-term growth vectors of early careers and enterprise Skilling. I look forward to telling you more about our progress against all of these shortly.

Speaker 7

Finally, our HOW underpins our strategic priorities, focusing our internal capital allocation process on higher growth opportunities, unlocking innovation to deliver better learning outcomes and more efficiently, and embedding a high-performance culture top to bottom through the organization. I am pleased with the progress we've made over the last 18 months, and as you know, this is a process of continuous improvement. These factors together drive the medium-term guidance I outlined this time last year, which we reiterate today. Let me turn now to our ongoing strategic and operational progress against our four priority growth areas, starting with driving performance in our core business. All five business units have demonstrated core performance improvements, executing upon the focus areas we outlined at full-year results, and that reflects a combination of strong commercial execution and excellent progress in developing and launching innovative new products and services in Assessments and Qualifications.

Speaker 7

We see continued execution focus through customer wins and renewals across Pearson VUE and U.S. Student assessments, expanding our customer set in Clinical with the first statewide adoption of our digital offering, and further international expansion for UK and international qualifications. We're on track to launch new Pearson VUE customers ServiceNow, the Association of Social Work Boards, and last month launch Salesforce, all of which will support faster growth at H2. From a product point of view, we've successfully launched the Pearson Skilling Suite and introduced further AI enhancements in U.S. Student assessment with the write up platform in Higher Education. We're building upon the successful monetization last fall of our Study Prep tool, previously called Channels.

Speaker 7

With an expansion into international markets, we continue to introduce innovative technologies in our products, including our new Go Deeper functionality in our AI-powered study tools, which we developed using nearly 130,000 student queries. Our research continues to show that our AI-powered study tools are helping students with their learning, including the development of new cognitive skills and higher order outcomes. In particular, when AI capabilities are built directly into the flow of study in Virtual Learning. Spring saw positive enrollment and retention trends, and we completed the rollout of our new enrollment platform and improved our new student acquisition capabilities. Career Academies will be fully embedded across the whole network for fall back to school, and we're on track to open two new schools in H2 for a total of 42 by year end.

Speaker 7

These factors support sales in H2 and a platform for accelerated growth over the medium term in enterprise learning and skills. Vishaal and team continue to build momentum with their enterprise approach as we strengthen our global enterprise sales teams and have landed new wins with HCLTech and Google Cloud. These wins, coupled with pipeline activity, strengthen the conviction we have in the growth potential for our enterprise opportunity. Vocational Qualifications continues to demonstrate strong execution with international growth in BTEC and new contract wins, including apprenticeship courses with the UK Ministry of Defence and T Levels in Health and Science. Finally, in English Language Learning, Pearson Test of English continues to show strong operational performance, and we're further advancing our offerings through our new Pearson English Express test while expanding our relationships with governments and institutions around the world.

Speaker 7

We've also won institutional clients in Latam, building upon recent strength in the region. Meanwhile, for educators, we've launched our Smart Lesson Generator that draws from Pearson's massive array of English content and will cut down the hours that teachers take to plan lessons, freeing them up to concentrate on coaching students in the classroom. I'd like now to take a moment to step back and discuss our progress in the foundational operational improvements we're making in the business. Firstly, we're transforming our revenue operations capabilities under the direction of our recently appointed Chief Business Officer, Nassim Tufaha. This is a set of processes and systems that will over time give us improved visibility and leverage on the activities that drive revenue growth, from targeting through to enabling and incentivizing sales teams.

Speaker 7

By using data to better make prioritization decisions, we will develop a stronger, more resilient commercial engine and one that can quickly and effectively scale and deliver results in our competitive markets. Secondly, we're now taking a modern marketing approach under our Chief Marketing Officer Ginny Ziegler, where we expect to see near term improvements in output and cost efficiencies in activities such as branding, social media, and events. Thirdly, as we discussed before, we're focusing on driving a performance culture, a foundational aspect of which is bringing clarity to our performance expectations across every single role in the company. To this end, we've reduced what were 1,600 roles down to 140 roles, enabling a circa 80% reduction in the number of job families and job categories, facilitating better performance management.

Speaker 7

In addition, through our focus on continual improvement, we have reduced headcount year over year, optimizing our spans and layers, resulting in quicker and more effective communication and decision making across the organization. Finally, AI-driven simplification is progressing at pace as well. For example, we've reached over 40,000 customer interactions with our AI-powered service agent since its very recent launch, and AI content development tools have cut translation times from 18 months to less than 3, accelerating speed to market internationally. This progress adds to my confidence in our medium-term guidance for faster growth and margin improvement. Let me turn now to our progress on unlocking synergies across the businesses. You will recall we identified three buckets of execution synergies and we've made significant progress already, starting with product and service bundling.

Speaker 7

Our new brand facilitates the simplification of our product estate, helping customers navigate our offerings more effectively, enabling increased bundling opportunities. We're also starting to lead with Pearson Research grounded in real world experience, which will improve our share of voice on key topics facing the future of education and learning. Secondly, we've improved product discovery and development. Under Tony Prentice's leadership, we've implemented a single product management tool company-wide and migrated over 600 projects. This now gives us a real-time holistic view of product development, enabling better prioritization and ROI tracking. Lastly, on strategic partnerships, we now clearly distinguish between transactional vendors through to strategic relationships unlocking new value, and we've made progress against two key categories. I've talked to you before about our new relationships with Microsoft and AWS, and I'm pleased to confirm we've now added a third with Google Cloud.

Speaker 7

These are long-term strategic partnerships where we can enable revenue growth alongside cloud transformation and unique go-to-market and innovation opportunities. We're working with our partners' amazing strengths across enterprise, Higher Education, and K12, and these partnerships are developing as planned, and we're starting to see commercial benefit. For example, Amazon has selected us for the integration of our learning products to support their workforce development. We will bring you further updates across these relationships as we progress. We've taken a similar approach to optimizing professional and technology services. We're consolidating from many dozen vendors down to a select group of service partners, unlocking cost savings and also ensuring better outcomes through a deeper 360-degree partner relationship where they are invested in our success, of course, opening up balance of trade opportunities as well as joint go-to-market activities.

Speaker 7

I'm pleased to announce our first services partnership with HCLTech, a leader in tech transformation services and a company of over 200,000 people who we're supporting in their own upskilling journey. Look out for more announcements in the coming months. Now, moving on to how we're expanding in targeted markets, as I mentioned earlier, we've established a new internal capital allocation process that allocates investment dollars towards faster growth segments. As I shared last year, we're targeting growth in near-adjacent markets where we have a smaller presence today and believe we're well placed to take advantage of a larger $80 billion plus market opportunity that grows at a faster rate than our existing core markets. One example is our recently announced partnership with McGraw Hill, which will unlock go-to-market opportunities in the formative assessment space.

Speaker 7

Another is how we've operationalized our district K12 sales team in Higher Education, onboarding over 70 sales professionals to take advantage of strong growth trends that we see in college and career readiness programs. Finally, we've successfully launched our test prep capabilities in Pearson VUE that we expect to contribute to growth in H2. We're also redirecting investment into innovation through Dave Treet and his teams. We're investing in relationships that promote and scale AI and immersive learning, partnering with third parties like Meta, Google XR, and VUE Technologies to explore what the future of learning may look like. We have created a dedicated research and innovation space here in 80 Strand where we showcase our latest product solutions to partners, investors, and other stakeholders. These investments help shape future products and keep Pearson focused on customer-driven innovation.

Speaker 7

I want to share an update on our progress with our medium-term growth vectors in early careers. We help people develop job-ready skills as they transition from school or university. We have businesses that are relevant in this theme already today. Think of Virtual Learning and its career offerings, Certiport from Pearson VUE, and our nascent career and college readiness K12 offering in Higher Education. To these offerings, we've now added eDynamic Learning as a core pillar of our early career strategy. We bought eDynamic Learning into the Pearson team because it's a leader in career and technical education and has a track record of delivering strong growth and profitability. The integration of its capabilities with our scale creates a powerful engine to deliver job-ready skills for the next generation of workers at the exact moment AI is transforming their career paths.

Speaker 7

Turning to Enterprise Skilling, I've spent time engaging with many CEOs and I hear a common theme. Leaders are grappling with how to better understand the actual skills of their people in a world where skill signals are opaque, and at the same time we're seeing a declining half-life of skills. This makes it pretty difficult to lead people on a learning path that is fit for a future workplace that must make heavy use of AI technologies. The Pearson story and our ability to assess and verify human skills resonates with these CEOs. On the back of this diagnosis, the opportunity for Pearson lies in helping enterprises build the capabilities they need for talent planning, talent sourcing, and talent development in the AI era. We are actively addressing these needs and we will continue to give you updates on this in due course.

Speaker 7

Now, before I hand over to Sally for a deeper look at our first half financials, let me summarize. You'll have picked up from our discussion today that there is a lot of progress underway at Pearson, and I'm really pleased with what we've achieved over the past 18 months. It positions us well for the current year and our medium-term outlook, and I look forward to updating you in the future on further progress as we continue to build a better business and deliver improved learning outcomes for more learners. Sally, over to you.

Operator

Thank you, Omar, and good morning, everybody. We have delivered another solid performance in the first half with sales up 2% on an underlying basis in line with the guidance that we set out at prelims in February. Adjusted operating profit was also up 2% underlying to £242 million. Adjusted earnings per share were down to £0.245, with the positive underlying trading performance and a reduction in share count due to the share buyback more than offset by FX headwinds. Our balance sheet remains strong, driven by another good cash performance enabling continued investment in the business as well as increased shareholder returns with the $225 million acquisition of eDynamic Learning and the £350 million share buyback, which is expected to complete in H2. Reflecting our performance and confidence in the outlook, we're proposing a 5% increase in our interim dividend to £0.078.

Operator

At the beginning of the year, we announced that Workforce Skills would evolve to become Enterprise Learning and Skills, incorporating our IT Pro business, which was previously in Higher Education. The comparative figures for H1 2024 have therefore been restated to reflect the modest financial transfers between segments, resulting in £22 million sales and £6 million profit moving from Higher Education to Enterprise Learning and Skills. The full-year impact of this is now expected to be £45 million of sales and £12 million of profit. Walking through the key elements of business unit sales performance, Assessments and Qualifications sales grew 2% with strong growth in clinical assessments and UK and international qualifications, partially offset by declines in Pearson VUE and U.S. Student Assessment. The VUE decline is due to the pause in a contract delivered in 2024 and recommencing in H1 2025 and headwinds in PDRI.

Operator

Virtual Learning sales declined 1% as expected due to the final portion of the impact of the previous school losses. Enrollments for the 2024-2025 academic year increased 5% in the spring semester on a same school basis and grew 7% including new school openings. We have also seen favorable retention trends in the first half. Higher Education sales grew 4% with IA growth of 21% and 3% growth in U.S. digital subscriptions. We continue to see good monetization of our study prep tool, formerly known as Channels, and ongoing engagement with our AI-powered study tools. English Language Learning declined 3% in line with our expectations, with our institutional business impacted by a strong comp period in H1 last year, and Pearson Test of English was flat, performing well against a tough market backdrop.

Operator

Enterprise Learning and Skills grew 4% with another solid performance from vocational qualifications, and enterprise solutions building momentum during the period. Turning to profit, group adjusted operating profit grew 2% on an underlying basis, driven by operating leverage on that sales growth, partially offset by inflation for each business unit. Assessments and Qualifications margins reduced to 21% due to the margin on sales growth being more than offset by prior year cost phasing and inflation. Virtual Learning margins increased to 16% driven by cost phasing, partially offset by trading declines. Higher Education and Enterprise Learning and Skills both saw margin improvement driven by sales growth, and English Language Learning margins were adversely impacted by sales phasing.

Operator

Free cash flow was again strong, up £129 million from last year to £156 million, given similar operating cash performance with good working capital management offsetting the impact of FX and the receipt of the state aid recovery. The state aid amount is £97 million on the tax line and £17 million on the interest line. Net debt has decreased by £0.2 billion from June 2024 to £1 billion at June 2025, driven by free cash flow, partially offset by dividends and that share buyback. Turning to the outlook for the remainder of the year, we are where we expected to be at the half year point, and we're on track to deliver on the expectations we set out at prelims in February. Let me walk you through this by business unit. As a reminder, Assessments and Qualifications will grow low to mid single digits in 2025.

Operator

Growth will be H2 weighted, in particular to Q4, due to new and renewed contracts including Salesforce, which launched last month, as well as the build of our new test prep business. Virtual Learning will return to growth in H2 and for the full year, driven by enrollment increases, partially from new school openings for the 2025-2026 academic year. The previously announced school losses will cease to be a headwind in H2. Higher Education growth in 2025 will be higher than in 2024 as we build on the successful results of our sales team transformation and product innovations, particularly using AI English Language Learning. Full year growth will moderate versus the 8% delivered in 2024 due to the Pearson Test of English business which is expected to decline in H2. The business unit growth will be H2-weighted and in particular to Q4.

Operator

Enterprise learning and skills will grow high single digits in 2025 with vocational qualifications seeing solid growth and the addition of those new contracts for enterprise solutions which you've heard about. Growth will increase quarter on quarter in H2, supported by those recent customer announcements and pipeline activity. Turning to profit, market expectations at the beginning of the year for adjusted operating profit were £656 million at an FX rate of 1.23. Subsequently, of course, there's been a significant move in the U.S. dollar rate, so I thought it'd be helpful to remind you that every $0.01 movement in the dollar equates to approximately £5 million of adjusted operating profit.

Operator

Now I'm not going to try and forecast FX rates, but if we take the actual average FX rate for H1, which is 1.31, and assume the recent spot rate of 1.32 for the rest of the year, then the average FX rate for the full year would be about 1.32. That would mean a 9 cent movement of FX, which reduces adjusted operating profit by £45 million down to £611 million, which is about where consensus is at the moment. The announced acquisition of eDynamic Learning has recently closed with consideration paid of $225 million. Sorry, at a 13 times adjusted EBITDA, we do not expect this to have a material impact to 2025 group guidance given near term integration costs and the acquisition accounting for deferred revenue which impacts the first 18 months sales.

Operator

Recognized eDynamic Learning has a highly attractive financial profile with strong margins and cash flow and a track record of delivering good growth. We expect this acquisition to be supportive of our medium-term guidance. In terms of interest and tax, we continue to guide to circa £65 million of interest costs with a 90 to 100% free cash flow conversion plus that state aid payment. Our tax guidance is unchanged at between 24% and 25% ETR. In summary, we're pleased with the performance we've delivered in H1, which is in line with expectations. We remain on track to deliver our 2025 outlook with known business unit dynamics in place to support stronger growth in H2, and we finished the first half of the year in a strong financial position, driven by another excellent cash performance supporting continued investment in the business as well as increased shareholder returns.

Operator

With that, I'll hand back to Omar.

Speaker 7

Thank you, Sally. As you've heard, firstly, our strategy remains the same and is now well established across the organization, and this is driving demand for what we do. I believe Pearson has a vital role to play in shaping the future of learning, especially in a world of AI-driven transformation. Secondly, we're executing well against our strategy, including core operational improvements with progress to unlock our medium-term growth vectors. Thirdly, our strategic clarity and our execution focus strengthen my conviction in Pearson's medium-term trajectory and that we're on track to deliver on our 2025 priorities. With that, Sally and I, along with Art, Tom, Vishaal, Sharon, and Tony, will be happy to take your questions. Operator, over to you.

Speaker 4

Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question today, please do so now by pressing star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. Our first question today comes from James Tate with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead, James.

Operator

Hi, James.

Speaker 5

Good morning, Omar. Sally, it's James Tate from Goldman Sachs. I've got two questions please. Firstly, on Fuse, new and renewed contracts. I know you talked about them having a greater contribution to growth in Q4, but you mentioned ServiceNow and a couple others already online. Are these all operating and performing in line with your prior expectations? As we start to think more about 2026, is it fair to assume that VUE should grow at least mid single digits as it gets almost a full year benefit from a lot of these new deals? Secondly, you've highlighted some of the new gen AI products rolled out across the portfolio. Could you also provide some more detail on what you see as the opportunity from the technology to drive cost efficiencies across the business? How have these progressed so far and are there certain divisions where you see greater potential?

Speaker 5

Thank you.

Speaker 7

Thank you very much, James. Appreciate your questions. As you know, we're probably not going to offer too much guidance on 2026 at this point, but I'll let Art talk to you about Pearson VUE and what he's seeing with the contractor and ServiceNow, Salesforce, and the others. Over to you, Art. Absolutely.

Speaker 8

Good to have you with us today, James. On VUE in particular, Omar mentioned three specific contracts. Salesforce launched last month. ServiceNow and the Association of Social Work Boards are launching later in this year, and all of those contracts, as well as the VUE testing contract portfolio in general, is performing according to expectations. The launch efforts, as well as our view as to what the volumes that are going to run through those contracts, is absolutely in line with what our expectations are and reflected in the guidance that Sally's given.

Speaker 7

Thank you. On Gen, let me say something about the customer-facing products, and then perhaps I'll ask Sally to comment on how we see it playing out in terms of our core operations. I'm particularly excited about the fact that we are getting more and more evidence, including in the last few months from 2 million students in the U.S., that when we apply AI correctly in the flow of study, you get higher order outcomes in terms of people's reasoning. I think there are more and more studies that have happened, and we'll see more of that. When you use AI as a teleportation device that moves you from here to the answer, you actually don't learn. When you use AI as a map to take you through the different stages to get to the endpoint, you really do learn. That's our approach.

Speaker 7

The work that Tony and the teams have been doing across our product sets is just really excellent in that space. To your question on cost efficiencies in our operations, I'll ask Sally to comment.

Operator

Yeah, of course. One of the things that's really special about Pearson is that not only can we have AI usage for our customers in our products, but obviously we have the benefits that other companies do in terms of generating cost efficiencies across our business. The things that Omar called out were things like content generation, which we're using AI in now. That can be around actually just creation of content. A really nice example would be translation so that we can get our products, for example in international higher education, into languages that just weren't cost effective before, and we can get them to market in a faster way as well. It's great for our top line and our customers and also for our cost base as well. Another example is customer services, where we're putting AI capabilities in.

Operator

Again, helps from a cost point of view, but also helps to make our customer experience more effective as well. There are lots of examples of where we're using it across the front office and the back office, generating cost savings, making the experience improved for our customers as well, and helping the top line.

Speaker 7

Thanks, Sally. Who's next?

Speaker 5

Thank you.

Operator

Thanks, James.

Speaker 4

Thank you. Our next question comes from Luke Holbrook with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead, Luke.

Operator

Hey, Luke. Thank you.

Operator

Good morning, everyone. I've got my main questions center around the Q3 and Q4 weighting for this year. Again, because you're guiding for 4.4% revenue growth for 2025. We've seen 2% in H1. I guess with the Q4 weighting, you're looking at 7% potential growth, maybe even a little bit higher than that. Could you just walk us through with some of what you've discussed today around virtual school contracts, launching Salesforce contracts, other partnerships, new contract recommencing? Can you just help us bridge in a financial context how we get to that and what's underpinned into Q4? I've just got a follow up. Thank you.

Operator

Sure. Why don't I take that one and then we'll take your follow-up. Your maths is right in terms of the number you're quoting for the second half, first of all. It's known things that we've known about from the start of the year in each of the business units. It's slightly different between the business units. In Assessments and Qualifications and Pearson VUE in particular, and in English Language Learning, it's about those contracts that you've heard Omar and Art talk about and those coming online. In answer to James' question on Pearson VUE, just to point out, because it might not be obvious to folks who aren't deep in the business, it does take a while, once we're awarded a contract, for that to transition sometimes from a previous provider to us.

Operator

That's why it feels like we maybe announced some of these a while ago, but they're only coming online now, just in case that's not clear. In Virtual Learning, you'll remember for the 2024-2025 school year, we were impacted by the loss of that California school. That is now past, and we're now thinking about the 2025-2026 academic year, which is what impacts H2 revenue. That will be driven by enrollment growth, and we won't have that loss school issue anymore. Last but not least, English Language Learning, where we had a tough comp in the first half of the year, which isn't reflected in the second half of the year.

Operator

Understood. My second question would just be on Higher Education. We saw a step down in growth into Q2, noticing your enrollments look relatively good in that quarter. What's the delta on the step down? Is that just a law of small numbers on the quarterly phasing?

Speaker 7

I mean, small numbers is a piece of it, but let's throw it over to Tom ap Simon.

Speaker 2

Yeah, James, thanks for the question. A couple of things really happened. Firstly, the core Higher Education business continued and was exactly where we were expecting it to be for the half year. What's really happened is that some of that deceleration you've seen in the second quarter is some of a function of what we were expecting to see in the college and career readiness business this year. It's been a smaller adoption cycle. Secondly, we've obviously been getting our new go-to-market team up and running. As you can appreciate, bringing 70 new people on board and establishing all those relationships is inevitably going to have a few teething problems, which is why we were clear with where we would be from that point of view.

Speaker 2

The third thing I would say was that there have been some delays in terms of some of the federal government spending for about $7 billion that would go out to the states. That doesn't have any impact on the money that we receive from the states from a college and career readiness perspective, but it did make superintendents just delay purchasing a little bit. We feel good about where we are from a K12 perspective. We feel pleased with the overall performance in Higher Education and we feel confident about the full-year guidance.

Speaker 7

Thank you, Tom, and thanks for being here.

Speaker 7

Up in the middle of the night. Thank you.

Speaker 7

Cheers, Luke.

Speaker 6

Thank you.

Speaker 4

Thank you. Our next question comes from Nick Dempsey with Barclays. Nick, please go ahead.

Speaker 4

Yeah, good morning, guys. I've got three. First one, just on Pearson VUE, can you give us any more information on the contract that was paused? Why was it paused, and exactly when does that come back in? Is it common for large contracts that can move the needle on that subdivision to be paused like that? Second question, in English Language Learning, if we're expecting Pearson Test of English to still decline for this year, it feels like you need really strong growth in the institutional business in the second half. How much of that can you already see coming through, and how much of it is kind of hope in terms of the sales that you achieve from September? Thirdly, on Higher Education, are you still expecting full 2025 enrollments to be flattish, as I think you said before?

Speaker 4

If so, I guess you're going to need to see growth from other factors coming through. Is that going to be more weighting to inclusive access, more price, or how should we think about that?

Speaker 7

Thank you very much, Nick. On view, I'm going to ask Art to make a quick comment. I think I can say that this is a very specific individual situation, not something you should expect to see repeated. Over to you, Art.

Speaker 8

Is absolutely the case, Omar. Good to have you with us this morning, Nick. It is an Internet partner. The pause on the contract commenced in the back half of 2024. We are confident in the resumption later this year. As Omar said, the circumstances are very specific to this customer and not something related to the product or service offering. Thus, it is in fact something that we do not. That is unusual.

Speaker 7

Thank you. Sharon, how are you feeling about institutional in the back half? Nick's asking us if we're just being a bit hopeful here.

Speaker 9

Hi, good morning. Thanks for the question, Nick. A couple of things to just mention. Obviously, the second half of the year, waiting for English as a whole, but particularly for institutional, is not a new feature of this business. It is driven very heavily by the academic year cycles and the fact that we have a particularly strong business in Latin America. We are performing as we expected for the first half of the year and feeling good about growth in our institutional business in the second half of the year, where we expect to see that growth being driven by the business in Latam, where we're expecting share gains and a strong focus on government deals. We are very, very focused on that execution plan and working closely with a number of governments across the world to land those deals.

Speaker 9

We are performing as we expect right now and looking forward to strong performance in institutional for the second half of the year.

Speaker 7

Thank you, Sharon. Tom, on Higher Education, the weighting of enrollments and what else that might assume about the shape of the business in the second half.

Speaker 2

Yeah, sure. It's obviously a dangerous game to be playing in terms of getting enrollments at the end of July given back to school is just around the corner, so I'll stay well clear of that. I would say that we feel good about where we're seeing growth coming from in terms of pricing. You've seen the IA mix up 21% in the first half of the year. We're pleased about that in terms of the growth in IA year over year. Lastly, some of the work we've been doing on study prep will help support us in the second half of the year as we're excited about the rollout of those products. They're some of the key drivers which we feel confident about going into the back half of the year.

Speaker 7

Thanks, Tom.

Speaker 7

Can I just have a very quick follow-up? I think you talked before about flattish enrollments in fall 2025 being what you were using when you were thinking about the year. I know you don't want to guess those. Is that still your base case for your planning tomorrow?

Operator

Yeah, yeah, it is.

Speaker 6

Okay, thank you.

Speaker 7

Cheers, Nick.

Speaker 4

Thank you. Our next question comes from Adam Ian Berlin with UBS. Please go ahead, Adam.

Speaker 6

Hi, good morning everyone. A few questions from me. The first question is just on Higher Education. Following on from the last question, can you talk about adoption share performance during the recent sales cycle? Did you win more share than last year? That's the first question. Second question is, can you talk a little bit about this eDynamic Learning business you bought? Can you just be clear exactly what it does, which business unit it will go into, how much revenue, how fast is it growing? Obviously we want to put it into our models for next year. Any more information you can provide would be very helpful.

Speaker 6

Then my third question is, you know, if you deliver what you're saying you're going to deliver, you're going to have this high single digit growth in H2, is that going to, it feels to me that the drivers of that should all continue into H1 of 2026. Any reasons why that wouldn't be a fair assumption?

Speaker 6

Thanks.

Speaker 7

Okay, I'm going to start with Tom. Just a couple of points on eDynamic Learning and then Tom, you can pick up on the adoption share topic and also maybe get a bit more into exactly what eDynamic Learning does. I'm really happy with the deal that we've done here. I think we've been very disciplined on not just the financial terms of the transaction, which Sally outlined some of earlier, but actually on really tight strategic alignment. This company is a company that we've been working with for many years. We know that one plus one equals three in this case because we've trialed it for real with customers. I feel very happy about it being a strong addition to our early career strategy.

Speaker 7

It's going to be run by Tom and his team in Higher Education, and he can talk to you a little bit more about the content of what it is. Tom, can you pick up first on the adoption share thing and then back on eDynamic Learning, please?

Speaker 2

Yeah, sure. From an adoption share perspective, in the first half of the year, we increased our share slightly this spring compared to last year. As you know, Adam, it's obviously 4:15 A.M. so I need a little bit more coffee. In that context, we're obviously very focused on our full adoption share. As you know, our sales team has got a good degree of understanding of what's going on in the market at this stage. They've made their final sort of full forecast, as it were, based on all the selling that they've done, and we're feeling good about where we are in that construction. From an eDynamic Learning perspective, the way to think about it really is if you are a middle school or predominantly a high school kid in the U.S.

Speaker 2

and you are looking for a career and technical education program, they sell a broad portfolio of content into those schools. For example, if you want to be a journalist, if you want to learn more about business, or if you want to do an early course in coding, that's where the courses and the courseware that it provides come in. That's incredibly important because what we're seeing is that the worlds of work and high school are blurring. We see that as you think about growth continuing in the U.S. from a higher education perspective, high schools are becoming increasingly important. We see really good evidence that people who have done career and technical education courses in high school, those high schools have better graduation rates overall. It's good from an academic outcomes perspective in terms of efficacy.

Speaker 2

Secondly, more of these students are more likely to go on to two-year or four-year colleges. That's why we think this is really important strategically, because it is an extension of what we do: high quality, outstanding content. We think we can bring a lot to the eDynamic Learning team in terms of the broader capabilities that Pearson has in this space. As Omar Abbosh mentioned, we have been a customer of this business for the last seven or eight years in virtual schools. We know them, we really like them, and we really respect what Gerry and the team have built in terms of this business. We're delighted to be acquiring them and moving forward.

Speaker 7

Thanks. Tom ap Simon and Sally Johnson, do you want to pick up the last question?

Operator

Yeah, why don't I pick up the specifics on the end of that one and then your one about H2. In case it wasn't obvious, given that Tom ap Simon answered the eDynamic Learning question from a business unit perspective, it's going to be going into Higher Education from a growth perspective. You can think of it as being alongside some of our higher growth business units. I gave you the 13 times EBITDA multiple so that you can work back to the EBITDA number. The DAR bit, of course, is relevant for this business and I do need to think about the acquisition accounting for deferred revenue, which will impact 2026.

Operator

In terms of thinking about H2 and the exit rate into next year, I'm not going to guide on 2026 at this point, but all the things that we're talking about in terms of these new customer contracts coming online, of course, are going to be customer contracts that move into next year. The comp things are not quite so relevant for next year, but Virtual Learning and that 2025, 2026 academic year are obviously relevant for 1H 2026 as well.

Speaker 7

Thanks Sally.

Speaker 6

Sally, eDynamic Learning's margin. Is that broadly in line with the group, or?

Operator

Yeah, they've got great margins. Nice margins.

Speaker 6

Okay, thanks. Thank you very much.

Speaker 4

Thank you. At this time we have no further questions from the telephone lines, and I'll hand over to Alex to read the written questions.

Speaker 3

I think we've answered your questions already, but obviously come back to me if that's not the case. Sami, again, we've answered some of them, but I'll pose the remaining one. Do you expect to sustain double-digit organic revenue growth in clinical assessment and UK qualifications in H2?

Speaker 7

I'm really happy with how the launch of the new products in Clinical have been faring in the market. Do you want to comment a little bit on how you would like to guide Sami on his question on Pearson Skilling Suite and Clinical?

Speaker 8

Would love to. I don't believe we're giving sub guidance for H2 on the call, but very happy to comment on the trading characteristics of both of those business units. Omar teed it up very nicely with Clinical. Strong product releases have carried over into this year, and a headline for that business continues to be very, very strong digital adoption. You will have seen in the notes that the state of Tennessee has adopted our digital library subscription, which was a very, very nice win for us. Upcoming in the second half, we have product releases that we're very, very happy about. Most notably, the Wechsler Memory Scale and the Delis-Kaplan Executive Function System, two products that we expect good performance out of. In the UK and international quals business, strong volume performance throughout the years, very, very good international growth.

Speaker 8

We expect those trends to continue throughout the second half, and they're absolutely part of the story and around us reaffirming our guidance for the full year.

Speaker 7

Any further questions?

Speaker 3

Just one quick confirmation from Sally. What is the share of AI in your U.S. Higher Education business?

Speaker 7

Over to you, Tom. Do we break that one out? The share of IA, I mean.

Speaker 2

We said last year it was mid 30%, so that's a good starting point. Obviously, we disclosed it was up 21% for the first half. We've disclosed the overall Higher Education growth rate, so you can probably extrapolate from there. We're pleased with our IA growth rate in the first half. What we're really about is meeting the customer where they are. There was a glorious win we recently had at the University of Indiana in Anatomy and Physiology, and actually it was a wonderful opportunity to reinvent what was by and large a print adoption into a digital courseware adoption, where they'd been using a print book of ours and one of our competitors' digital products, but they hadn't really been using the digital product properly at all.

Speaker 2

Once we were able to walk the faculty member through the fabulous quality of the Mastering platform that we have, as well as his real love for our product, that actually secured the adoption and that turned a $2,000 print adoption into a $100,000 plus adoption more broadly, which is just a beautiful example of our sales team really getting close to the customer, understanding what the customer needs are. That was something that we used IA for because it was able to bring pricing down for the students. It's just a really good example of one of our sales reps listening to the customer, understanding what they need, being clear about their pedagogical desires and understandings, and providing a great solution to the faculty and the students at really good pricing.

Speaker 7

Great. Thanks, Tom ap Simon.

Speaker 3

Alex, I see a bit of piecemeal question answering here, but I'll let you off. Two more, both for Assessments and Qualifications. Do you expect U.S. student assessment will revert to growth in H2? Also, how should we think about the scale and impact of Pearson VUE Test prep in 2025 and 2026?

Speaker 7

Okay, those are both for you, Art. The first one is around, do we expect U.S. student assessments to go back to growth in H2?

Speaker 8

Yes, we do. Again, the results of our expectations for each sub-BU are baked into that overall H2 guidance. Specific to U.S. school assessment in H1, we had the impact of some delivery timings that in the second half will contribute very positively to the overall picture. Good outlook there on the test prep business in H2 2025, complemented by the launch of the Pearson Skilling Suite, which we announced earlier this year. That business is continuing to scale. Our go-to-market hires are getting placed out in the field and continuing to deliver. We do expect to see results from that in H2, which again, are part of the story around the overall second half guidance.

Speaker 8

Thank you.

Speaker 7

Okay, I think that's it in terms of questions. All of you online who joined us today, thank you so much for being with us. We appreciate you and look forward to talking to you next. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you.

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