Investors in Pearson can feel relieved that this year’s opening trading update is relatively positive. For the past two years, January has seen warnings from the publisher about how challenging its education markets have been.
Trading continues to be mixed, but the message is that this year there will be some stabilisation in those markets while 2016 should mark a return to strong growth. Meanwhile, 2015 earnings will enjoy the benefit of a couple of special factors, the cost savings carried out during the past two years and currency movements. Pearson indicated last February that earnings per share would come in at between 62p and 67p. The outcome is at the top of that range, at 66p. This compares with 70.1p for 2013, itself down