Pearson buyback given top marks by investors
PEARSON is the latest FTSE 100 firm to unveil plans for a bumper share buyback.
A day after the Sensodyne toothpaste maker Haleon (down 0.4pc, or 1.3p, to 330.15p) said it would return £500m to shareholders this year, the education publisher pledged to hand back £200m to investors by early August.
That means Pearson will have bought £500m worth of shares since September last year.
The update came alongside the group’s full- year results that showed sales slid 4pc to £3.7bn in 2023 and profits jumped 53pc to £493m.
The blue- chip firm reported a 7pc rise in revenues across its assessment and qualifications division, led by a strong performance in its global testing company Pearson Vue.
And sales at the English Language Learning arm shot up 30pc following a surge in users on its digital platforms.
Pearson’s higher education struggled but sales are expected to return to growth this year. Chief executive Omar Abbosh, who took over in January, said: ‘Pearson is well positioned today, providing a stable platform for continued growth that can benefit from the inflection point we see with the development of AI. We have an exciting future ahead of us.’
Shares yesterday gained 5.6pc, or 53.4p, to 1014p.
The FTSE 100 rose 0.69pc, or 52.48 points, to 7682.5 and the FTSE 250 added 1.57pc, or 299.51 points, to 19,354.38.
Across the Atlantic, Wall Street was pushing for another recordbreaking session.
The Dow Jones Industrial A verage edged up 0.2pc, the S&P 500 rose 0.8pc and the Nasdaq gained 1.1pc. But the mood was somewhat soured by the crisis unfolding at New York Community Bank ( NYCB). The regional lender plunged 26pc after it revised its fourth-quarter losses to £1.9bn – more than ten times what it previously disclosed – due to ‘material weaknesses’ being identified in historical transactions. And NYCB ousted its boss Thomas Cangemi and replaced him with the chairman Alessandro DiNello.
In London, Rightmove warned its customer numbers are likely to fall this year due to the continuing pressures in the economy.
The property website’s membership dropped 1pc to 18,785 in 2023. Shares slid 0.07pc, or 0.4p, 566.2p.
Tritax Big Box , a logistics real estate investor, swung back into a profit of £70.6m in 2023, having made a £601m loss a year earlier.
The company has less than a week to say whether it wants to make an offer for the commercial property investor UKCM.
The Tritax update came as UKCM sold its office building in Bristol to the real estate investment and asset management firm Tri7 for £14.5m.
Shares in Tritax Big Box added 2pc, or 2.9p, to 149.5p and UKCM grew by 2pc, or 1.3p, to 65p.
Another riser was defence group Babcock after it agreed a £560m contract with the UK’s Submarine Delivery Agency (SDA) to refit nuclear subs. Shares gained 2.9pc, or 14.2p, to 504p.
Elsewhere, the green services provider eEnergy will be paid up to £40m of funding from Natwest to help bolster public sector energy transition projects. Shares soared 14.4pc, or 0.95p, to 7.55p.
The founder and chief executive of Superdry has been given an extra four weeks to say if he wants to make an offer to buy the British fashion retailer.
Julian Dunkerton, who set up the company in 1985 and owns a 26pc stake, is reportedly working with US private equity firm Davidson Kempner to snap up the shares he does not own.
The deadline was extended from yesterday to March 29. The stock tumbled 13.1pc, or 5.3p, to 35p.