Pearson more confident in 2008 outlook after H1

Publishing group Pearson Plc , owner of the Financial Times, said it was more confident in its full-year outlook after increasing operating profit 38% and sales by 14% in the first half.
UK-based Pearson, the world's biggest educational publisher which also owns Penguin books, said on Monday it had first-half sales of 1.97 bln pounds ($3.9 bln) and adjusted operating profit of 124 mln pounds.
Sales had been expected at 1.84 bln pounds and earnings before interest and tax were seen at 95.8 mln, according to the average of six analyst forecasts collated by Reuters Estimates.
"In spite of the macroeconomic conditions, we are on track to make further progress on our financial goals and our strong trading performance has increased our confidence in the full-year outlook," the company said in a statement.
Pearson shares were seen opening up 2.5% on the confident outlook, traders said.
Analyst Alex DeGroote of Panmure said: "The outlook appears to be fairly confident, fairly robust. At a time when people are very nervous overall about anything, it does read quite well."
"The numbers to me look pretty significantly ahead of what people were looking for," he added, while cautioning that Pearson's results are very heavily weighted toward the second half of the year.
The second half contains the back-to-school and Christmas holiday seasons that are important for Pearson's educational division and Penguin books.
The publishing group raised its forecast for its financial information business Interactive Data, saying it now expected headline sales growth of 8 to 10% versus 7 to 9% previously, and 11 to 13% growth in operating profit instead of 9 to 11%.
At FT Publishing, Pearson said it continued to expect profit growth even without any growth in advertising revenue, which was hard to predict as the economic slowdown squeezes ad budgets.
It raised its interim dividend by 6.3% to 11.8 pence.
Pearson shares trade at about 12 times expected 2008 earnings, according to Reuters data — a slight premium to the wider media sector, reflecting the company's relatively low exposure to the advertising market and strong balance sheet.
Pearson shares have fallen 19% so far this year, underperforming the European media index by 4%.