Pearson's profit and dividend rises make good reading

Education giant and publisher of the Financial Times and Penguin books Pearson today cheered readers by raising its profit forecast and dividend for this year.

"Our numbers for the first half are very solid," said chief executive Dame Marjorie Scardino.

"Though market conditions are anything but easy, we are sufficiently encouraged by our start to the year to raise both our guidance and our dividend."

Pearson shares rose 36.5p to 1175.5p. The publisher said it now expects to make earnings of around 80p a share, up from 77.5p last year, having previously indicated it expected growth but putting no figure on it.

Profits rose 20% to £208 million on sales up £2.4 billion. While the vast bulk of this come from its education business, both the FT and Penguin showed good progress, particularly in developing their digital business.

Online subscriptions for the FT grew by a third to almost 230,000 with a fifth of those on mobile devices. Digital now accounts for 46% of FT revenues.

At Penguin sales and profits dipped slightly, hit partly by the collapse of Australia's biggest book retailer. Sales of ebooks more than doubled and accounted for 14% of all Penguin's revenues worldwide which were £457 million.

Scardino said education was looking forward to a good second half particularly in North America.