Pearson - H1 2024

Transcript

Operator (participant)

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Pearson's 2024 Interim Results and Strategic Update. Today, we'll host a presentation followed by a Q&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'll address them in turn at the end. With that, I'll hand over to Omar.

Omar Abbosh (CEO)

Thank you, Jo. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining us today for our Interim Results and Strategy Update. I've been really looking forward to spending this time with you. We have a busy session. I'm going to kick us off today by sharing my early impressions on the business, and then I'm going to hand over to Sally to break down our Interim Results that many of you will have already seen in our RNS this morning. Next, I'll share with you our Strategy Update and what it means for our business going forward. Sally will then highlight what this means for all of you financially, and then we'll move to Q&A. For the first part of the conversation, it's just Sally and me.

And then for the Q&A, I've asked some of our wonderful team to join us here, many of whom you've met before: Art Valentine, Gio Giovannelli, Tom ap Simon, Tony Prentice, Sue Kolloru, and our new face, Vishaal Gupta. OK, since I last saw you for prelims in March, I've continued my listening and learning journey. I've had the pleasure of meeting hundreds and hundreds of our people, dozens of our customers, including following our sellers around with their customers. I met about 20 investors, a wide range of partners, and with our Pearson executive team, we've conducted about 20 town halls around the world. Also, starting in early March through June, we ran a process with about 65 of our top leaders to look at every single aspect of our business.

We brought this group together physically and covered all the topics that you would expect: market, competition, customers, operations, and more. We organized the group into action teams, addressing core business performance and growth, people and culture, data, AI, and product, and strategic partnerships. I have to tell you that the journey so far has been very exciting. I've learned a lot, and I continue to learn each day. And working with this team has been thoroughly enjoyable. Let me share a few perspectives with you on our business today. As I told you in March, Pearson does three things really well. We create and curate high-quality content in the form of learning materials and assessments. This ranges from assessment materials for surgery and nursing exams to author-driven content in Pearson+.

We distribute this content primarily through digital systems such as the VUE Testing System or the Pearson Connexus platform for virtual schools. We build and verify skills through assessments like Certiport and PDRI, capabilities like Faethm for skills design and diagnosis, and Credly for credentialing. So, as you can see, Pearson offers a very diverse array of products across multiple learning and education segments, and this gives our business resilience and a range of options for future growth. Also, I've learned that under the hood, we have two distinct business models. The first is B2B services, for example, VUE, virtual schools, Pearson School Qualifications. The second is the software business model, for example, higher ed courseware or clinical assessments or Mondly. I find that thinking about the business in this way really helps us see many areas of value creation upside.

So let me share three observations about our business. Firstly, we have five strong businesses, each with clear lines of accountability and each on a growth trajectory. I've kicked the tires on sales, sales operations, cost structure, processes, technology systems, skills, and capabilities. And I can confirm, as I told you in March, that Pearson is a solid business on a solid foundation that provides a platform with many good strategic options. As we look forward to understand future opportunity, we see that Assessments and Qualifications is a great operation. It is well run. It is highly trusted by customers. It scales well, and it's trusted in the most high-stakes situations. Virtual Schools has lots of potential as one of just two national players. Again, it performs an invaluable service. It is trusted and is back on a growth footing after a couple of lost customers in past years.

English Language Learning, this is an entrepreneurial team. Notwithstanding the ups and downs of market trends, for example, in PTE, the team under Gio has responded extremely well by diving into hybrid institutional opportunities because they're on the detail. They're very focused on execution and getting results. Workforce Skills, as you know, consist of two parts. The traditional strength in vocational qualifications in GED, the U.S. high school diploma equivalent, is there, and it performs very well from a growth and a margin perspective. In the last couple of years, the company invested heavily in solutions, given the clear upside potential in the worlds of skills and certifications. This is an area of focus for us and is why we have Vishaal Gupta, who's landed very well. Thank you, Vishaal. Focused on beefing up the go-to-market capability as we scale that offering.

It's no secret that the Achilles' heel of Pearson for the last 10 years has been U.S. higher ed. Many of the issues were exogenous: secondary market, open educational resources, piracy, and enrollment swings. But some were of our own making, for example, with product stability, sales team focus, and innovation in the core product. On the external factors, we see a significant reduction in their impact today. And on the internal factors, higher ed is competitive again. This is why we're confident for return to growth this year for the first time since 2014. I'm happy with our portfolio as it stands. Pearson is a unique company in a class of its own, delivering strong profitability, great cash flow conversion, and is diversified across customer segments and services.

In fact, we're the only B2B services company serving the full breadth of K-12 and higher ed institutions and students, governments, employers, and employees across a wide range of learning and education services. Each of our assets has a purpose in making us the natural home for learning and education. Secondly, Pearson is a trusted business. As I spoke to our customers, ranging from enterprise leaders to professional associations to higher ed leaders to school leaders to franchise owners, I heard over and over what people value in Pearson. Firstly, this is our people and culture. They're collegiate, customer responsive, and care deeply about helping learners around the world. In other words, they're strongly mission-driven, and our customers feel this. Next is our domain industry knowledge. As I mentioned, Pearson is the home of learning and education.

We're connected deeply to networks of authors, institutions, educators, policymakers, students, companies, startups, and more, all in the space of learning and education. These networks have resulted in several petabytes of data, high-quality leading-edge content and learning assessments, and a deep insight into how people learn. We also hear all the time from our customers that we are the gold standard. We're trusted by governments, professional organizations, educational institutions, and companies to set standards and then carry those standards for them. Finally, about two-thirds of Pearson's business is pure assessments. Think of VUE, BTEC, Clinical, GED, Pearson Test of English, Versant, while the remaining one-third is products and services with assessments embedded. This means that our core business is assessments and verification, which is increasingly important in a world of AI. Because in a world of AI, anyone can make out they know almost anything.

At some point, we need to demonstrate skills and learning. This is where assessments are so important. In March, we set out our strategic priorities for the year. We said that we will hit consensus numbers for 2024, that we would focus on the workforce opportunity, and that we'll drive AI through our products and services. We see AI as a tool that accelerates value and growth for Pearson. I'm happy to say that we're on track to meet our commitments for 2024. Sally will take you through our interims update now, where you'll see a little bit more detail on these numbers. After Sally does this, I'll get into the strategy update, where I'll expand further on workforce and AI. Over to you, Sally.

Sally Johnson (CFO)

Thanks, Omar. Hi, everyone. We've delivered another good performance in the first half, with underlying sales excluding OPM up 2% and adjusted operating profit up 4% to GBP 250 million. Earnings per share were flat at 25.6P, with higher net interest costs offset by the impact of the reduced share count, both predominantly due to the share buyback. Operating cash performance was again strong, up GBP 50 million from last year, with good underlying fundamentals as well as some phasing and FX benefits. Free cash flow was also strong, up GBP 77 million, given that operating cash performance and that below-the-line reorganization costs have now fallen away. Our balance sheet remains robust, with net debt at June 2024 of GBP 1.2 billion, GBP 0.3 billion more than last year, given the GBP 500 million share buyback and dividends, which were partially offset by strong free cash flow.

Reflecting our strong performance and our confidence in the outlook, we're proposing a 6% increase in the interim dividend to 7.4p. Touching on the key elements of divisional sales performance, Assessments and Qualifications grew 2%, with growth across VUE, Clinical, and UK and international qualifications, partially offset by an expected small decline in US student assessments. VUE renewed and won a number of key contracts, all of which support future pipeline growth. We're also pleased with the growth in PDRI, where we saw strong volumes across the TSA and United States Air Force contracts. We continue to expect low to mid-single-digit sales growth in ANQ for the full year. In Virtual Learning, sales decreased 8%, most of which is attributable to the final portion of the OPM-ASU contract in H1 last year. Virtual Schools was down 1%, reflecting the previously announced contract losses for the current academic year.

We've already announced the opening of three new schools this year and a further 19 career programs. We continue to expect virtual school sales to decline at a similar rate to 2023 in 2024 and for the division to return to growth in 2025. Higher education sales were down 2% in line with our expectations, and there are encouraging signs of progress in HE, with spring market adoption data indicating small share gains. In H1, we saw 3% growth in core text units, 2% growth in U.S. digital subscriptions, 25% growth in inclusive access, and K-12 growth of 12%, given the strong adoption cycle fundamentals in that market this year. Pearson+ performed well, with 5 million registered users and 1.1 million paid subscriptions for the 2023-2024 academic year, the latter representing 18% growth.

So we continue to be confident that higher education will return to growth in the second half and for the full year. We are, of course, keeping a close eye on the FAFSA student aid situation, given the uncertainty it creates around enrollments, but we currently expect any impact to be immaterial. Lastly, on higher ed, the usual reminder of the impact on digital growth, shifting RevRec from Q3 to Q4. English language learning grew 11%, with strong growth in institutional and Mondly, partially offsetting a sales decline in PTE. We've continued to gain market share in PTE despite a market which has declined, given the tightening of migration and international study in H1. The Argentina FX impact discussed at Q1 has faded, as expected, and will be immaterial in a full-year context.

Given the current market dynamics for PTE, we expect sales to be flatter down this year, offset by strong growth in other English language learning elements, such that we continue to expect high single-digit sales growth for the division as a whole. Our market share gains in PTE and the ramp-up for Canada mean we are well placed for English high-stakes testing market growth, which we expect in the medium term, given demographic projections. Workforce skills grew 6%, with strong performances in vocational qualifications, GED, and Credly, driven by strong renewals. Turning to profit, group adjusted operating profit was up 4% to GBP 250 million, with the trading performance alongside net cost phasing and savings partially offset by inflation and restructuring charges in higher education. These were always expected to be weighted to the first half.

Divisionally, profits improved, with the exception of virtual learning, given that highlighted impact of OPM on H1 profit in 2023. We remain on track to meet the group sales, profit, tax, and interest expectations I laid out at prelims. As a reminder, every 1-cent movement in the FX rate equates to £5 million of adjusted operating profit. So, in summary, H1, we've seen sales growth, a 4% increase in profit, and a £77 million increase in free cash flow. We remain on track for the full-year guidance, at which point I will hand back to Omar for our strategic update.

Omar Abbosh (CEO)

Thank you, Sally. As I listened to our investors, I was trying to understand what are they really thinking and what are really their past experiences with Pearson. At the bottom of it all, I heard essentially three questions. Firstly, can this team execute? Secondly, is this really a mid-single-digit growth company in the medium term? And thirdly, Pearson seems complex. What are the small number of things they're really going to focus on and be excellent at? These are fair questions, and I want to take you through an outside-in perspective on the company that I hope will answer these questions for you. We formed this perspective with our team of leaders from across the company who took part in our business review process, the one that I described earlier.

As we share our update, we also want to show you some of the progress our teams are making with applying AI in our product suites, which is, of course, one of our strategic priorities for 2024. This time last year, you saw a demo of AI capabilities planned for our higher ed products. We have executed against that and expanded that plan further for back to school. So I want to begin by just rolling one of those demos. If we could play the demo, please.

Speaker 5

Students are enthusiastic about the AI tools we launched last fall in Mastering, MyLab, and Pearson+, with more than 2 million student interactions with the tools. We're expanding the tools into international markets and into more MyLab and Mastering titles for fall. We're pushing AI technology even further. In Pearson+ channels, we're rolling out three new features for fall. Let's see how they work if I'm a chemistry student. Our first new feature allows me to upload my professor's syllabus. I just drop it in. Then the AI generates a personalized learning experience and puts what I need to learn in the order that's on my syllabus. I can click into any of the assigned chapters and immediately get the videos and practice questions I need. Next, if I need to get unstuck on a hard concept, our AI tutor is now in Pearson+ channels.

When I ask the tutor for help, it gives me the steps to solve my question and gives me video content and practice questions. Next, if I don't understand the concepts in a channel's video, I can use our third and newest, most cutting-edge feature. I can click on the AI tutor window that's right on the video. The video stops, and the tutor can answer my questions about the video concepts. It's kind of like I'm raising my hand to ask the video a question. While we're increasing the depth of student AI engagement, we're not forgetting about their instructors. We're rolling out our first AI instructor tools in Mastering and MyLab titles this fall. These tools use AI to help instructors build assignments for their students and adjust them based on length and difficulty.

Finally, we're adapting the tool for the K-12 landscape for the first time in Connections Academy. When high school students struggle with quizzes and practice tests, they can now use the same AI study tool available in Mastering with step-by-step help to walk them through tough material. It's an important step forward for younger students, as AI becomes part of the way everyone learns.

Omar Abbosh (CEO)

Isn't that cool? The hand raise thing there is literally the AI is seeing what the student is seeing in real time in the video, so they can interrupt it and essentially chat mid-video for explanations. We'll have more on how AI is adding value to Pearson and its customers as we move through the presentation. So I'm going to begin the strategy update by giving you six conclusions, six headline conclusions. Then I'm going to break each of these into more detail on the subsequent slides. Firstly, there are two powerful secular trends that will power Pearson's growth over the next 10 years. What's more, these trends sharpen why our purpose is so relevant in the world. The two large secular trends that will drive our market and Pearson's growth are the shifts in demographics that are happening and the growth in the power of AI.

These increase the importance of learning skills, verified skills, talent sourcing, and talent management. Serving these needs means Pearson will unlock growth and margin. Next, Pearson has a very powerful why. We know that people benefit hugely from learning. People need to learn to progress in their lives, and Pearson is the world's lifelong learning company. We turn our attention to shareholder value creation and have four value drivers. First, our market analysis shows us that we are strong leaders in subsegments of the market that are about $15 billion in size, but that have been growing at about 2%. The markets that we're targeting going forward are $80 billion in size and grow at 5% or more. Second, as you know, Pearson has been on a journey from being a holding company to an operating company.

This ongoing journey, with increasing focus on organic growth and execution, gives us opportunity to drive more performance from our existing five core businesses. Thirdly, we can unlock execution-based synergies from across the business units, from products and services bundling, secondly, from a modern approach to software and product development, and finally, from a focus on strategic partnerships. The fourth shareholder value driver is that we see two important growth vectors in enterprise skills and early careers that are good adjacencies that we will focus on. I don't really want you to plug these into your models quite yet, but as we develop the work in the space, we'll keep you fully updated. Let's double-click on each of these six elements. With our team, we started by looking at the external context around us, and we broke it down into four areas.

These were the macro environment, including government spending, geopolitics, consumer trends. Then our own industry, where we studied the education and learning markets, edtech, content, classroom trends. Then our competitive landscape, from the traditional to the edtech players to the range of platform businesses. And finally, we look at technology in all its forms that are relevant to learning and education. I won't get into all the details, but I will share with you that we've gone deep on the data in these areas, and we've codified them in our Pearson factbook that our leaders now use to guide our decisions. But the two trends that emerge as the most pertinent growth drivers, the first is the demographic shift. This means that of the baby boomer generation, most are leaving in the next six years, which increases pressure on talent sourcing in already constrained markets.

The second is the fast development of ever more powerful AI models. The combination of these two trends means that CEOs today are trying hard to, firstly, find new pools of talent to access. Think, for example, of 135,000 GED graduates that we graduate in the U.S. every year. Secondly, work out how people's skills can develop at a pace to cope with the advances in technology and AI. We already assess and certify millions of people in technology skills each year. Thirdly, they need to figure out how to design the future workforce that takes account of skills that can be automated or augmented by AI. This is a very real talent management question, and we have many of the elements needed to address this challenge.

Technology, of course, continues to accelerate, and AI is the big story and will have profound implications over the next 10 years in the worlds of learning and education, thanks to the power of personalization with multimodal models, even if we are in a hype bubble in the short term. By coming together, these two trends challenge us to keep growing human skills at a pace that can somehow match the incredible speed of development in new technology in the context of a workforce with fewer people who are augmented by AI. And it's this combination that creates great opportunities for Pearson in the worlds of work and learning. Now, let me turn to our purpose. We know that the minute a child is born, it starts learning. Learning is a very human trait. Like sleep and nutrition, learning is vital in our lives.

We know that when we learn more, we get happier, we get healthier, we live longer, and we can earn more. We know that with every extra year of education, there is a 2% reduction in mortality risks. Yet, in a market like the United States, there are already 40 million adults without a high school diploma. The world badly needs more learning, and Pearson is the world's lifelong learning company. Our people are propelled by this why, and our purpose is to help people realize the life they imagine through learning. This is our why. In addition to studying the trends, we also took a deep, hard look at our market. I want to illustrate this to you by looking at a very simplified version of the United States market. At the top level, this is a $2 trillion per annum market.

What our team did is we broke this along two dimensions. Firstly, the customer segments, the demand side. Think K-12, higher ed, and enterprise. Then the supply side, from offerings from content to tech services and solutions. This is where a lot of higher ed tech resides, to the actual delivery of the content and services. Exactly as you would expect, about $1.9 trillion is down to things like the physical delivery of learning in the form of teacher and facility costs. We've excluded this as not being part of the business that we want to focus on. To give you a sense, we actually broke down the supply side into approximately 35 different types of market services. Then we looked at the TAM, the growth rates, and the profit trends for every cell in the matrix.

Once we created our market analysis, we asked ourselves two things. Firstly, how is Pearson positioned in this particular cell in a segment today? And secondly, we asked, how are the profit pools going to move over the next few years, given the trends that we've learned about that we looked at before? And it's that work that's guiding our thinking on the market segments and the adjacencies that we will focus on. As we dug into the market analysis, we found that Pearson is strongly established in segments worth about $15 billion, and they grow at about 2% per annum. And you can see those in navy. We also identified another set of segments illustrated in light blue, where we already have presence or that provide a close adjacency to us where we're confident we can build a strong position.

These segments, inclusive of our core market, are worth about $80 billion, and they collectively grow at 5% or faster. For example, three areas where we have strength and can grow further are in the areas of learning apps, technology workforce content, and organizational evaluations and analytics. We are establishing a new capital allocation approach internally that prioritizes these higher growth segments over time. In other words, we will invest at a faster rate in the higher growth segments going forward, and this will contribute to a higher, more sustained growth rate for the business over time. The second conclusion that we have is that simply by focusing on organic growth and performance management, we can continue to drive value in our core five businesses. Our leaders have already done a lot of good work on the journey from holding company to operating company, driving growth and meaningful margin expansion.

But as we discuss with our teams, just because we're fit doesn't mean we don't continue to get to the gym. Our team is focusing hard on areas ranging from sales, sales operations, go-to-market execution, process optimization, vendor consolidation, our performance culture, building more execution muscle. Specifically, we're focusing on increasing customer centricity in our work, investing in our leaders, increasing clarity on our performance expectations by every role across the company, and driving collaboration in pursuit of value. Aggressive deployment of modern technology is clearly a lever in all of this. Our teams are now working on leveraging AI to improve customer services, for example, and customer-facing chatbots, AI assistants for our agents, and call transcribing. Also, to improve our productivity and performance in content generation, and of course, in the core product suites themselves.

We can see that effective deployment of technology will help us realize millions of dollars in savings over the medium term, tens of millions of dollars of savings in the medium term. The beauty of these conclusions is that we see a solid route to continued performance improvement as part of our normal rhythms of business. Beyond these areas that apply across each of the five businesses, each individual business unit has its own view of how to better drive growth as they execute against our corporate strategy. For example, in Assessments and Qualifications and English Language Learning, we see opportunity in geographic and vertical sector expansion. In higher ed, we can continue to accelerate the modernization of our courseware assets with AI. The same applies in virtual schools.

In workforce skills, we see good growth opportunities in product bundling for enterprises, in further professionalization of our sales motions, and our approach for cross-selling vocational and professional assessments. As you can see, each of the divisions is increasing its investment in AI capabilities across the board. Our consumer product development teams also drive innovation into the business. For example, the AI study tools developed in Pearson+ have been rapidly expanded across our platform portfolio so that by this fall, we will have over 60 Pearson+ and over 80 platform titles featuring the latest office hours and AI study tools. These teams are also drivers of the practical synergies when it comes to building software. More on this in a moment. You can assume that an increasing focus on producing consumer-grade software is a key feature for our businesses going forward.

So, in addition to driving growth from capital allocation and driving performance in our five core businesses, we can also drive value from synergies across the business. And we're tackling these carefully so as to not diffuse accountability. And the synergies fall in three distinct areas. Firstly, product and service bundling. We're working on the incentive regime to make it easier for our sellers to bundle products where it makes sense. It does make sense for institutional and enterprise buyers. So, we see packages like PDRI and TalentLens, or TalentLens and Versant, or VUE and Credly becoming increasingly meaningful as we make it easier for our buyers to buy. Secondly, on product development, I touched on this a little bit earlier, but with consumer-grade software, I want us to go a bit deeper here.

By recognizing that, in fact, Pearson is a major software product developer and that by simply adopting modern approaches to product design, development, and deployment, we can bring a range of revenue and margin synergies to the business. This comes from common services, common data platforms, harmonized tech stacks, tooling best practices, and more. We're reviewing in detail our product processes and policies as we evolve this part of the business. Thirdly, strategic partnering. Historically, we may be treating our vendors a little bit all in the same way without spending enough time distinguishing between transactional and more strategic relationships. This opens up possibilities in reciprocal trade, joint go-to-markets, and joint innovation. As we consolidate down to a smaller number of strategic partners, we can drive top and bottom-line synergies. Dave Treat, our new CTO, will be very helpful in advancing some of these agendas.

We're planning on reviewing our strategic KPIs to reflect on the changes that I've been hinting at here across the business, and we'll update you on that in our prelims next year. Now, before I move on to talk about our medium-term growth vectors, let's look at some of the up-and-coming AI tools in English language learning, virtual schools, and workforce skills. Please roll the video.

Speaker 5

We're currently working on a tool for English language learning that makes lesson creation easier with an AI-driven platform for English teachers. If I'm an English teacher, I may spend hours creating lessons from Pearson Courseware, searching the web for materials, or creating my own. Now, AI can do it for me with Teaching Pal. Let's say I want a lesson on climate change, so I select the proficiency level I need.

I choose the topic of what I want to teach, and it gives me more topic recommendations. Then, I choose the kind of activities I want to include for the student, like reading, speaking, or writing. The AI generates a custom lesson plan complete with content like grammar practice, reading passages, or vocabulary tests. I can rearrange the content, add more activities, or even bring in content I've created myself. We've also built help for Connections Academy teachers by adding AI to the tools that help them build custom assessments. Teachers can choose their subject, the student grade level, and the types of questions that they want, like multiple choice or fill-in-the-blank. Then, teachers can let the AI do the work. Within minutes, they'll get a fully AI-generated assessment with various types of questions that they can edit, adjust, or further customize for their students.

Finally, in workforce skills, we're adding skill proficiency levels to our Faethm capability. We'll start using AI to better define skill needs for people at all levels, from early career workers to C-suite executives.

Omar Abbosh (CEO)

I hope you like that one as well. Okay, finally, in addition to the growth drivers that I've just talked about, we also do see two medium-term growth vectors that are a very good fit for Pearson. The first is early careers. With tens of millions of jobs needing to be filled in the coming years, for example, we already have a gap of 511,000 roles for nursing jobs, 300,000 roles for engineering, and 273,000 allied health roles in the U.S. alone, we see a strong need for new approaches and alliances to talent development based around career and technical education, apprenticeships, and partnerships with educational institutions and enterprises.

By building on our strong network of educational institutions, our unrivaled IP, and existing strengths, including GED and vocational qualifications, plus our relationships with enterprises, we're uniquely positioned to support both educational institutions and enterprises as AI and demographics reshape the future workforce. Also, enterprise skills. As you know, we made workforce a strategic priority for this year. The reason is that that market is very significant, and Pearson has several very relevant capabilities there. Vishaal has focused on the following things: helping pre-assess new employees, identifying high-value skills and aptitude in candidates for early careers, learning and upskilling pathways, diagnosing learning and future-proofing skills in the age of AI, and finally, redesigning the future workforce, augmenting and automating away tasks, changing the nature of work and jobs. We can support employers with bundled solutions from across all of Pearson.

Therefore, on the back of our market analysis, we're targeting capital allocation to faster growth areas by focusing on performance in our core business. We see opportunity for profit expansion, and we can add to this with synergies that are based on our execution orientation. And finally, even if I said, "Don't put it in your models," we see good room for medium-term expansion in the two growth vectors that I just spoke about. So, what does this all add up to? Let me hand over to Sally to share our financial summary with you.

Sally Johnson (CFO)

Thank you. I'll start by outlining the overall financials and then dive a bit deeper on cost. Of course, the group guidance I have previously given for 2024 and 2025 is consistent and still stands.

As we look out to the medium term beyond this, we will be focusing our effort and investment, as Omar explained, on a larger aggregate market that's growing at 5%+. So, you can expect a CAGR underlying sales growth of mid-single digits. As we continue to drive operational improvements, we expect to be able to deliver sustained margin improvement over time that will equate to an average of 40 basis points per annum beyond 2025. We expect to maintain strong free cash flow conversion in the region of 90%-100% on average across that period. The Pearson investment proposition provides diversified access to the growing learning market, strong financials, and highly rated planet, people, and product credentials. In terms of capital allocation, we are aligning our investment priorities around where we see the best opportunities for growth and returns.

Firstly, assessments and verifications, and then enterprise skills and early careers. English language learning is, of course, relevant to each of these areas of investment focus. We expect to invest both organically and inorganically, always following the disciplined approach that Omar will describe shortly. We will continue to maintain a strong balance sheet, by which I mean net debt to EBITDA of around two times on average over time, equating approximately to the guidelines of our rating agencies. Shorter term, it will likely be somewhat lower than that, as we want to have the flexibility to make selective, high-returning investments to complement or accelerate growth in line with our allocation priorities.

Our dividend policy is progressive and sustainable, and having bought back £1 billion of our shares in the last few years, we don't at present plan to further extend our buyback program, but we are committed to regularly reviewing this in the context of foreseeable investment opportunities and maintaining a strong but efficient balance sheet. We are also focused on continuing cost efficiency and customer experience. Our last AI demo demonstrates some of the early ways we are using the strategies this technology enables.

Speaker 5

Our core focus of AI efforts inside Pearson is making content production more efficient with a tool to speed up the tedious work of copy editing. If I'm a copy editor on a higher education book about construction, I can upload a chapter, and I'll get a fully edited text.

The tool is smart enough to give me nuanced notes and suggestions about building codes and the correct use of technical terms. This ensures authors have the most relevant and accurate content. We're also putting AI to use in different customer service venues, like accelerating rebates for customers. We're giving our employees a secure tool that lets them access various AI models for help with generating presentations, images, and written materials, all to encourage employees to build AI skills, be more creative, and infuse AI in their daily work.

Sally Johnson (CFO)

Let me expand on this. We've identified a number of technology-enabled initiatives, which we expect to unlock tens of billions of GBP of savings over the medium term. Initially, those savings will be offset by our restructuring costs, but as these pay back, they will enable us to further invest in the opportunities Omar's highlighted to drive future growth.

You saw what we're doing in customer services and content in the video. In addition to this, our technology teams will continue to consolidate the services used across our business units to remove duplication and ensure the highest quality security. We will choose partners who use the latest technologies to reduce outsourced costs as well as enhance trading balance. The improved product design processes and tools Omar discussed will enhance our consumer-grade product as well as reducing the related cost base. These initiatives will drive better operational performance, improved customer experience, and enhance productivity. Now, back to Omar to close us out.

Omar Abbosh (CEO)

Thanks, Sally. Thank you, Sally. Hopefully, this gives you a good sense of how we're thinking about our capital structure and future financial posture. I want to dig into the one area that Sally touched on here on M&A.

In our leadership team, we're being very, very clear about the criteria under which we may consider acquisitions. Firstly, we will strongly prefer deals that are part of a pre-agreed strategy. Next, we expect our teams to originate thoughtfully and build up solid pipelines of possible deals over time. In other words, we will be proactive. Deals need to have very clear synergies with our core business. Synergies can be capability extensions that bring us into a new area, or perhaps they may extend our reach into newer markets. Very important for me, we're very mindful of who can do an acquisition. This means landing deals in areas with a track record of past success. And finally, it has to be a good deal at a good price. If one steps back, we can see that Pearson is rapidly evolving.

Once upon a time, it was a holding company with a set of loosely held assets where the company moved in and out of different markets. Now, we're a unified operating company with very clear higher growth addressable markets with a capital allocation approach focused on assessments and verifications, early careers, and enterprise skills. As you can see, the analog publishing business is a very small part of our current and future business, and the company today is a digital learning and assessments company. It serves its customers through convenient, usable, and AI-powered platforms. Our company is well-focused, with 80% of our revenues coming from the U.S. and the U.K., and we're moving quickly from a legacy culture to a more modern one oriented on execution and high performance. So, to wrap up, Pearson is the world's lifelong learning company.

We have 17,000 people who are exceptionally focused on this mission and on helping individuals realize the life they imagine through learning. We have a strong core business in the worlds of learning and education through our assessments and verification strength, which is the bulk of our business. We can grow value around this core through organic business performance, targeted capital allocation, and disciplined M&A. In the medium term, our growth is fueled by the two secular trends of the demographic shift and the expansion of AI, which drive demand in our two natural adjacencies of early careers and enterprise skills. We're allocating capital in the United States to a large market of $80 billion that grows at 5% or more, and we're committed to growing at mid-single digits underlying sales CAGR, while also driving margin expansion of at least 40 basis points on average per annum.

You can put those in your models. And we're making this happen through a capital allocation approach targeted against this strategy, a deep focus on product innovation, and an increased execution orientation through our performance culture. We're well advanced with our 2024 priorities, with progress on our numbers, on AI, and on workforce. For the coming years, we're focused on a small number of growth areas with a clear path to sustained growth with a leadership team that is oriented on execution. With that, let's go to Q&A. So, Jo, any questions coming through?

Sally Johnson (CFO)

I think we might have one question on the line.

Speaker 4

Yeah, I don't know whether you can hear me. Tom here from Citi.

Sally Johnson (CFO)

Yeah, thanks, Tom.

Speaker 4

Yeah, I had a few sort of questions, if it was okay, actually.

First one, on adoption share, which obviously you flagged has ticked up, but I'm sort of just interested in whether you could give some qualitative commentary on whether that's a function of AI investments that you've already done and the trials in place, or is it a function of primarily the sort of change in approach for the sales force? I'm just trying to work out whether it's a, as I say, whether the AI effect is already kicking in or it's a down payment, if that's the way of putting it on AI investment, or whether the AI effect on adoption is yet to come. That was the first question. And then secondly, on AI, actually, I think it was as long ago as 12 months ago, you did talk about sort of interest in sort of, or from third parties in sort of licensing content off you.

You've got a lot of data sort of coming out of the platforms that you operate. I'm just interested in your philosophy towards licensing data, whether you're just completely against it in all instances or whether it could form part of the approach with respect to sort of strategic partnerships. Those are the two questions I've got. Thank you.

Omar Abbosh (CEO)

Well, Tom, thank you very much. On the adoption share, I'm going to pick on Tom here. It's true, and you're right to ask us the question because over the years, perhaps we've landed some surprises in that sense that none of us wanted. I don't think we would have come out this strongly and said about our confidence about higher ed coming back to growth had we not really sort of double-clicked on what's going on in the operation and in that market. But I'll let Tom comment a bit on what he's seeing in the adoption share space and what we believe is behind it.

Tom ap Simon (President of Virtual Learning)

Yeah, sure. Thanks, Omar. So, Tom, great question. So, from an adoption market share perspective, that was a mouthful to get out. I would say that this is not really a function of any of the AI yet. This is a function of just the improvements we put in place in terms of the sales force, in terms of product stability, in terms of go-to-market coverage, in terms of the general manager operating model. So, we've got much more specific plans for math and science, business and economics, vocational professional. What was pleasing about the market share improvements was it was in two-year, it was in four-year, it was across all of the major portfolios. So, we were really pleased with the first-half performance.

Although we've been pushing our CRO, it was all delivered without any of the new AI-related features which are coming out this fall. So, I'm hopeful that that will continue to bode well for a really strong fall. So, in short, not much AI in the numbers, product stability, high-quality sales, better quality sales operations, and the new operating model leading to dividends.

Omar Abbosh (CEO)

But also, kudos to Tom and the team for leaning into the innovation with the AI in the product set, which we're getting great anecdotal feedback from our students and professors that they love it and it really helps them. And our sellers are commenting on how that helps them with win rates, which is just fantastic. Tom, on your second question regarding AI and licensing, let me give you a synopsis.

So, of course, as we've said before, Pearson sits on an enormous amount of high-quality, curated, professionally developed data, several petabytes' worth of data as it happens. And indeed, if you're trying to build a very accurate LLM, our data is valuable. And as you'd suspect, all the characters in the West Coast and beyond have approached us about various licensing agreements. I'm not against it. I just don't think that licensing needs to be our primary strategy. It's a kind of a one-off thing where you trade IP for money. Our value comes from bringing the great content with our knowledge of learning science baked into the learning pathways in our platforms, with the AI modules along the lines that you saw earlier in the demonstrations, packaged together in a piece of courseware that really helps students or professors attain the outcomes thereafter. That is very valuable.

But rest assured, in fact, I just spent a week out in Palo Alto a couple of weeks back, met all the key characters across the businesses. These companies want to work with Pearson. They see us as a leader in the world of education and learning. And so, we'll, of course, double down on those relationships going forward. Anyone else coming up on the platform, Joe? Okay. Great.

Speaker 4

Thank you.

Omar Abbosh (CEO)

Well, just to say, everyone, thank you so much for coming in, dialing into our call, spending time with us. We appreciate it very much indeed. Thanks to the team for all the great work that we're doing and looking forward to seeing you back, I guess, in the October timeframe. So, take care, everyone. Thank you.