Pearson - Earnings Call - H1 2025
August 1, 2025
Transcript
Speaker 0
Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Pearson's 2025 Interim Results. Today, we will host a presentation followed by a Q and 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 will address them in turn at the end. And with that, I'll hand over to Omar.
Speaker 1
Thank you, Alex. Good morning. It's a pleasure to be with you again today. I've been looking forward to it. As well as hearing from Sally and me, we'll be joined later today by our colleagues Art, Tom, Vishal, Sharon and Tony for Q and A.
Now, we're very aware that the external world has changed significantly since our prelims in February, so I wanted to first provide a view of the market dynamics that are relevant for our business and our perspective on these. I'll then move on to an update of the strategic and operational progress that we've made so far this year before handing over to Sally, who will give you an overview of our interim financial results. And then we'll open up as usual for your questions. But before we get going, let me first outline the key takeaways. Firstly, our strategy remains unchanged and is now well established across the organization.
The two seismic trends of demographics in AI that we outlined this time last year are playing out exactly as expected. And in a world where AI is decreasing the half life of skills, we have a vital role to play in shaping the future of learning. We're building medium term growth engines for the company, for example, by gaining momentum in our Enterprise business, while in parallel innovating to ensure our products and services continue to lead the way in the world of learning. Secondly, our execution is going to plan and I'll share some proof points with you today. And thirdly, when you put together our strategic clarity and the progress we're making with our execution focus, it only strengthens my conviction in Pearson's medium term trajectory.
And we're also on track to deliver a full year financial performance in line with the expectations we set out in February with phasing playing out precisely as anticipated. I now want to step back for a moment and consider the environment we're operating in. You all know very well it's been evolving quickly, offering both opportunities and market dynamics to address. I'd like to highlight two overarching points. Firstly, each of these dynamics influences only a small segment of our business, and we understand them deeply, which is a source of strategic advantage.
And secondly, our diversified portfolio means that we benefit from market growth overall while being resilient to subsegment trends. So I'd like to start with The U. S. Federal Government. Our only material direct exposure is through PDRI, which faces some near term pressure from hiring freezers, which we expect to continue into the second half of the year.
However, PDRI's focus on merit based hiring aligns exactly with the goals of the new administration, and its long term relationship with the Office for Personnel Management positions us well for future opportunities. With the Department of Ed, our core offerings are well aligned with the administration's priorities on outcomes and accountability, and we are ready to support mandates to upscale and develop a future ready and AI embedded workforce. While some disruption cannot be ruled out as changes are implemented, we have seen no meaningful impact on our businesses so far and we are prepared to move quickly to take advantage of emerging opportunities. For a bit of context, federal funding accounts for a relatively small proportion of total funding for K-twelve and Higher Ed, and the latter includes grants for research universities where Pearson's exposure is small. On migration, the market backdrop is materially unchanged and is baked into our PTE guidance for the year.
The medium term outlook for PTE and ELL as a whole is undiminished, supported by demographics and our team's strong operational track record of taking market share. Beyond ELL, international mobility has minimal impact including in The US, where less than 2% of university students are international. So overall, we remain resilient and are well positioned to take advantage of potential opportunities. So now I want to move back to our strategic framework that I shared with you last July, which hopefully you're familiar with and that includes our why, our what, and our how. First, our purpose has never been more relevant.
Every day, we see people advancing their lives through learning, demonstrating the power of education and skill development. Yet, at the system level, our recent research highlights the huge costs of persistent and widespread skill gaps at key career and learning transition points. These have a very real economic impact, totaling over $1,000,000,000,000 a year in The U. S. And £96,000,000,000 a year in The UK.
This represents a massive opportunity to ensure that learning keeps pace with the rapidly changing demands of the workforce and supports economic growth. Second, our WAT. We are a global leader in assessments and verification, and we're implementing our strategy to drive performance in our core businesses, realizing execution synergies, expanding into larger and faster growing adjacent markets, and building scale in our medium term growth vectors of Early Careers and Enterprise Skilling. I look forward to telling you more about our progress against all of these shortly. Finally, our how underpins our strategic priorities, focusing our internal capital allocation process on higher growth opportunities, unlocking innovation to deliver better learning outcomes and more efficiently and embedding a high performance culture top to bottom through the organization.
I am pleased with the progress we have made over the last eighteen months. And as you know, this is a process of continuous improvement. These factors together drive the medium term guidance I outlined this time last year, which we reiterate today. Let me turn now to our ongoing strategic and operational progress against our four priority growth areas, starting with driving performance in our core business. All five business units have demonstrated core performance improvements, executing upon the focus areas we outlined at full year results.
And that reflects a combination of strong commercial execution and excellent progress in developing and launching innovative new products and services. In Assessments and Qualifications, we see continued execution focus through customer wins and renewals across View and U. S. Student assessments, expanding our customer set in Clinical with the first statewide adoption of our digital offering and further international expansion for UK and international qualifications. We're on track to launch new View customers, ServiceNow, the Association of Social Workboards and last month launched Salesforce, all of which will support faster growth in H2.
From a product point of view, we've successfully launched the Pearson Skilling Suite and introduced further AI enhancements in U. S. Student assessment with the WriteUp platform. In Higher Education, we're building upon the successful monetization last fall of our Study Prep tool, previously called Channels, with an expansion into international markets. We continue to introduce innovative technologies in our products, including our new Go Deeper functionality in our AI Study Tools, which we developed using nearly 130,000 student queries.
Our research continues to show that our AI Study Tools are helping students with their learning, including the development of new cognitive skills and higher order outcomes, in particular when AI capabilities are built directly into the flow of study. In Virtual Learning, Spring saw positive enrollment and retention trends, and we completed the rollout of our new enrollment platform and improved our new student acquisition capabilities. Career Academies will be fully embedded across the whole network for fall back to school, and we're on track to open two new schools in H2 for a total of 42 by year end. These factors support sales in H2 and a platform for accelerated growth over the medium term. In Enterprise Learning and Skills, Vishal and team continue to build momentum with their enterprise approach as we strengthen our global enterprise sales teams and have landed new wins with HCL Tech and Google Cloud.
These wins, coupled with pipeline activity, strengthen the conviction we have in the growth potential for our Enterprise opportunity. Vocational Qualifications continues to demonstrate strong execution with international growth in BTEC and new contract wins, including apprenticeship courses with the UK Ministry of Defence and T Levels in Health and Science. And finally, in English Language Learning, PTE continues to show strong operational performance and we're further advancing our offerings through our new Pearson English Express test, while expanding our relationships with governments and institutions around the world. We've also won institutional clients in LatAm, building upon recent strength in the region. Meanwhile, for educators, we've launched our Smart Lesson Generator that draws from Pearson's massive array of English content and will cut down the hours that teachers take to plan lessons, freeing them up to concentrate on coaching students in the classroom.
I'd like now to take a moment to step back and discuss our progress in the foundational operational improvements we're making in the business. Firstly, we're transforming our revenue operations capabilities under direction of our recently appointed Chief Business Officer, Nassim Tufaha. This is a set of processes and systems that will, over time, give us improved visibility and leverage on the activities that drive revenue growth from targeting through to enabling and incentivizing sales teams. By using data to better make prioritization decisions, we will develop a stronger, more resilient commercial engine and one that can quickly and effectively scale and deliver results in our competitive markets. Secondly, we're now taking a modern marketing approach under our Chief Marketing Officer, Ginny Ziegler, where we expect to see near term improvements in output and cost efficiencies in activities such as branding, social media and events.
And thirdly, as we discussed before, we're focusing on driving a performance culture, a foundational aspect of which is bringing clarity to our performance expectations across every single role in the company. To this end, we've reduced what were 1,600 roles down to 140 roles, enabling a circa 80% reduction in the number of job families and job categories, facilitating better performance management. In addition, through our focus on continual improvement, we have reduced headcount year over year, optimizing our spans and layers, resulting in quicker and more effective communication and decision making across the organization. And finally, AI driven simplification is progressing at pace as well. For example, we've reached over 40,000 customer interactions with our AI powered service agent since its very recent launch.
And AI content development tools have cut translation times from eighteen months to less than three, accelerating speed to market internationally. This progress adds to my confidence in our medium term guidance for faster growth and margin improvement. Let me turn now to our progress on unlocking synergies across the businesses. You will recall, we identified three buckets of execution synergies and we've made significant progress already, starting with product and service bundling. Our new brand facilitates the simplification of our product estate, helping customers navigate our offerings more effectively, enabling increased bundling opportunities.
We're also starting to lead with Pearson research, grounded in real world experience, which will improve our share of voice on key topics facing the future of Education and Learning. Secondly, we've improved product discovery and development under Tony Prentiss' leadership. We've implemented a single product management tool company wide and migrated over 600 projects. This now gives us a real time holistic view of product development, enabling better prioritization and ROI tracking. And lastly, on strategic partnerships.
We now clearly distinguish between transactional vendors through to strategic relationships, unlocking new value, and we've made progress against two key categories. I've talked to you before about our new relationships with Microsoft and AWS, and I'm pleased to confirm we've now added a third with Google Cloud. These are long term strategic partnerships where we can enable revenue growth alongside cloud transformation and unique go to market and innovation opportunities. We're working with our partners' amazing strengths across enterprise, higher ed, and K-twelve. And these partnerships are developing as planned, and we're starting to see commercial benefit.
For example, Amazon has selected us for the integration of our learning products to support their workforce development. We will bring you further updates across these relationships as we progress. We've taken a similar approach to optimizing professional and technology services. We're consolidating from many dozen vendors down to a select group of service partners, unlocking cost savings and also ensuring better outcomes through a deeper three sixty degree partner relationship where they are invested in our success, of course opening up balance of trade opportunities as well as joint go to market activities. I'm pleased to announce our first services partnership with HCL Tech, a leader in tech transformation services and a company of over 200,000 people who we're supporting in their own upskilling journey.
So look out for more announcements in the coming months. Now, moving on to how we're expanding in targeted markets. As I mentioned earlier, we've established a new internal capital allocation process that allocates investment dollars towards faster growth segments. As I shared last year, we're targeting growth in near adjacent markets where we have a smaller presence today and believe we're well placed to take advantage of a larger 80,000,000,000 plus market opportunity that grows at a faster rate than our existing core markets. One example is our recently announced partnership with McGraw Hill, which will unlock go to market opportunities in the formative assessment space.
Another is how we've operationalized our district K-twelve sales team in Higher Ed, onboarding over 70 sales professionals to take advantage of strong growth trends that we see in college and career readiness programs. And finally, we've successfully launched our test prep capabilities in Pearson VUE that we expect to contribute to growth in H2. We're also redirecting investment into innovation. Through Dave Treat and his teams, we're investing in relationships that promote and scale AI and immersive learning, partnering with third parties like Meta, Google XR and Vue Technologies to explore what the future of learning may look like. We have created a dedicated research and innovation space here in 80 where we showcase our latest product solutions to partners, investors and other stakeholders.
These investments help shape future products and keep Pearson focused on customer driven innovation. Finally, I want to share an update on our progress with our medium term growth vectors. In early careers, we help people develop job ready skills as they transition from school or university. We have businesses that are relevant in this theme already today. Think of virtual schools and its career offerings, CertiPort from Pearson VUE, and our nascent Career and College Readiness K-twelve offering in Higher Ed.
Now to these offerings, we've now added eDynamic Learning as a core pillar of our early career strategy. We brought eDynamic Learning into the Pearson team because it's a leader in career and technical education and has a track record of delivering excellent strong growth and profitability. The integration of its capabilities with our scale creates a powerful engine to deliver job ready skills for the next generation of workers at the exact moment AI is transforming their career paths. Turning to enterprise skilling. I've spent time engaging with many CEOs, and I hear a common theme.
Leaders are grappling with how to better understand the actual skills of their people in a world where skill signals are opaque, and at the same time we are seeing a declining half life of skills. This makes it pretty difficult to lead people on a learning path that is fit for a future workplace that must make heavy use of AI technologies. The Pearson story and our ability to assess and verify human skills resonates with these CEOs. Now on the back of this diagnosis, the opportunity for Pearson lies in helping enterprises build the capabilities they need for talent planning, talent sourcing and talent development in the AI era. We are actively addressing these needs, and we will continue to give you updates on this in due course.
Now, before I hand over to Sally for a deeper look at our first half financials, let me summarize. You'll have picked up from our discussion today that there is a lot of progress underway at Pearson, and I'm really pleased with what we've achieved over the past eighteen months. It positions us well for the current year and our medium term outlook. And I look forward to updating you in the future on further progress as we continue to build a better business and deliver improved learning outcomes for more learners. Sally, over to you.
Speaker 2
Thank you, Omar. And good morning, everybody. We have delivered another solid performance in the first half with sales up 2% on an underlying basis, in line with the guidance that we set out at Pilim's in February. Adjusted operating profit was also up 2% underlying to £242,000,000 Adjusted earnings per share were down to 24.5p, with the positive underlying trading performance and a reduction in share count due to the share buyback more than offset by FX headwinds. Our balance sheet remains strong, driven by another good cash performance, enabling continued investment in the business as well as increased shareholder returns with the £225,000,000 acquisition of eDynamic Learning and the £350,000,000 share buyback, which is expected to complete in H2.
Reflecting our performance and confidence in the outlook, we're proposing a 5% increase in our interim dividend to 7.8p. At the beginning of the year, we announced that Workforce Skills would evolve to become Enterprise Learning and Skills, incorporating our IT Pro business, which was previously in Higher Ed. The comparative figures for H1 twenty twenty four have therefore been restated to reflect the modest financial transfers between segments resulting in a £22,000,000 sales and £6,000,000 profit moving from Higher Ed to Enterprise Learning and Skills. The full year impact of this is now expected to be £45,000,000 of sales and £12,000,000 of profit. Walking through the key elements of business unit sales performance.
Assessments and Qualifications sales grew 2% with strong growth in Clinical Assessments and U. K. And International Qualifications, partially offset by declines in Pearson VUE and U. S. Student Assessment.
The VUE decline is due to the pause in a contract delivered in 2024 and recommencing in H2 twenty twenty five and headwinds in PDRI. Virtual School sales declined 1% as expected due to the final portion of the impact of the previous school losses. Enrolments for the twenty twenty four-twenty twenty five academic year increased 5% in the spring semester on a same school basis and grew 7% including new school openings. We have also seen favorable retention trends in the first half. Higher Education sales grew 4% with IA growth of 213% growth in U.
S. Digital subscriptions. We continue to see good monetization of our Study Prep tool formerly known as channels and ongoing engagement with our AI study tools. English Language Learning declined 3% in line with our expectations with our Institutional business impacted by a strong comp period in H1 last year. And Pearson Test of English was flat performing well against a tough market backdrop.
Enterprise Learning and Skills grew 4% with another solid performance from Vocational Qualifications and Enterprise Solutions building momentum during the period. Turning to profit. Group adjusted operating profit grew 2% on an underlying basis driven by operating leverage on that sales growth partially offset by inflation. For each business unit, Assessments and Qualification margins reduced to 21% due to the margin on sales growth being more than offset by prior year cost phasing and inflation. Virtual Learning margins increased to 16% driven by cost phasing partially offset by trading declines.
Higher Ed and Enterprise Learning and Skills both saw margin improvement driven by sales growth and English Language Learner margins were adversely impacted by sales phasing. Free cash flow was again strong, up £129,000,000 from last year to £156,000,000 given similar operating cash performance with good working capital management offsetting the impact of FX and the receipt of the state aid recovery. The state aid amount is £97,000,000 on the tax line and £17,000,000 on the interest line. Net debt has decreased by £200,000,000 from June 2024 to £1,000,000,000 at June 2025 driven by free cash flow partially offset by dividends and that share buyback. Turning to the outlook for the remainder of the year.
We are where we expected to be at the half year point and we're on track to deliver on the expectations we set out at prelims in February. Let me walk you through this by business unit as a reminder. Assessments and qualifications will grow low to mid single digits in 2025. Growth will be H2 weighted in particular to Q4 due to new and renewed contracts including Salesforce, which launched last month as well as the build of our new Test Prep business. Virtual Learning will return to growth in H2 and for the full year driven by enrolment increases partially from new school openings for the twenty twenty five-twenty twenty six academic year.
The previously announced school losses will cease to be a headwind in H2. Higher education growth in 2025 will be higher than in 2024 as we build on the successful results of our sales team transformation and product innovations, particularly using AI. English Language Learning full year growth will moderate versus the 8% delivered in 2024 due to the PTE business, which is expected to decline in H2. The business unit growth will be H2 weighted in particular to Q4. Enterprise Learning and Skills will grow high single digits in 2025 with vocational qualifications seeing solid growth and the addition of those new contracts for Enterprise Solutions, which you've heard about.
Growth will increase quarter on quarter in H2 supported by those recent customer announcements and pipeline activity. Turning to profit. Market expectations at the beginning of the year for adjusted operating profit were £656,000,000 at an FX rate of 1.23. Subsequently, of course, there's been a significant move in the U. S.
Dollar rate, so I thought it'd be helpful to remind you that every $01 movement in the dollar equates to approximately £5,000,000 of adjusted operating profit. Now I'm not going to try and forecast FX rates, but if we take the actual average FX rate for H1 which is 1.31 and assume the recent spot rate of 1.32 for the rest of the year then the average FX rate for the full year would be about 1.32. So that would mean a zero nine pounds movement of FX, which reduces adjusted operating profit by £45,000,000 down to £611,000,000 which is about where consensus is at the moment. The announced acquisition of eDynamic Learning has recently closed with consideration paid of £225,000,000 dollars sorry, at a 13 times adjusted EBITDA. We do not expect this to have a material impact to 2025 group guidance given near term integration costs and the acquisition accounting for deferred revenue, which impacts the first 18 sales recognized.
EDynamic Learning has a highly attractive financial profile with strong margins and cash flow and a track record of delivering good growth. We expect this acquisition to be supportive of our medium term guidance. In terms of interest and tax, we continue to guide to circa sixty five million pounds of interest costs with a 90% to 100% free cash flow conversion plus that State Aid payment. Our tax guidance is unchanged at between 2425% ETR. So in summary, we're pleased with the performance we've delivered in H1, which is in line with expectations.
We remain on track to deliver our 2025 outlook with known business unit dynamics in place to support stronger growth in H2. And we finished the first half of the year in a strong financial position, driven by another excellent cash performance, supporting continued investment in the business as well as increased shareholder returns. And with that, I'll hand back to Omar.
Speaker 1
Thank you, Sally. So as you've heard, firstly, our strategy remains the same and is now well established across the organization, and this is driving demand for what we do. I believe Pearson has a vital role to play in shaping the future of learning, especially in a world of AI driven transformation. Secondly, we're executing well against our strategy, including core operational improvements with progress to unlock our medium term growth vectors. And thirdly, our strategic clarity and our execution focus strengthen my conviction in Pearson's medium term trajectory and that we're on track to deliver on our 2025 priorities.
With that, Sally and I, along with Art, Tom, Vishal, Sharon and Tony, will be happy to take your questions. Operator, over to you.
Speaker 3
Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. Our first question today comes from James Tate with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead, James.
Speaker 2
Hi, James.
Speaker 4
Good morning, Omar. Sally, it's James Tate from Goldman Sachs. I've got two questions, please. I think firstly on Fuze new and renewed contracts. I know you talked about them having a greater contribution to growth in q four, but you mentioned ServiceNow and a couple others already online.
Are these all operating and performing in line with your prior expectations? And as we start seeing more about 2026, is it fair to assume that you should grow at least mid single digits as it gets almost a full year benefit from a lot of these new deals? And I guess, secondly, you've highlighted some of the new generic products rolled out across the portfolio. Could you also provide some more detail on what what you see as the opportunity from the technology to drive cost efficiencies across the business? How do you how have these progressed so far?
And are there certain divisions where you see greater potential? Thank you.
Speaker 1
Thank you very much, James. Appreciate your questions. So as you know, we're probably not gonna offer too much guidance on '26 at this point, but I'll let Art talk to you about Veev and what he's seeing with the contracts around ServiceNow, Salesforce, and the others. Over to you, Art.
Speaker 5
So we get to have you with us today, James. On on view in particular, Omar mentioned three specific contracts. Salesforce lost launched last month. ServiceNow and the Association of Social Workboards are launching later in this year. And all of those contracts, well as the Vue testing contract portfolio in general, is performing according to expectations.
So the launch efforts as well as our view as to what the volumes that are gonna run through those contracts is absolutely in line with what our expectations are and reflected in the guidance that Sally's given.
Speaker 1
Thank you, Art. On Gen AI, let me say something about the customer facing products and then perhaps I'll ask Sally to comment on how we see it playing out in terms of our core operations. So I'm particularly excited about the fact that we are getting more and more evidence, including in the last few months from 2,000,000 students in The US, that when we apply AI correctly in the flow of study, you get higher order outcomes in terms of people's reasoning. So I think there's there are more and more studies that have happened and that we'll see more of that. When you use AI as a teleportation device device that moves you from here to the answer, you actually don't learn.
But when you use AI as a map to take you through the different stages to get to the endpoint, you really do learn. And that's our approach. And and and the work that Tony and the teams have been doing across our product sets is just really excellent in that space. But to your question on cost efficiencies in our operations, I'll ask Sally to comment.
Speaker 2
Yes, of course. So one of the things that's really special about Pearson is that not only can we have AI usage for our customers and our products, but obviously we have the benefits that other companies do in terms of generating cost efficiencies across our business. The things that Omar called out were things like content generation, which we're using AI in. Now that can be around actually just creation of content or really nice example would be translation so that we can get our products, for example, in international higher education into languages that just weren't cost effective before, and we can get them to market in a faster way as well. So it's great for our top line and our customers and also for our cost base as well.
Another example is customer services where we're putting AI capabilities in. Again, helps from a cost point of view, but also helps to make our customer experience more effective as well. So there's lots of examples of where we're using it across the front office and the back office, generating cost savings, making the experience improve for our customers as well and helping the top line.
Speaker 1
Thanks, Sally. Okay. Who's next?
Speaker 4
Great. Thank you.
Speaker 2
Thanks, James.
Speaker 3
Thank you. Our next question comes from Luke Holbrook with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead, Luke.
Speaker 1
Hey, Luke.
Speaker 6
Thank you. Good morning, everyone. I've got my my main question center around the q three and q four weighting for this year again because, you're guiding for 4.4% revenue growth for 2025. We've seen 2% in H1, and I guess with the Q4 weighting, you're looking at 7% potential growth, maybe even a little bit higher than that. But could you just walk us through with what some of what you've discussed today around virtual school contracts launching, sales force contracts, other partnerships, new contract recommencing.
Can you just help us bridge, like, what what find out in a financial context, how we get to that and what's underpinned into q four? And then I've just got a follow-up. Thank you.
Speaker 2
Sure. Why don't I take that one and then and then we'll take your your follow-up. So your maths is right in terms of the number you're quoting for the for the second half, first of all. And then it it's it's known things that we've known about from the start of the year in each of the business units. It's slightly different between the business units.
So in in A and Q and View in particular and in ELS, it's about those contracts that you've heard Omar and Art talk about and those coming online. In answer to James' question on View, just to point out because it might not be obvious to folks who aren't deep in the business, it does take a while once we're awarded a contract for that to transition sometimes from a previous provider to us. So that's why it feels like we maybe announced some of these a while ago, but they're only coming online now, just in just in case that's not clear. Then in virtual schools, you'll remember for the 2425 school year, we were impacted by the loss of that California school. That is now past.
And so we're now thinking about the 2526 academic year, which is what impacts H2 revenue, and that will be driven by enrollment growth, and we won't have that lost school issue anymore. And then last but not least, English Language Learning where we had a tough comp in the first half of the year, which isn't reflected in the second half of the year.
Speaker 6
Understood. And just, just my second question would just be on the higher ed. We saw a step down in growth into q two, noticing your enrollments look relatively good in in that quarter. Just what what's the delta on on the step down, or is that just a a law of small numbers on the quarterly phasing?
Speaker 2
Mean, I think small
Speaker 1
number is a piece of it, but let's turn it over to Tom. Yeah.
Speaker 7
James, thanks for the question. So a couple of things really happened. Firstly, the core Higher Education business continued and was exactly where we were expecting it to be for the half year. What's really happened is that some of that deceleration you've seen in the second quarter some of a function of what we were expecting to see in the College and Career Readiness business this year. It's been a smaller adoption cycle.
Then secondly, we've obviously been getting our new go to market team up and running. And as you can appreciate, bringing 70 new people on board and establishing all those relationships is inevitably going to have a few teething problems, which is why we were clear with where we would be from that point of view. And then the third thing I would say was that there have been some delays in terms of some of the federal government spending for about $7,000,000,000 that would go out to The States. Now that doesn't have any impact on the money that we received from The States from a college and career readiness perspective, but it did make superintendents just delay purchasing a little bit. So we feel good about where we are from a K-twelve perspective.
We feel pleased with the overall performance in higher education and we feel confident about the full year guidance.
Speaker 1
Thank you, Tom. Thanks for being Thank up in the middle of the you. Cheers, Luke.
Speaker 6
Thank you.
Speaker 3
Thank you. Our next question comes from Nick Dempsey with Barclays. Nick, please go ahead.
Speaker 6
Yes. Good morning, I've got three. So the first one, just on Pearson VUE. Can you give us any information more information on the contract that was paused? Why was it paused?
And exactly when does that come back in? And is it common for large contracts that can move the needle on that subdivision to be paused like that? Second question, in English Language Learning, if we're expecting PTE to still decline for this year, it feels like you need a really strong growth in the institutional business in the second half. How much of that can you already see coming through? And how much of it is kind of a hope in terms of the sales that you achieved from September?
And then thirdly, on higher education, are you still expecting full twenty twenty five enrollments to be flattish, as I think you said before? And if so, I guess you're gonna need to see growth from other factors coming through. So is that gonna be more waiting to include the back there, more price? Or how should we think about that?
Speaker 1
Thank you very much, Nick. So on view, I mean, I'm gonna ask Art to make a quick comment, but I think I can say that this is a very specific individual situation, not something you should expect to see repeated. But over to you, Art.
Speaker 5
It's absolutely the case, Omar, and good to have you with us this morning, Nick. It is an an an international partner. The pause on the contract commenced in the 2024. We are confident in the resumption later this year. And as Omar said, the circumstances are very specific to this customer and not something related to the product or service offering, and thus it is, in fact, something that we do not that that that is unusual.
Speaker 1
Thank you, Art. So Sharon, how are you feeling about institutional in the back half? And, you know, Nick's asking us if we're just being a bit hopeful here.
Speaker 8
Hi, good morning. Thanks for the question, Nick. So a couple of things to just mention. Obviously, the second half of the year weighting for English as a whole, but particularly for Institutional is not a new feature of this business. Of course, it's driven very heavily by the academic year cycles and the fact that we have a particularly strong business in, Latin America.
So we're performing as we expected for the first half of the year and feeling good about growth in our institutional business in the second half of the year, where we expect to see that growth being driven by the business in LatAm, where we're expecting share gains and a strong focus on government deals. And we're very, very focused on that execution plan and working closely with a number of governments across the world to land those deals. So we're performing as we expect right now and looking forward to strong performance in institutional for the second half of the year.
Speaker 1
Thank you, Sharon. And then Tom, on Higher Ed, the weighting of enrollments and what else that might assume about the shape of the business in the second half?
Speaker 7
Yes, sure. So it's obviously a dangerous game to be playing in terms of guessing enrollments at the July given back to school is just around the corner, so I'll stay well clear of that. But I would say that we feel good about where we're seeing growth coming from in terms of pricing. You've seen the IA mix up 21% in the first half of the year. So we're pleased about that in terms of the growth in IA year over year.
And then lastly, some of the work we've been doing on study prep will help support us in the second half of the year as we're excited about the rollout of those products. So that's some of the key drivers which we feel confident about going into the back half of the year.
Speaker 1
Thanks, Tom.
Speaker 6
Can just have a very quick follow-up? I I think you talked before about flattish enrollments in fall twenty five being what you were using when you were thinking about the year. I know you don't wanna guess those. Is that still your base case for your planning, Tom? Yeah.
Speaker 2
Yeah. It is.
Speaker 9
Okay. Thank you.
Speaker 1
Cheers, Nick.
Speaker 3
Thank you. Our next question comes from Adam Berlin with UBS. Please go ahead, Adam. Hi.
Speaker 9
Good morning, everyone. A few questions from me. The first question is, just on higher ed, following on from the last question. Can you talk about adoption share performance during the recent sales cycle? Did you win more share than last year?
That's the first question. Second question is, can you talk a little bit about this eDynamics business you bought? Can you just be clear exactly what it does? Which business unit will we go into? How much revenue?
How fast is it growing? Obviously, we want to put it into our models for next year. So any any more information you can provide would would be would be very helpful. And then my third question is, you know, if you deliver what you're saying you're deliver, you're gonna have, you know, this high single digit growth in h two. Is that gonna see, it feels to me that the drives of that should all continue into 2026.
Any reasons why that wouldn't be a fair assumption? Thanks.
Speaker 1
Okay. I'm gonna start with Tom. Just a couple of points on eDynamics and then Tom you can pick up on the adoption share topic and also maybe get a bit more into exactly what eDynamics does. So I'm really happy with the deal that we've done here. I think we've been very disciplined on not just the the financial terms of the transaction, Sally outlined some of earlier, but actually on really tight strategic alignment.
I mean, this company is a company that we've been working with for many years. We know that one plus one equals three in this case because we've trialed it for real with customers. And so, I feel very happy about it being a strong addition to our early career strategy. I'll let and so it's gonna be run by Tom and his team in Higher Ed, and so he can talk to you a little bit more about the content of what it is. So Tom, can you pick up first on the adoption share thing and then back on eDynamics, please?
Speaker 7
Yes, sure. So from an adoption share perspective in the first half of the year, we increased our share slightly this spring compared to fall last year. And as you know, Nick, the sorry, Adam, it's obviously 04:15 in the morning, so need a little bit more coffee. So in that context, we're obviously very focused on our fall adoption share. As you know, our sales team has got a good degree of understanding of what's going on in the market at this stage.
They've made their final sort of full forecast as it were based on all the selling that they've done. And so we're feeling good about where we are in that construct. And then from an eDynamics perspective, the way to think about it really is if you are a middle school or predominantly a high school kid in The U. S. And you are looking for a CTE program, they sell a broad portfolio of content into those schools.
So for example, you want to be a journalist, if you want to learn more about business, for example, if you want to do an early course in coding, that's they're the sort of the courses and the courseware that it provides. And that's incredibly important because what we're seeing is that the worlds of work and high school blurring. We see that as you think about sort of growth continuing in The U. S. From a higher education perspective, high school is becoming increasingly important.
And we see really good evidence that people who have done CTE courses, in high school, a, those high schools have better graduation rates overall, so it's good from an academic outcomes perspective in terms of efficacy. And secondly, more of these students are more likely to go on to two year or four year colleges. And so that's why we think this is really important strategically because it is an extension of what we do, high quality outstanding content. And we think we can bring a lot to the eDynamics team in terms of the broader capabilities that Pearson has in this space. As Omar mentioned, we have been a customer of this business for the last seven or eight years in virtual schools.
We know them. We really like them. And we really respect what Gerry and the team have built in terms of this business and we're delighted to be acquiring them and moving forward.
Speaker 1
Thanks Tom. And Sally, do you want to pick up the last question?
Speaker 2
Yes. Why don't I pick up the end the specifics on the end of that one and and then your one about H two. In case it wasn't obvious given that Tom answered the EDL question from a business unit perspective, it's gonna be going into higher ed. From a growth perspective, can think of it as being alongside some of our higher growth business units. And then I gave you the 13 times EBITDA multiple so that you can work back to the EBITDA number.
The DAR bit of course is relevant for this business. And I do need to think about the acquisition accounting for deferred revenue which will impact 2026. And then in terms of thinking about H2 and the exit rate into next year, I'm not going to guide on 2026 at this point. But all the things that we're talking about in terms of these new customer contracts coming online, of course, are going to be customer contracts that move into next year. The comp things are not quite so relevant for for next year, but virtual schools, and that 2526 academic year are obviously relevant for the first half of twenty six as well.
Speaker 1
Thanks, Sally.
Speaker 9
And e sorry, Sally. E Dynamics margin, is that is that broadly in line with the group?
Speaker 2
Or It's got yeah. They've got great they've got great margins. Nice margins.
Speaker 9
Okay. Thanks. Thank you very much.
Speaker 3
Thank you. At this time, we have no further questions from the telephone lines, and so I'll hand over to Alex to read the written questions.
Speaker 0
So Steve, I think we've answered your questions already, but obviously come back to me if that's not the case. And then, Sami, again, we've answered some of them, but I'll pose the remaining one. Do you expect to sustain double digit organic revenue growth in Clinical Assessment and UK qualifications in H2?
Speaker 1
So actually I'm really happy with how the launch of the new products in clinical have been faring in the market. But Art, do you want to comment a little bit on how you would like to guide Sami on his question on PSQ and clinical.
Speaker 5
We'd love to. I don't believe we're giving sub BU guidance for H2 on the call, but very happy to comment on the trading characteristics of both of those business units. Omar teed it up very nicely with clinical. Strong product releases have carried over into this year, and a headline for that business continues to be very, very strong digital adoption. You will have seen in the notes that the state of Tennessee has adopted our our digital library subscription, which was a very, very nice win for us.
And upcoming in the second half, we have product releases, that we're very, very happy about, most notably the Wexler memory scale and the Dellis executive excuse me, Dellis Kaplan executive functioning system, two products that we expect good performance out of. And then in The UK and international Qual's business, strong volume performance throughout the years, very, very good international growth. We expect those trends to continue throughout the second half and they're absolutely part of the story, around us reaffirming our guidance for the full year.
Speaker 1
Any further questions?
Speaker 0
Just one quick confirmation from Sami. What is the share of IA in your U. S. Higher Ed business?
Speaker 1
Over to you, Tom. Do we break that one out, the share of IA?
Speaker 7
Well, mean, we said last year it was mid-thirty percent. So that's a good starting point. And then obviously, we disclosed it. It was up 21% for the first half. And we've disclosed the overall Higher Education growth rate, so you can probably extrapolate from there.
But we're pleased with our IA growth rate in the first half. And really we think what we're really about is meeting the customer where they are. And so there was a glorious win we recently had at the University of Indiana in anatomy and physiology. And actually, it was a wonderful opportunity to reinvent what was by and large a print adoption into a digital IA courseware adoption where they've been using a print book of ours and one of our competitors' digital products, but they hadn't really been using digital product properly at all. And once we were able to walk the faculty member through the fabulous quality of the mastering platform that we have as well as his real love for our product That actually secured the adoption and that turned sort of a $2,000 print adoption into a sort of 100,000 plus adoption more broadly, which is just a beautiful example of our sales team really getting close to the customer, understanding what the customer needs are.
And that was something that we used IA for because it was able to bring pricing down for the students. And it's just a really good example of one of our sales reps listening to the customer, understanding what they need, being clear about their pedagogical desires and understandings and providing a great solution to the faculty and the students at really good pricing.
Speaker 1
Great. Thanks, Tom.
Speaker 0
Alex? I see a bit of piecemeal question answering here, but I'll let you off. So two more both for A and Q. Do you expect U. S.
Student Assessment will revert to growth in H2? And then also how should we think about the scale and impact of VU Test Prep in '25 and '26?
Speaker 1
Okay. Those are both for you, Art. So the first one is around do we expect U. S. Student assessments to go back to growth in H2?
Speaker 5
Yes, we do. Again, the results of our expectations for each sub BU are baked into that overall H2 guidance. But specific to U. S. School assessment, in H1 we had the impact of some delivery timings, that that in the in the second half will contribute, very positively to the overall picture, so good outlook there.
On the test prep business in the '25, complemented by the launch of the Pearson skilling program, we announced earlier this year, that business is continuing to scale. Our go to market hires are getting placed out in the field and continuing to deliver and we do expect to see results from that in H2 which again, are part of the story around the overall, second half guidance.
Speaker 1
Thank you, Art. Okay. So I think that's it in terms of questions. So all of you online who joined us today, thank you so much for being with us. We appreciate you and look forward to talking to you next.
Thank you.
Speaker 2
Thank you.