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Pearson is the latest FTSE 100 company to reveal plans for a bumper share buyback.
A day after Sensodyne toothpaste maker Haleon (down 0.4 per cent, or 1.3p, to 330.15p), said it would return £500m to its shareholders this year, The educational publisher has pledged to return £200m to investors by early August.
That means Pearson will have bought £500m worth of shares since September last year.
The update came alongside the group’s full-year results, which showed sales fell 4 per cent to £3.7 billion in 2023 and profits rose 53 per cent to £493 million.
The blue-chip firm reported a 7 percent increase in revenue across its testing and qualifications division, led by strong performance at its global testing business Pearson Vue.
Full marks: Educational publisher Pearson pledged to return £200m to investors by early August
And sales in the English language learning division soared 30 percent after an increase in users on its digital platforms.
Pearson Higher Education struggled, but sales are expected to grow again this year. Chief executive Omar Abbosh, who took over in January, said: “Pearson is well positioned today, providing a stable platform for continued growth that can benefit from the inflection point we see with the development of AI.” We have an exciting future ahead of us.”
Yesterday the shares gained 5.6 per cent, or 53.4 pence, to 1,014 pence.
The FTSE 100 rose 0.69 per cent, or 52.48 points, to 7,682.5 and the FTSE 250 added 1.57 per cent, or 299.51 points, to 19,354.38.
On the other side of the Atlantic, Wall Street was looking for another record session.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 0.2 percent, the S&P 500 rose 0.8 percent and the Nasdaq gained 1.1 percent. But the mood was somewhat soured by the unfolding crisis at New York Community Bank (NYCB). The regional lender plunged 26 per cent after revising its fourth-quarter losses to £1.9bn – more than ten times what it had previously disclosed – due to the identification of “material weaknesses” in landmark transactions. And NYCB ousted its boss Thomas Cangemi and replaced him with president Alessandro DiNello.
In London, Rightmove warned that its customer numbers are likely to fall this year due to continuing pressures on the economy.
Membership of the property website fell 1 per cent to 18,785 in 2023. The shares fell 0.07 per cent, or 0.4 pence, to 566.2 pence.
Tritax Big Box, a logistics real estate investor, returned to a £70.6m profit in 2023, after making a £601m loss a year earlier.
The company has less than a week to say whether it wants to make a bid for commercial property investor UKCM.
The Tritax upgrade came as UKCM sold its Bristol office building to property investment and asset management firm Tri7 for £14.5m.
Shares in Tritax Big Box rose 2 per cent, or 2.9p, to 149.5p and UKCM rose 2 per cent, or 1.3p, to 65p.
Another group to rise was defense group Babcock after it agreed a £560m contract with the UK’s Submarine Delivery Agency (SDA) to refit nuclear submarines. The shares gained 2.9 per cent, or 14.2 pence, to 504 pence.
Elsewhere, green services provider eEnergy will receive up to £40m of funding from Natwest to help boost public sector energy transition projects. The shares soared 14.4 per cent, or 0.95p, to 7.55p.
The founder and chief executive of Superdry has been given an extra four weeks to say whether he wants to make a bid to buy the British fashion retailer.
Julian Dunkerton, who set up the company in 1985 and owns a 26 per cent stake, is reportedly working with US private equity firm Davidson Kempner to take over the shares he does not own.
The deadline was extended from yesterday until March 29. The stock fell 13.1 per cent, or 5.3p, to 35p.