Pearson plc (PSON) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Pearson's 2022 full year results. Today, we'll host a presentation followed by a Q&A session. [Operator Instructions] And as a reminder, please, can you put your phones on silent. And with that, I'll hand over to Andy.

Thanks a lot, Jo, and welcome to everyone here in the room and for you joining online, many thanks for joining our full year results and strategy presentation. As usual, I'm here with Sally, and it's great also to have my full leadership team with me here today with the exception of Marykay Wells, who unfortunately had knee surgery last week and was unable to travel. Whilst you'll hear from the divisional presidents in due course, I do want to acknowledge the whole team that you see behind me because what we're building and what you're going to see today is truly a team effort. I also want to take the opportunity to thank Mr. Modesty, Tim Bozik, for over 39 years of service at Pearson. Now Tim was set to retire at the end of last year, but such is his commitment to this company and to what we're building, he's agreed to stay on to help both me and to partner with Lynne in building the next iteration of Pearson+, and you'll be able to see that outside for those of you here in the room after this presentation. Now this morning, you're going to hear about some significant strategic and operational progress we made last year, which has strengthened our foundations for a future of sustainable growth. At the start of 2022, I identified 4 clear priorities for Pearson: firstly, deliver sales and profit growth; secondly, increase our focus on execution, quality and trust. We want to embed customer and consumer insights across the whole company; and finally, scale and grow Pearson+. Now the results that we announced today demonstrate the strong momentum that we've been building over the past 24 months. For a second consecutive year, our financial performance was ahead of our expectations, with sales growing by 5% and operating profits increasing by 11% to GBP 456 million. Now this reflects excellent progress across the group, driven by our strategic initiatives. Our strategy centers around a lifetime of learning. A major focus last year was to enhance the interconnectivity between our divisions, making more parts of Pearson more relevant to each other while driving financial and operational benefits. Our business model is now moving from stand-alone products to connected learning applications centered around the trusted relationships we're creating with consumers. In 2022, we delivered on those priorities and evolved our overall proposition. We've also been adding new capabilities and market opportunities through the acquisitions of Mondly, Credly and the recent decision to acquire PDRI. We saw significant growth in Pearson+ paid subscriptions. And just last month, we received Canadian government approval for our Pearson Test of English. We've also been hard at work on our workforce skills talent investment platform and exciting innovations in our English products, and these are just some of the ways we're moving Pearson forward. As we do all of this, we're growing our universe of consumer relationships. Last year, our products and services impacted the lives of around 160 million global users. While we continue to serve the full spectrum of learning institutions, the workplace is now the heart of many people's learning journey. Throughout today's presentation, you'll hear about the central role credentials in a lifetime of learning, be that a college degree or increasingly workplace skilling. Enterprise learning has become foundational to Pearson and is more important than ever to our future. We now have more than 2,000 enterprise learning clients. Increasingly, when employers need trusted workplace learned solutions, they think of Pearson. [Presentation]

Now this part of our business is and will continue to be subject to strategic investment. As you'll see today, the capabilities of Faethm and Credly are coming together in a product with the potential to accelerate the growth of our workforce skills division. In addition, we continue to expand our Pearson View offerings, and we're capitalizing on the demand for English as a gateway to employment. Beyond our workforce offerings, the progress of Pearson+ continues to point to an exciting future. In calendar year 2022, our first full year in market, Pearson+ had 600,000 paid subscribers and 4.8 million registered users. As many of you know, while we started Pearson+ with eTextbooks, the additions of channels content covering subjects beyond higher education, you're going to see us start to expand our total addressable market beyond institutional higher education and into enterprise learning on a global basis. Now I found it really interesting that since launch last August, Pearson+ channels have been viewed by learners in over 170 countries, demonstrated great product market fit and presenting a big opportunity, given that we haven't even actively marketed the offering outside of the United States. So as you can see, 2022 has been a year of extraordinary momentum. The level of activity around the business is unprecedented, but it's also focused and better executed. Pearson is in a strong position to capture the opportunities in front of us. Now shortly, you'll hear from our divisional presidents. Each of them will take you through the significant progress they've made in the last 12 months and explain their plans for the future. But first, I'll hand over to Sally for our financial performance and expectations.

Thanks, Andy. Hi, everyone. I'll walk you through the detail in a bit. But in summary, we've had a great 2022 and are on our way to achieving the 2025 commitments that we made last year. We saw continuing momentum in 2022 with 5% sales growth and profit up 11% to GBP 456 million. EPS increased 48% to 51.8p given this increase in operating profit and the changes in tax and interest that I highlighted at Q1 last year as well as lower issued shares because of our share buyback. Our cash performance was good with cash conversion of 88% despite the impact of disposals, which I've previously flagged. Our free cash flow continues to be an area of strength for the group. Year-end net debt increased to GBP 0.6 billion given our GBP 350 million share buyback and dividend payments. This was partially offset by strong operating cash and net M&A proceeds. Given these strong results and our confidence in the outlook for the group, the Board are proposing a 5% increase to the full year dividend to 21.5p. We shared our revenue performance with you in our January trading update, so I'll keep the comments on this slide brief. We saw good underlying sales growth of 5% in 2022, in part helped by a return to a normalized exam pattern and borders reopening following COVID, but also due to continued momentum across the business. Assessments and qualifications grew 8%, partly because of the normalized exam pattern, but also due to clinical assessments, where government funding was strong, and the increased interest in well-being providing a tailwind. Pearson View growth returned in Q4 as the DBSA contract change fell out of the year-on-year comp. Virtual Learning grew 4% with growth of 4% for both virtual schools and OPM. Higher education saw an improving trend on 2021 and was down 4%. English grew 24%, following a strong performance in Pearson Test of English, partially as borders reopened, but also driven by market share performance, particularly in India. Workforce skills grew 7% as we saw good growth in BTEC and apprenticeships and GED. In 2023, Faethm and Credly will be part of our underlying growth measures. Group profit grew 11% on an underlying basis to GBP 456 million through operating leverage, partially offset by inflation. We continued to invest for growth, reallocating spend as necessary. At a headline level, we benefited from FX, which was partially offset by the midyear disposal of our international courseware local publishing businesses, which removed approximately GBP 15 million of profit. At a divisional level, assessments and qualifications maintained margin at 18%. Profit grew strongly in the year, with operating leverage, partially offset by inflation. Virtual Learning margins improved to 9% through operating leverage as well as efficiencies across virtual schools and OPM. Higher education grew margin to 10% with cost efficiencies and margin improving, offsetting declining revenues. The headline profit for each of these divisions was also impacted by FX, given their weighting to the U.S. and therefore, the dollar. English grew profit through operating leverage, partially offset by increased investment with margins rising to 8%, and workforce profit was broadly breakeven as expected due to investment in the business and in particular, in Faethm, Credly and our new workforce skills talent investment platform. These investments will drive significant future growth with operating leverage, which will support further investment and improved margins. We saw a good cash conversion of 88% despite the impact of the timing of the disposal of our international courseware local publishing businesses. This impacted conversion by approximately 10%, which can be seen predominantly on the other working capital movements line. From a net debt movement of funds perspective, this impact is offset by the standard M&A working capital adjustments. So in short, our operating cash performance remains strong. As expected, our capital investment profile changed in the year with CapEx reducing and the focus shifting to investment in product development. Our free cash flow is also a point of strength, which we plan to maintain, and we've adjusted our incentive plan metrics towards this measure on a go-forward basis. Net debt increased to GBP 0.6 billion, given our GBP 350 million share buyback and dividend payments, partially offset by strong operating cash and positive net M&A proceeds. Return on capital increased from 7.9% to 8.7%. We continue to be disciplined in our investments and rigorous about securing required returns. Turning to 2023 and beyond. We gave you our expectations out to 2025 this time last year and our expectations of mid-single-digit underlying growth across the '22 to '25 period remain the same. Given that we brought forward our mid-teens margin expectation from 2025 to 2023, we now see upside to this for 2025, predominantly through the operating leverage we expect to achieve from that revenue growth. At a divisional rate level, growth rate expectations remain consistent with those previously outlined with the exception of virtual schools, where we now expect low single-digit growth over the period and English, where we expect high single-digit growth. Virtual Schools is impacted by the COVID cohort unwind in the '22, '23 school year as well as the loss of a major school in each of '23, '24 and '24, '25. Whilst we had planned the school churn and we can mitigate the impact over time, the size of these particular schools impacts revenue growth over this time period. But we remain confident in the long-term performance of this division, which we expect to demonstrate high single-digit growth over the 2019 to 2025 period, and we plan to invest in career and technical curriculum to drive growth and synergies with workforce. English expectations have risen to high single digits given the significant revenue synergies Mondly brings to the group. In 2023 specifically, at a group level, excluding OPM, we expect low to mid-single-digit revenue growth with declines in higher education moderating further and virtual schools impacted by factors I've mentioned. There will be growth across all the other divisions with assessments and qualifications growing low to mid-single digit and view returning to growth. English growing high single digit and workforce growing double digits with the launch of the talent investment platform. Adjusted operating profit and tax will be in line with market expectations, but the interest charge will be lower at about GBP 35 million. Profit growth will be driven by operating leverage and cost efficiencies, partially offset by higher inflation and the residual impact of our disposal of the international courseware local publishing businesses. Margin in 2023 will be at mid-teens with improvement driven by the efficiency program, which we announced in August '22 and delivered by the end of last year. As a side note, given our profit growth and the increased percentage of profit in U.S. dollars, a $0.01 move in FX from 2023 will equate to GBP 4 million of profit. In terms of quarterly phasing, divisional growth will be relatively consistent across the year with each quarter aligning to the full year expectation, which I've given you, with a few exceptions, which I've outlined on this slide. Obviously, OPM will be included in results at least until we have concluded the strategic review with the impact of the ASU contract loss reflected. As a reminder, the '22 to '23 revenue impact of ASU is GBP 130 million. Balance sheet expectations remain the same, with CapEx reducing and investment mix shifting towards product development with cash conversion of 90% plus, and a return on capital improvement in 2023 and a double-digit target in 2025. We continue to have a disciplined approach to capital allocation, building on the track record of recent years. In the short term, we will maintain our balance sheet strength and the optionality that brings should further investment opportunities arrive. But at this point, we have no current material M&A plans beyond the completion of PDRI, which is expected to take place in the first half of 2023. The Board is committed to our progressive and sustainable dividend, and we'll keep capital allocation policy application under continuous review. So in summary, we exceeded financial expectations in 2022. We're on track to meet expectations in 2023 and remain committed to our targets out to 2025. We will meet mid-teens margin in 2023. We have a strong balance sheet, which provides optionality, and we maintain strong operating cash conversion and attractive free cash flow profile and see improving return on capital. So with that, I will hand over to Gio. He will update you on our English Language Learning business.

Great. Thank you, Sally, and good morning, everyone. I'm Gio, President of English Language Learning. Today, I'm going to remind you of our strategy in ELL, share the progress we made in 2022 and how we intend to continue to drive growth for the division in 2023. Let's start with our strategy. In ELL, we aim to be the world's leading destination for committed learners. These are people looking to learn and to prove their English proficiency in order to make progress in their lives, whether through study, work, opportunities or migration. We are building personalized language learning at scale, which allows us to expand our addressable market to increase our market share and to capture more consumer lifetime spend. As a reminder, everything we do in ELL is based on our proprietary global scale of English. It's a simple scale that allows learners to track the progress of the language learning journey. Last year, we highlighted 2 areas of focus for the division in 2022. Firstly, we shared our plan to build our direct-to-consumer strategy. As you know, we did this through acquiring Mondly. Secondly, we outlined our aim to win in 2 other segments, high-stakes assessments and institutional learning. In 2022, we gained market share and increased revenue in the Pearson Test of English. We also launched Pearson English Connect, a new digital solution that enhances the learning experience for students and teachers across our institutional customer base. This work has laid the foundation for growth in ELL in 2023 across our 3 product areas. Firstly, in our institutional English business, we are accelerating the development of digital first flexible products that will deliver personalized pathways for learners. Secondly, within high stakes assessment, as Andy mentioned, we recently received approval from the Canadian government to accept PTE for migration, and we'll start delivering tests later in 2023. We are also looking to expand our addressable market outside traditional high-stakes assessment by launching the Pearson English skill certificate later this year. This is a new mid stakes 4 skills English test. Finally, within online self-study language learning, we will continue to invest in monthly integration and product enhancements. This will be critical to driving our direct-to-consumer growth strategy. We will explore an offering for corporate language learning, starting with Mondly Works for enterprises and further develop existing content on platforms such as VR. There is a demo in the breakout area where the team will be ready to answer your questions. We are constantly working on ways to innovate and to expand what we can offer to learners. Here's a look at some of the exciting new features that we're building and testing right now. [Presentation]

So alongside our product innovation, we're also supporting Pearson's growth strategy. First, we will bring millions of direct-to-consumer relationships into the broader Pearson ecosystem, and we're working to establish direct relationships with even more of our end users. Second, we have growing interconnectivity with other divisions, such as workforce skills where we are building a joint go-to-market plan and positioning English language proficiency as a key skill for career progression. And let's not forget that in 2022, we successfully integrated Mondly into Pearson+. Third, we bring a truly global team to Pearson with presence and relationships in over 150 countries, creating opportunities for other divisions. Moving to the financials. We foresee high single-digit revenue growth in 2023 and through to 2025, underpinned by share gain. And because of our strong operational leverage, we can expect margin enhancements across ELL. We know that we are tapping into a large growing market, with an exceptional set of capabilities and a clear product road map, supported by an exciting strategy. That is the key to our growth, and we're fully focused on execution. And with that, I'll hand it over to Tom who will update you on the higher ed business. Thank you.

Thanks, Gio. So it's great to be with you all today. I'm Tom Simon, I'm President of Virtual Learning as well as Higher Education, which I took over last September. So today, I'm going to talk a little bit about higher education, talking about some of the changes we've made in 2022. Before moving on to what we're doing now, all of which will make this part of Pearson more competitive and more successful. I want to start off by saying that we've got some really good strengths in higher education, incredible IP, great author relationships, deep expertise in learning technology strong relationships with faculty and, of course, a small little thing called Pearson+. However, we haven't been as commercial from an organizational, sales, service, product and cultural perspective as we need to be. [Audio Gap] to increase competitiveness bringing in new talent, reducing fixed costs and product investment as we focus on key initiatives, setting up a price-led operating model, investing in sales and transforming our product. Since August 2022, we changed the leadership team with 4 new hires, and we've reduced the number of senior roles by 30% to increase accountability. Alongside our other cost initiatives, we've made major structural efficiency savings and delivered margin expansion in 2022. We should see further operating leverage in the future. Alongside the reductions in fixed costs, we've continued to invest in our key growth drivers, in particular, our go-to-market strategy. And as I mentioned, we're implementing a new product-led operating model in the first half of 2023. General managers will now be responsible for revenue growth, product profitability and building successful learning franchises like Campbell's Biology, Tro Chemistry and Triola Statistics. At the same time, we are working on product transformation. Our new go-to-market strategy will be driven by a reorganized and larger sales team, designed to improve the win rate of new adoptions and drive much higher renewal rates in our existing business. Our core team will continue to focus on 5 key disciplines: math, business, science, computer science and engineering, where we already have strong market positions and the potential to win new adoptions. They will be complemented by our customer loyalty team to manage renewals for lower value, high penetration existing business with a focus on retention. We will also have a team entirely focused on winning new business in white space, high potential departments, and we are developing our coverage for professional disciplines, teach education with a larger dedicated team, and we are doubling our efforts to cover disciplines such as English, humanities and social sciences. From a product perspective, in 2022, we've migrated Mastering to the Cloud. And this year, we're migrating MyLabs to the Cloud. Through this, we're enhancing stability and performance and driving a better user experience. And building on these initiatives, we're going to focus on 4 key areas: converging and upgrading our courseware platforms; simplifying, increasing access integration strategies; building out our digital learning experiences and driving improvements in product stability. We are launching 3 interactive MyLab titles in calculus, algebra and statistics this fall. And we're also launching new iLabs in biology and microbiology with anatomy and physiology to follow in 2024. And of course, we now have 18 study channels to grow Pearson+, which helps widen our total addressable market and helps us with secondary market recapture. We are simplifying and reducing the number of inclusive access integration models we have to make our offering more competitive, and that includes the adoption of Pearson+ in IA models for roughly 1/3 of our schools this fall. And we are building out our digital learning experiences to deliver more interactive and personalized learning experiences and to take a digital-first content creation approach. Finally, we're focused on improving the stability of our core learning experiences. Turning to the financials. We expect revenue declines to moderate further in 2023 to low single digit and additional margin improvements as we benefit from cost efficiencies. We continue to expect revenue growth of low to single mid digit -- sorry, low to mid-single digit for 2022 to 2025, and for margins to further improve driven by operating leverage as the business returns to growth. And we will focus our investment on key product launches as we look to enhance the user experience to drive better performance in the future. So to summarize, in 2022, we've put in place a new management team and significantly reduced fixed costs. We started to implement a new operating model with sweeping changes to our sales teams, and we're putting in place plans to transform our product. And we're excited about the developments in Pearson+, which helps address and widen our addressable market and also helps us with secondary market recapture. And over the medium term, I am confident that these initiatives will help us build a higher education organization that can define the future of learning and to realize this vision will take time as it's not a straightforward endeavor, but it represents a huge opportunity for us, one, we are seizing with both hands. And with that, I'll hand you over to Mike, who will update you on our workforce skills business.

Many thanks, Tom. Good morning, everyone. It's great to be with you all this morning and with my fantastic group of colleagues. I'm Mike Howells, President of our Workforce Skills division. I'm going to spend the next few minutes talking to you about the significant progress that we made during 2022, what we intend to deliver this year and how that underpins our growth outlook. 2022 has been a year of great progress for us. From a product point of view, we restructured our existing portfolio and build a series of new products and new features. From a technology point of view, we reengineered our product platform and created a single state-of-the-art global marketing and sales tech stack. Organizationally, we integrated what were previously disparate products and engineering teams into 1 global organization, and we've created a single global sales and marketing team. So we have a clear strategy, a unique set of innovative products and a great team to sell them. And we've achieved all of that in 2022, while also delivering solid financial performance. So this is a team that knows how to execute. To focus on the needs of our different customer segments, we have organized our workforce skills division into 2 parts: vocational qualifications and workforce solutions. Now vocational qualifications is what we previously referred to as our performance zone. And here, we offer globally renowned qualifications and training services that allow learners to build their knowledge, skills and behaviors they need for career success. Now whether that's a higher national deployment in computing, a BTEC in health and social care or training as part of the TQ Construction Academy, we provide the skills and qualifications that our economy needs now and in the future. The second part of that is this is Workforce Solutions, which we've previously referred to as our transformation zone. This is our enterprise and consumer-focused business. It brings together our 2 recent acquisitions, Credly and Faethm, with our existing portfolio of products and capabilities in TalentLens, GED and Accelerated Pathways. Workforce Solutions portfolio of services is specifically designed to meet the needs of enterprises, but always with a core focus on the needs of individual consumers, the employees upon whom the success of any organization depends. Workforce Solutions will be the growth engine of the division, and we see near-term priority growth opportunities in pre-hire recruitment, talent management and learning as an enterprise employee benefit. At the heart of our new strategy is our new talent investment platform, and this is available now as an MVP with a full launch coming in 2023. We first told you about our ambition 12 months ago, and now we can show you the product itself. The platform helps enterprises solve their connected challenges in workforce planning, upskilling and recruitment. It connects Faethm skills, AI and data science capabilities with Credly's portable skills profile and credentialed learning for enterprises. And we developed a platform based on testing and feedback from a number of enterprise customers. And these insights have helped us put the customer and their employees at the heart of this product. They love the unique data and services that we offer, so now we are making those available in a newly connected and above all, actionable way. We designed this product to tackle the fragmentation that enterprises told us was one of their key frustrations with other solutions in the market. And as with all good technology businesses, we will continue to rely heavily on customer feedback and insights to develop the platform over time, and we'll share updates with you as we progress. So let's go into a bit more detail on functionality. At the most basic level, enterprises using the product can give each employee their own personal and portable skills profile based on a mix of inferred skills from their current role and verified skills from prior credentials and certifications. Employees benefit from personalized recommendations for accredited learning to boost success within their current role as well as a future path to maximize their career potential. Senior executives, HR leaders can see at a glance the real skills they have within their organization and the skills they need in the future to remain competitive. That helps them build training and skills programs that truly maximize the performance and the value of their employees. Now we are selling this as a Software as a Service product, supplemented by additional professional services. And we have a demo available in the breakout area afterwards where the team will be ready to answer any questions that you may have. But here's a short taste of video to set this in. [Presentation]

In 2022, we grew our enterprise client base by 133% to 1,503. Our clients include Fortune Global 500 companies and many other household names, a selection of which you can see on this slide. And as well as continuing to grow customer reach in this way, we will grow the value we bring to these clients through expanded features within the core platform itself and additional high-value services such as our strategic workforce planning and market data tools. To strengthen the way we go to market, we have created 1 global enterprise sales team with hubs in the U.S., U.K. and Australia, focused on our target industries, including tech, health care, financial services and retail. And I'm sure you can see how workforce skills fits into Pearson's wider strategy with products that can interconnect with others across the Pearson ecosystem, supporting and accelerating Pearson's lifelong learning ambition. For example, English is the globally recognized language of business. So we have added English to Faethm's skills framework as well as offering Credly badges for Pearson's range of English assessment products, as you heard from Gio earlier. This allows consumers to prove their language proficiency to employers. The connection between students and work is an obvious collaboration point with Pearson+. And there are fantastic opportunities to connect our services with Pearson VUE to maximize the value that Pearson can bring to our enterprise customers and our consumers. Turning to our financials. We expect double-digit revenue growth in 2023. For 2022 to 2025, we expect revenue growth of more than 20% and for margins to increase. So we remain firmly on track with the guidance that we gave you last year. In summary, we've made significant progress over the past year, executing against our plan, building our organization and expanding our value proposition for our customers. And as we enter this next phase, this is an incredibly exciting moment for the division, and I'm confident that we have another year of significant progress ahead of us. Thanks for listening. And with that, I'll hand you over to Art.

Thanks, Mike, and good morning, everyone. I'm thrilled to be here today to talk about a business that I love, assessment qualifications. Our A&Q business showed great momentum in 2022, and we're poised to deliver revenue growth and continued strong margins in '23 with an excellent longer-term outlook driven by growth initiatives that will help us expand the scope and the reach of our product offerings. Each of our business units within A&Q, clinical assessments, Pearson VUE, U.S. school assessments and our U.K. Pearson School Qualifications business remains in strong market positions with excellent offerings and a blue-chip customer base. Our offerings help people and enterprises at all stages of learning and career advancement. They make an excellent value proposition for our customers and deliver good business results for us. Allow me to focus for a moment on our Pearson VUE business. Just as our full A&Q portfolio offers great diversification, so does the sectors that Pearson VUE serves. We have strong market presence, information technology, health care, insurance, professional associations, finance and others across our 550 clients. This breadth gives us exposure to areas of significant growth, like cybersecurity and cloud computing as well as resilience to economic swings via areas such as nursing, pharmaceuticals, emergency medical technicians and other health care professions. We're continuing to invest in the Pearson VUE platform, which, as you heard Andy say earlier, delivers 1 test every 1.6 seconds around the globe. We're steadily expanding the global delivery platforms reach, scalability and features. We've made further investment in targeted growth initiatives. In late 2022, we announced the decision to acquire PDRI, a company that specializes in assessments for human government -- excuse me, for human capital and government. PDRI gives us immediate accretive growth and expands our reach into a key strategic area. The U.S. federal government is one of the largest employers in the world with more than 4 million professionals. We're also investing in an expansion of Pearson VUE's service offering. We'll be moving up the value chain by broadening our offering to provide more support for the Professional learnings journey towards certification. With our partners, we'll expand the core capabilities in select industries to offer tools and guidance to our test takers to help prepare them for their certification exam. We'll be sharing more as we bring these expanded capabilities to market. These growth initiatives are an excellent testimony to the synergies across the entire Pearson portfolio. In particular, the role that Pearson VUE plays in helping global professionals get certified is a perfect complement to our workforce skills business. Pearson VUE is the delivery backbone of our Pearson Test of English, and our higher education business provides content as part of Pearson VUE's work to help professionals prepare for their certification journey. We see growth low to mid-single digits in 2023 and through to '25. We'll continue our strong market position and margins. In summary, our A&Q business continues to be a mainstay of Pearson revenue and profits with dependable results and growth, diversification across numerous economic sectors complement a relationship with the rest of the Pearson products and our reputation for quality adds up to a winning business that we can all count on. And with that, I'll turn it over to Lynne.

Thank you, Art, and good morning, everyone. On behalf of Tim and I, it's great to be here with you today to share an update on Pearson+. Here are the key headlines. Pearson+ has quickly gained traction in the market. Our channels offer is expanding both the addressable market and reach with college students, and Pearson+ will increasingly become a key offering to integrate consumers into the Pearson ecosystem. Now as you know, we created Pearson+ to provide students with affordable access to enhanced eTextbooks with the kind of consumer-grade digital experience we all now take for granted. In a relatively short space of time, we've made huge progress in bringing that vision to life. This year, Pearson+ made strong headway. It performed well in the '22 fall semester with 406,000 paid subscriptions, a 3x increase over the same period last year. And in the same period, it reached 2.83 million registered users. Now for calendar year '22, our first full year in market, this translates to 600,000 paid subscriptions and 4.8 million registered users. This progress was driven by a consistent and rigorous focus on 3 areas: product improvements, growing our catalog, which now stands at more than 1,800 titles, and expanding our distribution to include college bookstores alongside our direct-to-consumer channel. We are pleased with the progress of Pearson+, but we have always been clear that this is just the starting point for what will be a far more expansive journey. Now we started out on this path last fall with the launch of a channel's MVP. Channels provides original and curated video content and practice materials to help students learn the most challenging subjects, pass their courses and perform better on their exams. We have already grown channels to -- sorry, we've already grown to 18 channels covering 23 college courses containing over 40,000 video and practice problems. And by year-end, we are planning to add another 6 channels like calculus for business and managerial accounting. For a product that's still in its infancy, it's impressive that since August '22, students have engaged in nearly 2 million minutes of video content and more than 1 million practice problems and channels. And channels is relevant to every student studying subjects like chemistry, biology or economics, not just those assigned Pearson course materials. So this meaningfully expands our addressable market and reach with college students, and we're now developing our commercial plans with the goal to be ready for fall this year. But that's not all. We continue to look to other student and consumer learning needs. As they reach the end of their formal education, students need a bridge from academic knowledge and skills to those that will help them thrive in employment. And Pearson+ can offer them more tools and more ways to prepare for entering the workforce. Now we're currently piloting an enhanced content offer in Pearson+ with a focus on in-demand tech skills and essential soft skills, classes such as Intro to Python, JavaScript, Critical Thinking and Emotional Intelligence. This is all part of how Pearson can support people throughout their learning journeys and a great illustration of how we can extend our value proposition, creating strong connections across the different parts of the company and leveraging the wealth of our unique IP. To give just 1 tangible example of how this could work. Imagine a college student who comes to Pearson+ for their college textbook and study needs, who can also now learn AWS Cloud foundations, who then goes on to complete their tech certification via Pearson VUE, and ultimately earns a Credly badge. We are very excited about the market response to Pearson+. We see further momentum in subscription numbers this spring semester and we have a clear strategic road map. And to tell you more about how we see this future opportunity for the consumer and for the future of Pearson, I'll hand back to Andy.

Thank you, Lynne. Now in summary, English language learning is growing strongly and bringing millions of direct-to-consumer relationships into the company. Our higher ed business has undergone strategic organizational changes, and we're investing in our products to get us back to top line growth. Pearson+ continues to grow and serve as a springboard for the future of our Higher Ed business and our ambitions across a lifetime of learning. In workforce skills, the launch of our talent investment platform represents a significant step forward in this division's strategy and capitalizing on the market demand for reskilling and upskilling. And finally, assessment and qualifications continues as a source of stability and growth for Pearson. We're excited to expand the scope of its offering, and it will play a central role in our lifetime learning strategy. We're delivering on what we promised to do, and we'll continue to do that. The crossover between our businesses is accelerating, creating synergies and forming the foundations of our digital learning ecosystem. Now our focus is on leveraging our progress to make that ecosystem a reality. Our priorities in 2023 will focus on moving us closer to this goal. Specifically, I've identified 3 critical priorities for 2023: drive sustainable and profitable revenue growth; delight our consumers and become obsessed with meeting their expectations; and finally, focus on execution across all of the business. As I've mentioned, we're at a unique moment where we're beginning to combine our capabilities to benefit a vast number of individuals and enterprises. We believe there's enormous power in an ecosystem that brings our products together and that there is significant growth potential when we combine Pearson+, our talent investment platform, Pearson VUE and English into 1 unified platform. As we move into 2023 and beyond, you'll see us push further into a business model that connects the 160 million consumers we reach each year into 1 connected Pearson experience. Even as we turn this concept into reality, we continue to work hard to deliver what consumers demand every day. As we deepen relationships with our consumers, they can move with ease between our products and services as their learning needs evolve. That creates lifetime value for each one of them and for Pearson and for our stakeholders. And with that, we'll be happy, the entire group, including any ESG questions or legal questions to Cinthia, our General Counsel; Strategy, Sue, who recently joined us from Delta; and Ali, since we're in the talent business. We also focus a lot internally on our own talent. And of course, myself, the divisional President. We take questions in the room. Jo, you are monitoring the questions that are coming in online. Jo?

[Operator Instructions] I think I'll start in the room for now. Okay.

[Operator Instructions] Tom?

Tom here from Citi. I mean there's too much to talk about, so I'm going to try and bring it down to 3. And at least 2 of them, I think, are going to be on workforce skills because it's obviously a big new development. The first question, when I look at some of the other companies exposed to the sort of enterprise learning environment, they've talked about that lengthening sales cycles and things like that. I'm just wondering whether you could offer some perspectives on just the sort of the broad macro outlook and trying to sort of sell this new product. And then actually 1 follow-on question on your 1,500 enterprises, we obviously don't know the exact number in terms of revenue for Faethm and Credly, but that feels like something like GBP 15,000 or GBP 20,000 straight dollars per client. Can you just talk about how that evolves? I presume a lot of this is land and expand, but if you can just give us a sort of a sense of pathway. And then maybe the third question on English language learning, another very exciting area. The Canada contract or designation feels very exciting. Can we maybe unpack the opportunity there and also talk about whether there are further big contracts like that, somewhere in the pipeline?

Great. Mike?

Thanks for the question, Tom. So at the macro level, I mean, this continues to be a very exciting opportunity, a very exciting market for Pearson. It's going through a huge amount of change and disruption. Our belief very strongly is that we're still really in the early phases of digital disruption of the HR technology and the learning and development market. We still see very strong growth signals in spite of the macroeconomic backdrop. And above all, the mega trend we see is that there is a very clear and emerging awareness within organizations of the need to understand the value of their people, particularly of the value of their people as opposed to the value of their technology or in partnership with the value of their technology. So automation and augmentation actually reveal the value of people and then we can talk a bit more about that. So we see great growth prospects, great opportunities in the change and disruption that we are solving for with our core platform. Sales cycles about 90 to 120 day typically, sales cycles for the platform, which we've built into our model. You're right, within that very large number of enterprise customers that we have, as you would expect, we have a big variety of the extent to which we serve them. We have some very, very high consumers of the full suite of products that we offer, and we have others that are presently consuming 1 portion, 1 slice. And you are correct, our approach here is a land and expand strategy. We're trying to bring a very differentiated core set of services that help them make sense of the change that they see in this space, and in particular, to deal with that fragmentation that they're suffering from. And in so doing, we think that gives us great opportunities for further growth with all of those relationships.

Thanks for your question, Tom. Canada is the biggest destination for migration and study in the world. It represents approximately 30% of the overall market. Migration, as Andy said, is what we received approval for, we estimate is about GBP 100 million, and we think we can, over time, gain share in that market as we've done in other destination location. We're already accepted by 91% of Canadian universities for study admissions. So to your second point, we believe that we can further grow in the study market, which is slightly bigger than the migration opportunity for Canada. For that, we're also in conversations with the Canadian government to obtain approval for the SDS, the Fast Track approval on that study segment, which would further expedite that because it requires a simpler application for the student perspective. On top of that, as you heard me saying, we believe that there is opportunity in mid stakes assessments. We've had the nursing recognition in the U.S., which is not sizable in terms of revenue, but it's an example of how we can continue to address our addressable market going into specific professional bodies. And then lastly, the important thing to realize is that the assessment opportunity overall is very large and as we unfold that product experience that I described, I think we can capture further growth across our different platforms.

Perfect. Where next, Jo?

Can we take the next question from James from Goldman.

It's James Tate from Goldman Sachs. I've got 2 questions, please. First, you mentioned a couple of years ago that the secondary market impairs and textbooks in higher ed was around 14 million units. Can you give us an update on the progress since then? And how successful has the recapture the secondary market been? And how much is still to come? And secondly, just to double check, you mentioned that you don't expect any material future M&A. Does that mean that you now have all the capabilities you want in work for skills? And I guess you slightly changed the wording of your midterm growth guidance for the division to greater than 20% CAGR. But do you still expect revenue in 2025 to be double 2021?

Sally, do you want to or Tom?

Sure, I'll take the first one on the secondary market. I won't get into the sort of the exact units, yes, in terms of the secondary market today, but the sort of the 2 fundamental strategies on how do we make sure that we're attracting more students upfront in terms of purchasing, and we do that by thinking through the inclusive access model. So if you do that and you get that right, then you've got more students opting in at the start of class as especially relevant for some of the humanities and social sciences, of course, is where you've got lower sell-through. So that's how we think about that in terms of the institutional approach to the secondary market. Then obviously, as we think about Pearson+ and our overall pricing strategies when you're thinking about it from a consumer perspective, clearly, we're being very deliberate and thoughtful from a pricing perspective to make sure that as you look at some of the secondary market options, we're pricing at a more attractive rate than what you might get in a secondhand bookstore so on and so forth. So we're kind of thinking about it from the institutional point of view as well as the consumer point of view, making sure that the pricing works, both institutionally and for the consumer. That's kind of how we're thinking about it.

On capabilities, yes, we have all of the core building blocks that we need going forward, and we will continue to look for new opportunities to accelerate returns for shareholders and to progress our strategy. As we rightly said, we have no plans for any material M&A, but like any good growth-minded company, we keep our eyes open for opportunities reward shareholders. But for now, absolutely no plans because we have what we need. And you're correct, yes, we're retaining our guidance for double revenue by '25.

Can we go to Matt just behind Rachel from Credit Suisse?

It's Matthew from CS. The first one is on higher ed. So you mentioned you wanted to have a growth CAGR for '22 to '25. I guess this is for Sally. Does that mean that you, therefore, need growth to return in higher ed in '24? Or alternatively, you've got a massive growth rate coming in 2025. So just some color on that, first of all, please. The second question is also for Sally, which is on the margin for the group in 2025. What does sort of high mid-teens mean? Does that mean 16, 17, does it mean 17, 18? I know you don't want to define it, but I'm asking anyway because it's a little bit vague. And the last question is, and this is not a criticism because I think the articulation of the strategy is really good. A lot of messages around interaction between the different divisions. But there have been a couple of slip-ups on contracts in the last couple of years. There was now it's virtual schools. What sort of reassurance can you give us on other contracts? Like how are the contracts structured in virtual schools, what's the concentration of contracts? And how do we know that we're not going to be sitting down full year next year, discussing another loss of a school contract that has an impact on numbers.

So in terms of higher ed growth, you'll probably want to hear the same thing from Tom, but absolutely, yes, it means growth in '24 and '25. In terms of margin in 2025, I'm really confident about that margin improvement in 2025. It comes from the operating leverage on revenue as I described. 16, 17 is probably a good way to look at it, but we are really focused on that revenue growth and it dropping through nice and strongly. And as you know, we've got a reputation for being really cost conscious as well, so really confident in delivering that. And I guess I'll give an overview on the contracts and maybe Tom will come in as well as leader of that business. It's within the Virtual Schools business, you get this rotation of schools. We see schools coming in, we see schools going out. I think in this particular circumstance, it's about the size of this particular contract, but we're really confident in this business. We know how to manage these contracts. The team are already on making sure that we mitigate this particular circumstance, but we really see good future in this business. And I think the shift into the career and technical space is a real opportunity for us as well that we're already bringing online this year, too. Would you add anything, Tom?

Yes. I mean, I would just reaffirm exactly what Sally said about higher education as you think about virtual schools, right? This business has grown from about 75,000 kids to 106,000 kids over the last few years. That's huge growth. Against that backdrop, we've seen improvements in NPS. We've seen improvements in retention. We've seen improvements in lifetime value. We're seeing good growth in the business, which is why we feel good about it. The contracts are typically structured in terms of 3 to 5 years depending on sort of the co-terminus with the length of the charter approval that the school gets. So that's how the contracts work. As Sally mentioned, these are part and parcel of life. We probably lose 1 small to medium-sized school every year. We typically replace them. So this is something that we're working through. We think about mitigation from a virtual schools perspective in key states. We look to have more than 1 school in the state so we can serve students differently. And it was actually a very good example. In the last 6 weeks where a virtual school that left us in 2019, 2020 came back to us in the middle of the school year, which is totally unheard of because they were very disappointed with the provider they've gone to. And so our team did a heroic job of basically taking on a school with 1,000 kids in the middle of the school year to get them back into the fold. So it happens. It's part and parcel of life. We roll with the punches and we continue to mitigate the risk holistically.

Can we go to Omar just sitting next to Matt from Morgan Stanley.

So a couple of questions. First of all, on the talent and investment platform, could you -- maybe just walk us through what the value proposition is for the customer. So why is it that a customer takes the product? Are they trying to drive revenue? Are they trying to save costs? That would give us a little bit of sense of how your go-to-market might play out. And also, can you just maybe walk us through the unit economics. So when you add a customer, how does it drop through, but the revenue dropped through to the bottom line and so on? That's the first question. And then secondly, again on virtual schools. Sally, could you just kind of just explain whether the guidance that you've given for virtual schools this year assumes that the mitigation strategies will work, you'll get something else to replace it. Are you sort of guiding more conservatively and just a bit more color on that? And then finally, actually, a third question, on OPM, could you update us on the sale process, please, or the strategic review process, please?

So the first one, yes. So one of the curses I suspect that Ali will understand well for a lot of HR professionals is that people are often seen as a cost center rather than a growth engine. And part of the reason why that is -- has been the case traditionally is companies and individuals and organizational leaders do not have the insights they need about the value creation potential of their people. We all know in theory that our people are our greatest assets and that the ability of our people to be effective individually and together is the differentiator between success of any organization and failure. But companies and individuals have lacked the tools and insights they need in order to understand that and make use of it. So we think about this as bringing the same level of insights and predictability and forecasting and above all, the ability to make sound investments so that you understand the returns from those investments, which is why we call it a talent investment platform for people as you would expect in other areas of your supply chain and the other areas of inputs to any commercial strategy for our business. So ultimately, the value creation that we bring here is to help our companies and our individuals understand their value and how that translates through to achieving commercial success. So we will be devising targets in partnership with our customers that are focused on driving productivity improvements that are focused on driving sales team improvements, for example. And we feel that's an area of great differentiation. We're not here to tell you how many hours of learning content your team has consumed. That is an output. We're here to show you the impact that your interventions are having on the productivity and the performance and above all the commercial delivery of your staff. In terms of the drop through from growth to profit, I mean, we -- fundamentally SaaS businesses are very attractive in that regard. Very good operating leverage. Obviously, we are, as you know, at the moment, in a growth phase. So as we guided you towards margins were broadly breakeven this year. We see that increasing through 2023. I believe we guided you towards low teens profit in 2025. I think based on where we're at with our plans at the moment, we think we can potentially improve on that.

And then virtual schools in terms of the guidance, it doesn't assume that we immediately mitigate at, but we are used to mitigating it over a period of time. And then on the OPM strategic review, I've got nothing to tell you today, but it is progressing.

Nice try.

Can we take a question down here -- just in the second row? And then I'll go to Nick after that. Nick, on to you next.

Thank you for that presentation. The change that's happened under this new management team has been very evident in everything that you presented today, so thank you for that. But my question is on something else that caught my eye today. There's an article on Bloomberg talking with some comments attributed to Sally about a potential U.S. listing. So could you just clarify thoughts on that, why you would feel your additive would not be easy to sell in the U.K. or why that would even be a consideration or just your thoughts around the matter, please?

A quote without context is sometimes taken out of context and makes a very nice headline, I guess. I was on CNBC myself this morning and was asked the same question and we gave the same answer. We are always, as a Board, looking at opportunities, but have not actively discussed anything other than maintaining our presence on the FTSE. We're very proud and long-standing member of the FTSE. We happen to perform quite well last year as memory recalls. And so if you do deliver on your promises or overdeliver, underpromise, overdeliver, always good. And so I would just confidence that reassure or reiterate that there is nothing active in terms of conversations that are going on in terms of whether we should. I know there are many companies that are doing that, and it was on the -- was on the front page of the FT today as well. So the quote or that portion of the quote as it was, was taken a little bit out of context.

We take the next question from Nick.

It's Nick Dempsey from Barclays. I've got 3 still, please. So just following on from Matt's question on higher ed. I make it that we need 5% growth in '24 and '25 to get to our 3-year CAGR. When we look at '22, the units went down quite a lot and was offset by price. So when we're thinking about achieving that 5% growth, do we think that we can carry on putting through price in those years? Or are we expecting to grow units a lot more than we have in the past? Second question. When I add together the gap between product development cash and amortization and then the cash restructuring in '22, I get about GBP 100 million. So in other words, the main difference between P&L and cash flow. When I'm thinking about '23, you've got GBP 85 million of cash restructuring. I guess there will be a further gap on product development. Beyond that, can we expect that to come down quite a lot so that we can then start looking at the P&L as more of an indicator for cash flow than it is at the moment? And third question, so you said you don't have anything notable in the M&A pipeline. You're pretty under-geared. Do you expect to stay under geared? Or can we expect that buyback to come back? Or are you just waiting for the kind of the right deal to square that circle?

Do you want to take the first one, Tom?

Yes, I'd love to. So as we think about higher education and the sort of guidance out to 2025, a couple of things just to put in context. Firstly, in 2022, we had the access card elimination that weighed on volumes a little bit, which made it a little stocker than otherwise would have been. As you think about '23 to '25, obviously, we're in a price constrained environment. But clearly, we were able to put up pricing predominantly in our print products in 2022 but we're going to be looking at pricing very carefully because, obviously, where we see opportunities to raise pricing, we will be clearly -- we're in an inflationary environment. That makes a lot of sense as we think about pricing. And you're right, clearly, we have to grow units. And then the other thing I would, of course, say is there is the rest of the world. And as we think about growth internationally, that's also a feature of helping us achieve that medium-term number.

And in terms of product development and P&L, yes, you're right, product development and amortization will normalize back. Reorg is a '23 factor not out into the future. And therefore, that 90% plus cash conversion is absolutely achievable. And then from an M&A perspective, no, I'm not suggesting that I'm just sitting waiting for an acquisition. I'm just pointing out that we have nothing near term or material. And the Board keeps the capital allocation policy application under continuous review. And at the right time, there's the opportunity for share buybacks.

Next, Jo?

Tom?

I apologize. It's only 1 question, and you're probably not going to answer it anyway. So it's on -- actually on OPM. And just as we look back at Pearson's history, you've got this -- and I'm particularly thinking about Penguin here, track record of taking an asset and injecting it into something else on a sort of nil capital basis and then nil capital invested basis and then running with it. I'm just interested big picture, whether that could be a strategy you employ with OPM or is -- when you're thinking about the strategic review, are we thinking about a clean break?

Great question, Tom. I'm not going to answer it as predicted. We're going through the review and at the appropriate time, everyone will hear what the conclusion of that is.

We'll answer it then.

Yes. Amana here from The Analyst. Just when you talk about interchangeable or intercommunication between the different platforms in Pearson, what is right now the cross-sell that is happening? And where it could potentially go in the future?

Yes. I can take that since I've been sort of highly inspiring or architecting some of that. There is a tendency when you have a business and divisional structure or in any line of business or like to kind of compartmentalize individuals, and the last time I looked in the mirror, I wasn't compartmentalized. I was 1 person, and I did different things in my life, both in terms of life journeys and life stages. And that's very much relatable to how you should think about and how we're thinking about this lifetime of learn opportunity. The 1 thing that we all do as humans from the moment we're born until the moment we pass is continually learn. And that learning journey is becoming largely driven by technology, is becoming increasingly diverse. It's no longer a straight linear path that certainly my formal education was. And I think today, hopefully, you're getting a sense of is interconnectivity that an individual has as they seek different learning opportunities. Another way of looking at it is, in some ways, Pearson has been in the certification business for decades. The certificate that really mattered was your degree. And so what we did as a company was provide courseware and content to help support you, whether it be an instructor or a student, pass that certificate. And you've got that certificate and you went to university or you went to college because there was a promise of greater job prospects when you graduated. What we see now and what's demonstrated whether it's with credibly workforce skills, with English language learning and, of course, through Pearson VUE, is there is now a proliferation of certificates that carry real value. And so if you think about one of the areas that we haven't touched on in Tom's word is how we redefine what higher education is. Tom alluded to it, but you should think going forward that higher education will be beyond institution. Clearly, we have a great strength in parallel within higher institutional learning but we have this opportunity to then provide resources and materials to help people who are taking certification credentials, whether it's through the workforce skills or whether it's coming through Pearson VUE and start to create these different pieces together. One could imagine, and you saw on one of Lynne's slides, that you've got the talent investment platform at the top, you have Pearson+ channels being able to deliver content that enables an individual to then go to Pearson VUE to get that certification or to even do it all within 1 application, and that then gets stored on your profile, which utilizes the technology of Credly. So these lines are blurring between thinking about just 1 sector versus another sector, just as our lives have become more blurred as it were, what is the common thread through all of it is our desire and need to learn and to satisfy that curiosity, whether that's to take a job, to migrate. Part of one of the interesting things with Pearson Test of English is, and Jo referenced this, is most people who are taking that test are taking it to migrate either to go to college or to go get a job. So you then start to link the Pearson Test of English with a certification in cloud computing or whatever it happens to be to help that individual. Now we have relationships with consumers. One of the most important things we've done. That's why we can say we reached 160 million consumers last year. We are now starting these no longer anonymous individuals, and you're going to see the company move from being purely transactional in nature to building relationships. And once we start to build relationships, then we can start to build lifetime value. And you start to create a flywheel effect, depend and you think of the businesses as customer acquisition funnels that are coming in. They may come in through English language learning. They may come in through workforce through your employer or an employee. They may come in and then graduate through higher education or from Pearson VUE or Pearson+. They're all coming in. The use of one thing we haven't talked about, which is somewhat implied is, of course, the value and the use of data through all of this. We have some very, very, very rich data, and you're going to see, as we talk -- we'll probably talk a bit more about this at interims when we start to expand on this notion. But hopefully, that gives you a sense of when you saw the slides or in your notes of the interconnectivity. That's how you should start to think about how the ecosystem will start to develop. And one of the interesting things, I know we're focused on '22 to '25, 36 months. What starts to get interesting is '25 and beyond as you start to think of that ecosystem starting to play, but that's for another day.

Got a question here.

[ Kajal ] from HSBC. Thank you for the lovely presentation. It was very helpful. Just a follow-on question from here. You said there are significant operational and financial savings due to interconnectivity that you anticipate. Is there a number that you have in mind which you can share with us today?

We just went through the process last year. We identified GBP 120 million of savings through efficiencies. We've just literally finished that. But as you can see, there is the blurring of the lines I referred to and that takes some redundancy, it takes redundancy out of technology. It takes redundancy of consumer acquisition. It allows you to move with the consumers, the consumer moves from division to division more efficiently. And that then allows us -- this is -- that's why this is not necessarily about just saving money for the sake of saving money. This is about becoming more efficient so we can invest behind the real growth engines of the company going forward. So that's how I would look at that. So we have no specific targets in mind given what we've just done. And I think it was quite precipitous that we did it announced in July of last year. But it was really driven by the actions we've taken in the previous 18 months really that enabled us to do that. And you're going to see us continue to be able to do that as we -- as sort of this new construct matures, and we're constantly looking at better ways of driving efficiency and ultimately driving growth, both top line, bottom line growth throughout the organization.

And I think I'm going to hand back to you to wrap up.

Okay. Thank you very, very much. Thank you very much for all of your interest and for those of you watching online, really appreciate your support. For those of you that are here, there are a number of stations set up where you can now go and experience the workforce and the talent investment platform. There is a new generation of mastering MyLabs, iLabs that you'll be able to see in terms of where higher education is going and where we go beyond the textbook. And then there is Pearson+ channels. So you're able to experience the channels beyond higher ed and see where that's going. And then in the room next door, you can go meet, you can experience virtual reality as a way of learning languages through modeling and meet an interesting character, shall we say, conversational character that will help you also learn languages. So please enjoy refreshments but more go get your hands dirty as it were and go play and ask lots and lots of questions. And of course, we will all be around to answer any questions that you have. And again, thank you for taking the time and for your interest and support of the company.