Pearson PLC (PSO) 2021 Q4 法說會逐字稿

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Pearson's 2021 Full Year Results. (Operator Instructions) And with that, I'll hand over to Andy and will start the presentation.

(presentation)

Good morning. Welcome again. And I'm very pleased to welcome you here in person today, and also all of you online. Thanks very much for joining. I know very, very busy for many of you, and welcome to our full year results and strategy presentation.

I'm here with my CFO, our CFO, Sally Johnson, and the entire executive team that you see here and going to introduce themselves also after the presentation. And you'll be hearing from this motley crew of divisional presidents shortly as we lay out the strategy. And you'll also hear about how our new company purpose, to add a life to a lifetime of learning really sits at the heart of everything we do.

And then as I was just saying, you've just seen our own employees proudly sharing what that purpose means to them. What we're really doing is redefining Pearson's purpose to meet this moment in our world, I think a moment weaning is becoming more fluid and exists inside and outside of formal education.

It's a purpose and a strategy, however, then nothing without the employees who bring those to life. And over the last 12 months, our employees have shown the dedication, the perseverance and commitment to drive Pearson forward. As you see throughout today's presentation, everyone at Pearson has and will continue to be relentlessly focused on execution.

That's reflected in our strong financial performance in 2021, where we delivered ahead of expectations with 8% sales growth and a 33% increase in profit to GBP 385 million and with a cash conversion of 101%.

Now Sally will go into more details about future expectations shortly. But the headline is that we will deliver further sustainable revenue and profit growth for this year and beyond. The management team is aligned and we're focused on growth, managing our businesses well, and delivering results.

Today, I hope you'll see a new Pearson, 1 that's streamlined, well organized and working as a much more agile and interconnected company. I'm more excited than ever about our opportunity to make a positive impact through both our products and our people as we continue to evolve our sustainable business plan to align with our company's strategy and purpose.

The digital growth and product development we will feature today is part of our effort to drive learning for everyone. We've also placed renewed energy into building our talent and our own innovation culture so people can make a difference at scale. And as we become more digital, we're providing products with a smaller carbon footprint that meets the demands of a green economy and influences action.

And as such, we're on track with our goal to make Pearson a net 0 carbon business by 2030. Now this time last year, I set out to create a strategy around a lifetime of learning. My priorities continue to center on building a company that is digital first, puts the consumer at its heart and delivers high-quality learning products to more people at scale than ever before.

To do that, we created a new organizational structure with 5 core divisions and supplemented that with a dedicated direct-to-consumer team that successfully launched Pearson+. And we laid the foundations for our Workforce Skills business, and the leaders of those divisions have spent significant time crafting their strategies to execute on our plan.

There's much work underway, and you're going to hear more details from each of the divisional presidents today. We recognize that learning is no longer a stage in life. It's a lifelong journey, and we'll continue to work with long-standing partners such as schools, universities and colleges, but we're increasingly working more and more with employers.

I think companies now play a critical role in that learning life cycle, and we have an opportunity to help individuals and employers turn the great resignation into the great reengagement. The recent acquisitions of Faethm and Credly in our Workforce Skills division signal the direction of travel you can expect from us including the expansion into data as a service for employers and into credentialing for employees.

Now there are 3 reasons why I think Pearson will win. Firstly, we're the world's leading learning company with an unmatched scope and scale and the deep expertise of thousands of employees who deliver high-quality, trusted learning solutions every day. Secondly, we have a great foundation with established businesses that are well managed, cash generative and underpin the company financially.

Thirdly, we're bringing together multiple facets of our expertise to deliver innovative digital learning products through a more connected commercial and consumer strategy. You should start to think about Pearson not just as a collection of individual businesses, but increasingly as a highly interconnected company with capabilities that work together to help people learn at multiple points in their lives.

Pearson has the potential to greatly accelerate our growth when we leverage our businesses in a coordinated fashion across the entire spectrum of learning. Pearson+ will be the centerpiece of that growth effort as we believe -- as we begin rather, to realize its potential beyond our higher education business.

You're going to hear the team reference that today and I'll lay out my vision for Pearson+ later in the presentation. So the success of Pearson and the work we do has never been more important. There's been an incredible amount of progress this year. And during our time together today, I hope you get a better sense of our ability to deliver on our bold ambition.

Now before we dive into each of the 5 businesses in detail, I'm going to hand over to Sally to take you through our financial performance and expectations. Sally?

Thanks, Andy, and hello, everybody. As Andy said, we delivered a strong group performance in 2021 with an 8% sales growth and profit of GBP 385 million with a lower interest charge than previously expected of GBP 57 million and a tax charge of 20%, we delivered an EPS of 34.9p, up 22%.

Our cash performance was also strong with 101% operating cash conversion, driving an improved net debt position at the end of the year of GBP 0.4 billion. We have a clear and rigorous capital allocation policy and a robust balance sheet with significant headroom. Our strong financial position has enabled us to make bolt-on acquisitions like Faethm and Credly, to help drive our strategy and future growth.

Given these solid results and our confidence in the outlook, the Board are proposing a 5% increase in the dividend to 20.5p. We've also announced our intention to commence a share buyback during 2022 of GBP 350 million.

We shared our revenue performance with you along with more detailed data in our January trading update. There has been significant growth in the top line at Pearson which is in part due to the restrictions easing post COVID, but also due to the strategic positioning of our business and the growth initiatives that we're undertaking.

By way of a brief reminder, assessments and qualifications grew 18%, with VUE and Clinical revenues now having grown in comparison to 2019, demonstrating that 2021 performance is more than COVID recovery. Virtual Learning grew 11% with 17% growth in virtual schools and 7% underlying enrollment growth in OPM.

English grew 17% and with a strong performance in both Pearson Test of English and our institutional courseware businesses, Workforce Skills grew 6%, and higher education declined 5%, less than in 2020. Group profit grew 33% to GBP 385 million with operating leverage on our revenue growth and cost savings, offset by inflation and investment to drive future growth.

At a divisional level, you can see more normalized margins as the business has recovered post COVID. Assessments and qualifications delivers more than 50% of group's profits with a margin of 18%. Profit grew strongly in the year due to the operating leverage on revenue growth, partly offset by FX.

Virtual Learning grew profit through margin on revenue growth and operating improvements in OPM, partly offset by investments in virtual schools in curriculum, enrollment processes and the teaching platform. Virtual Learning margins were low at 4% due to the lower profitability of the OPM business where we see potential for improvement and have demonstrated progress in 2021.

English grew profit through the operating leverage on revenue growth. Margins improved from flat to 6%, and we would expect them to improve further as COVID recovery continues in 2022. Workforce maintained a margin of 16% with margin on revenue growth, partially offset by investments.

We see opportunity to invest substantially in this division to drive significant future growth. Higher education profits reduced due to revenue declines and investment offset by continued substantial cost savings. The higher ed margin was 9%, which we expect to stabilize in 2022 and improve thereafter.

Our reorganization into our 5 new global business divisions is now complete. We've incurred around GBP 50 million of restructuring costs, and we expect -- as expected, we've reinvested those savings into growth generation. The financial implications of the restructure of our corporate offices have also been finalized in 2021, incurring costs which are predominantly noncash in nature of around GBP 160 million.

This has generated property savings of GBP 10 million in 2022, which is incorporated in our guidance and GBP 20 million thereafter. Our KPIs are brought together on the following 2 slides. Group digital sales grew 9%, meaning digital and digitally-enabled revenues now make up 75% of the business.

Our divisional leaders will talk through these KPIs as they go through their divisions. We've once again seen a strong cash conversion of 101% and continue to manage our balance sheet and working capital efficiently with tight inventory management and strong collections.

Turning to net debt. This decreased from GBP 0.5 billion to GBP 0.4 billion, with operating cash and the disposal of our Brazilian Sistemas business, partially offset by dividends, interest and tax, which included the state aid payment, which we expect to recover in time.

Return on capital increased from 6.6% to 7.9%. And we continue to be disciplined in our investments and rigorous about securing the required returns. I'd like to touch on the dynamics of our cash flow before I later talk about how it will develop in the future.

Firstly, looking at a simplified version of our cash flow, you can see that the key drivers of operating cash conversion are the investments we make in CapEx, such as enterprise technology and initiatives like our global ERP program and product development. Working capital levels are relatively low and flat.

CapEx cash increased slightly in 2021 as we paused elements of technology programs at the height of the pandemic in 2020, and product development declined due to the natural ebb and flow of our product road maps. Turning to 2022 and beyond. My colleagues will take you through the divisional expectations for this year and out to 2025, which we've summarized on this slide.

In 2022, at a group level, we expect revenue growth with higher education declines further moderating and growth in our other 4 divisions. Adjusted operating profit, interest and tax will be in line with current market expectations. Profit growth will be driven by the operating leverage on revenue growth and property cost savings, partially offset by inflation.

In terms of investment, we see 3 key areas of focus: ongoing investment in our products and services and technology to maintain our competitive advantage in positions of strength; maintaining our investment in Pearson+ to accelerate our growth and our direct-to-consumer strategy; and the reallocation of resources to our workforce division where we see a significant growth opportunity.

We will offset any increased inflationary pressures through cost efficiencies and as appropriate price increases. Cash conversion will continue to be strong and over 90%. The marketing process for our international courseware local publishing business is well underway and is progressing well. We expect it to conclude at some point during 2022. The sales and profits of this business can clearly be seen in our segmental analysis and we'll update guidance as and when is relevant.

These businesses do share costs with our other international businesses, duplication of which will need to be eliminated as TSAs unwind. You should also note that these businesses are H2 weighted given their nature. From a quarterly phasing perspective, group growth will be relatively consistent across the year with virtual learning H2 weighted aligning to the start of the new academic year and Assessment & Qualifications, H1 weighted, given the resumption of exams and with the U.S. now back to a more normal timing.

Revenues for the businesses under strategic review will decline in H1 due to the discontinuation of certain low-margin businesses. As we look out to 2025, we expect the group to achieve mid-single digit revenue CAGR. And for 2022 to 2025, the margins will remain relatively stable then increasing to mid-teens by 2025.

Looking at those key elements of the cash flow that I highlighted earlier, CapEx has peaked in 2021 as our enterprise technology and property transformation programs reach conclusion and will reduce from 2022 forward. We will reinvest this incremental cash into revenue-generated product development and still maintain our strong cash conversion.

Return on capital will increase throughout the period and will be double digits by 2025. Our rigorous capital allocation policy is clear and consistent and serves the business well. Our balance sheet remains strong. Net debt is low and leverage is well below rating agency targets. Our dividend is progressive and sustainable.

We continue to invest in our business. As I set out on the previous slide, we expect to maintain our strong cash conversion, whilst investing organically in product to drive growth. Whilst we see potential for further incremental M&A to accelerate our strategy and growth, it's unlikely to utilize a significant proportion of our headroom. So we can continue to manage our balance sheet prudently and also return capital to shareholders by way of the GBP 350 million share buyback, which will also mitigate the earnings dilution from the strategic disposal of those international courseware local publishing divisions.

So in summary, we've exceeded the financial expectations in 2021, and we've improved return on capital. We've shared the KPIs, which we expect to drive the business and which will evolve as the strategy builds. We expect to meet expectations in 2022. And looking out to 2025, we expect good revenue growth and for margins to improve to mid-teens.

Our strong balance sheet provides the capacity to invest in future growth and raise our dividend as well as making an additional GBP 350 million return to shareholders.

And with that, I will hand over to Bob.

Thanks, Sally. I'm Bob Whelan, and I'm the President of the Assessment & Qualifications business. Nice to see many of you here again today. I've seen some of you in the past, and it's nice to see you come back to see us.

As you might already know, this is my last hurrah as President of the business. And I've been very excited to do it. I'm proud to have led this great business. We had a great year, and I'm very confident that we'll continue to thrive under the new leadership of Art Valentine, who you meet in just a couple of seconds.

I have a few highlights before I hand it over to Art. And it was a realistic year. Our message is simple. We are now the largest business at Pearson. Assessment & Qualifications is the largest business. That's hard for me to say because for many years, we were not, and we're very proud of that.

We had an excellent year in 2021, and we're poised to continue to grow as a source of really strength and stability in the company. Our business provides assessment and qualifications that lead to certifications and licenses that allow people to move on and demonstrate their knowledge for a lifetime of learning. From a youngster in prekindergarten all the way to someone advancing their career, assessments work for everybody to help them move along in their career. We also have clinical assessments, which diagnose why someone might have learned and how we can help them get along the way.

In 2021, COVID impacted our business, but our teams really maintained the challenge in an environment to have a terrific year. Sales were up 18%, have to pause on that one. Profits were up 59%, which might require even a better pause. So we're very proud of those numbers, and a lot of people worked hard to get there.

This excellent performance was driven by VUE's strong role in online proctoring, which accelerated very quickly during the pandemic. And then the second half of '21 when the test center started reopening again back to normal. The focus on mental health and new product offerings were key drivers in our clinical business, along with the excellent leadership of Art, who you'll meet soon.

U.S. assessment bounced back from 2020 cancellations to a more normal year with some choppiness of the exams moved from spring to fall and some grade levels drop the example, but it was much more normal in '21. U.K. qualifications saw most exams canceled in '21, but are going to resume in 2022, which they already have starting in January.

Well, I've enjoyed a great run of Pearson. A great deal of gratitude for the many people and support -- for their support and the contribution. Before I introduce Art, I have to thank Marjorie Scardino, John Fallon and Andy Bird, who believed in me enough to give me an opportunity to build this fantastic business.

So with that, I'll turn it over to Art.

I'm just going to say, even though Bob is leaving Assessment & Qualifications, I'm not going to let him go too far, and he's going to stay with the company and advise the company in a more broader capacity. Because while he still wants to go play a bit of golf, it's really important, he can help me and the rest of the team.

Anyway Art, pretty easy to follow.

Thanks, Bob. In 2022, we expect to continue our strong market position and share capture with low to mid-single-digit growth across the portfolio. We also expect to maintain our profitability and margins with each of the business units through 2025.

We'll continue to invest across the businesses to ensure we have innovative, best-in-class products and services. In 2022, U.S. student assessment will show high single-digit revenue growth, powered by a return to the normal cadence of in-classroom assessment delivery and the annualization of some of our large contracts that we have won.

Our U.K. International and qualifications business has already started conducting exams this past January, and we expect to resume normal exam volumes later in the summer. We do expect this business to rebound to pre-COVID testing levels and revenue. Clinical Assessment revenues will be slightly down.

We're going to show strong growth in our digital and subscription products. That's going to be offset by a very strong 2021, where we had 2 stellar new product releases and some pent-up demand for clinical services. Our VUE business is going to be generally flat year-over-year. We continue to have very strong core volumes and a fantastic win rate of new contracts, but it's going to be offset by a reduction in the U.K. Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency test. That's the driver's license here in the U.K.

We continue to expect to renew 98% or better of our contracts that's consistent with prior year's performance. Test volumes in 2021 were up 30% and will be stable to up slightly more in 2022 including mid-single-digit growth in our on-view exam deliveries. That's our remote proctoring offering.

As we look into 2025, we expect the Assessment & Qualifications business to deliver low to mid-single-digit revenue and profit growth across the portfolio. VUE will return to low to mid-single-digit growth in 2023 and beyond as we enter new markets and broaden the solution set.

Clinical will generate low to mid-single-digit growth as we continue to enhance the customer experience and invest in our digital initiatives. U.S. student assessment revenues will be flat over this horizon. We anticipate some changes in the contract portfolio as well as a move towards more frequent but shorter assessments.

And our U.K. qualifications business will grow through international volume growth and our investment in the digital experience for our customers. In summary, the A&Q team is experienced knows their business, and we know how to deliver results.

There are 3 reasons that we are very confident we're going to continue to succeed. First off, we have long-term contracts, high renewal rates across multiple sectors and geographies. This allows us to weather macro changes in any 1 part of the market. You can see this on the chart of VUE's revenues, and we expect these trends to continue into the future.

Second is the scale of our business. 17 million assessments, 20,000 test centers, 200 countries, the breadth of our business is a major competitive advantage. And then lastly, the continued demand for upscaling and rescaling continue to increase our market opportunity and allow us to integrate our products and services into other parts of Pearson.

And with that, I'll turn it over to Tom.

Good morning. It's great to be with you here today. I'm Tom Simon, and I lead Virtual Learning, and that comprises of virtual schools and online program management. And the path forward in virtual learning is clear. Our businesses meet today's learning needs, where online and hybrid learning are becoming a norm and the lines between high school, higher education and workforce are blurring.

And because of that, we are well positioned for continued growth. Currently, our Virtual Schools business supports nearly 50 virtual schools in the U.S. and the U.K., around 110,000 students and 5,500 teachers. Our support for these schools includes marketing and enrollment services, the technology and curriculum to deliver individualized learning as well as a wide range of services from substitute teachers to special education.

In online program management, we provide marketing and enrollment services, student support and instructional design for 477 programs across 31 academic partners globally. We see plenty of headroom for sustained growth in our Virtual Schools business over the long term, along with growth in the OPM business. And here's the one.

In Virtual Schools, we had a good track record of growth. In the 3 years before the pandemic, they achieved an enrollment CAGR of 9% and a revenue CAGR of 14%. The pandemic naturally drove increased uptake of virtual schooling in 2020. And in that year, we grew enrollments 43%.

In 2021, despite a widespread return to bricks and mortar, we grew enrollments of further 2%, which we believe to be ahead of the overall market. And we estimate that the overall virtual schooling population in the U.S. is still only a small fraction of U.S. K-12 students today, around 1.5% of $3.5 billion. So there is significant room to grow.

And our primary growth driver centers on increasing penetration in the 30 states where we already operate. And while we have a COVID cohort in our base for 2021, which we need to factor into 2022, we are confident that over the period to 2025, we can continue to grow in the mid-single digits because of the growing acceptance of virtual learning, the increased ability of parents to work remotely and to support learning at home.

In turn, the OPM market was worth $4.5 billion in 2021, and we expect it to grow at 14% over the next 4 years. The market is relatively fragmented and growth has been driven by a strong rise in online enrollments and increasing propensity to outsource by universities. The division has undergone extensive changes over the last 2 years and we're now 10 months into a transformation program designed to reduce fixed costs and improve our marketing and enrollment funnel for cost efficiencies and better conversion rates.

We've also reduced a number of programs where we could not scale or reach profitability. So pulling this all together, what does it mean for future growth? In 2022, we anticipate sales growth to be low single digits in Virtual Schools as the COVID cohort unwinds. And high single digit in OPM as the impact of discontinued programs has ended.

We expect to see continued margin expansion in virtual learning as margins in OPM improve due to operational efficiencies. And longer term, we expect a 22 to 25 sales CAGR in mid-single digits for Virtual Schools and high single digits in OPM. And growth in Virtual Schools is supported by opening 3 new schools a year offset by the loss of 1 school annually and in OPM by the addition of some 40 to 50 new programs per year.

By 2025, we anticipate operating profit margins will be low double digit largely driven by operating leverage and improved profitability in OPM. So we have strong foundations in both Virtual Schools and OPM that lay a solid path forward. And I'll leave you with 4 reasons why we are going to deliver on growth for shareholders and a high-quality experience for students.

Firstly, the pandemic has entrenched virtual learning across the board, giving more people more exposure to it and increasing the use of hybrid learning models. Secondly, we have a market-leading position as 1 of only 2 national players in U.S. virtual schools. Thirdly, we're going to capitalize on this market opportunity, thanks to our 20 years of experience, our strongly differentiated value proposition and our good track record of growth.

And furthermore, we are uniquely positioned as part of Pearson to benefit from a wider offering as those lines blur between high school, higher education and workforce. And lastly, in our OPM business, we are focused on a complete reset with the aim of building a profitable business, which provides close linkages to both Virtual Schools and to workforce. This is why we feel confident about the virtual learning strategy as well as the synergies to the lifelong learning story at Pearson. Thank you. And I'll now hand it over to Gio.

Thank you, Tom. Hi, everyone, I'm Gio, and I lead our English Language Learning business. Our vision at ELL is to be the world's leading destination for committed learners to prove -- to be able to improve their English proficiency. With 1.5 billion people currently learning English, there is a big opportunity for us to grow in the institutional assessment and direct-to-consumer spaces.

And we're well positioned to capitalize on it. We're focused on those who define as the committed learners, those who dedicate time and money to language learning. English is a gateway to the world. more than 140 countries include English as a mandatory subject in their national curriculum.

English is indispensable in the workplace, making it a vital part of closing the skills gap globally. Our ELL division grew its revenues in 2021 by 17% to GBP 238 million. We have well-established businesses with solid market shares, plenty of room to grow and the ability to contribute to the success of other Pearson divisions.

We've also built a strong brand and developed a unique IP and services like our proprietary international recognized global skill of English against which we map all our content and assessments as well as the Pearson Test of English, which has a growing synergy with Pearson VUE.

Our Versant testing product also has crossover potential with Pearson's new Workforce Skills division, and Mike will address that shortly. Our go-forward strategy focuses on 3 market segments: first, institutional ELL. It's a growing global market worth GBP 2.2 billion, of which GBP 1.5 billion is courseware.

We're 1 of the 3 biggest players in courseware with circa 11% market share, and we generated GBP 160 million of revenue in 2021, up 13% on prior year. Our value proposition to academic institutions and to private language schools is made up of digital and blended solutions and reaches indirectly some 21 million people in 160 countries. Second, the growing GBP 0.8 billion market for high-stakes English assessments, meaning those that are officially recognized by immigration authorities, universities and professional bodies.

We're well placed to win in this segment with our flagship PTE. It's a top 3 player with a volume share of circa 10% that has been taken over 400,000 times in 2021 and has revenues of GBP 78 million, up 23% on prior year.

A key focus for us is to grow more in the direct-to-consumer space. We estimate the online direct-to-consumer English market that we want to focus on to be worth more than GBP 1.5 billion and to grow at double digits in the next 5 years.

This segment benefited from the shift to online brought by the pandemic and can be an effective, engaging and affordable way to learn for millions of people. We're actively exploring how to best grow in this exciting DTC space, including the role of an ELL offering within the Pearson+ ecosystem over time. And we'll update you as our strategy progresses.

We're excited by this growth opportunity in each of the 3 market segments. In 2022, we foresee mid-single-digit revenue growth underpinned by PTE volumes as the business continues to recover from COVID-19 with margins improving versus 2021.

In the next 5 years, we expect mid- to high single-digit revenue growth. PTE will be a core driver. And because of our operational leverage, we can expect margin enhancement across ELL to mid-teens by 2025. While we further build our direct-to-consumer strategy, the key to our success will come from winning in our other market segments, especially high stakes assessments.

Here's how we'll do it. We will focus on maintaining our differentiation in PTE and continue to improve the test taking experience. PTE is already a world-class fully digital, computer-based test with high security and AI-powered, unbiased scoring. We deliver score reports to test takers faster than anyone else with an average time of 1.2 days.

We're widely available in more than 110 countries thanks to our network of over 380 Pearson VUE and third-party test centers. Last year, we reduced the length of the test to make it more convenient, and we launched the first online at-home PTE academic test made possible by Pearson's on VUE online proctoring. It's yet another example on how we're leveraging capabilities across divisions.

So with a consumer-friendly test and a wide delivery network through Pearson VUE, we will continue to expand our addressable market through gaining recognition from universities and governments across the globe. One recent example of this is the U.K. where we developed our new test, the PTE Home portfolio. And last year, we grew our volumes by 42% versus 2020 and almost double versus 2019 levels.

In short, with a focus on our institutional business, continuing to grow in our high stakes assessment business and building our consumer strategy, we believe that we can be a big contributor to Pearson's lifelong learning mission. Thank you for listening, and I'll now pass it over to Mike.

Thanks, Gio. Hi, everyone. I'm Mike Howells, and I have the privilege and the pleasure of leading our new Workforce Skills division. Now the headline for this business is straightforward. We are transitioning to a new business model, a new go-to-market strategy for Pearson as a strategic solutions provider for workforce skills.

And I want to tell you why we are confident we're going to succeed. We spent the last few months engaging deeply with our partners in Pearson's fantastic global network to understand the challenges that our customers face. And they are clear and consistent. Existing solutions are fragmented and do not work well together, deliver poor ROI and above all, a poor employee experience.

Many businesses are trying to solve these problems, and there are some great offerings out there. But this market, which is valued at $100 billion in the U.S. alone is still in the rapid early phase of disruption. And we're confident that Pearson can differentiate by exploiting 4 important competitive advantages: First, the ability to provide our customers with an integrated end-to-end set of solutions from diagnosing the problems they face to providing the learning solutions to meet their specific needs and verifying the outcomes that they have achieved.

Second, Pearson's reach and scale, which allows us to address the needs of individuals, enterprises, governments and institutions through a single ecosystem of products and services. Third, our new status as one of the leading sources of accurate, trusted data on skills and talent, a theme that you'll hear throughout the conversation today. And fourth, a global brand recognized for the rigor and quality of our learning solutions.

So let me take you through that in a bit more detail. Firstly, our new business model will give enterprises what they want, an integrated solution to address their specific problems and drive verifiable returns at scale. To build this model, we have started with Pearson's current excellent enterprise products. such as TalentLens, Versant in our English business, GED testing service, Accelerated Pathways and, of course, Pearson VUE.

Now in the past, we've largely taken these products and services to market case by case, but we're now bringing them together into a single solution suite and building a world-class enterprise sales team to take them to market. This will allow us to generate greater revenues from Pearson's existing portfolio. And it's an example of how we are connecting offerings from across our 5 divisions.

To that portfolio, we have added our first acquisition, Faethm, our AI-driven strategic workforce analytics and planning platform. Now Faethm helps enterprises diagnose what skills they will need to be successful, verified by millions of pieces of data, and they've worked with hundreds of companies over the last years.

And we invite you to stay on after the presentation for a demo of Faethm. Then as we announced at the end of last month, we expanded our product suite to include Credly, the world's largest digital credentialing network. With Credly, employees can prove what skills they have learned and employers can source what skills they need. And the team at Credly has put together this quick glimpse at the platform.

(presentation)

My name is [Susan], and I'm from the education team at Credly. Let's take a tour of our platform. Through Credly, individuals can manage and share their verified skills and certifications. When we look at [Leanne's] profile, we see the details of her credentials, including insights and opportunities for making her next career move. Earners are in control of how their credentials are used. One feature allows them to opt in to be contacted by employers directly through Credly.

For employers, our talent solutions help businesses recruit, engage and develop their employees like [Farhan]. With real-time information about skills people have, employers see what their employees have learned from both internal and external training programs. Analytics tools help pinpoint employees whose skills are perfect for projects or new roles. Credly also helps highlight skill trends, strengths and gaps across the company, informing learning and development opportunities. Hiring managers and recruiters access the world's largest pool of talent with verified skills and certifications.

Credly helps people connect to the right next opportunity whether that's next steps with the current employer, a career change or a great new learning opportunity. And we do this while driving business results for a fast-growing global network of customers.

Now the Credly team will also be available after the presentation. And as you saw from that video, Credly expands our opportunity in the Workforce Skills space. And with Faethm and Credly, we have a comprehensive, accurate and future-looking data set on demand and supply in the skills economy today.

And by bringing these new capabilities together with Pearson's learning portfolio, we have created an unmatched end-to-end value proposition for employees. You can envision a scenario where much of this learning also becomes available via Pearson+ and yet another opportunity to expand the scope of that product.

Our second competitive advantage is our reach and scale. Pearson has an outstanding ability in this market to cater to the needs of governments and institutions, enterprises and individuals. And it's the link between the needs of employers and individuals that is particularly crucial.

It's a difficult problem to crack. Very few learning providers have served both successfully, and we are targeting that challenge from the start, combining our deep expertise in building learning experiences for individuals, with our new enterprise focus capabilities in Faethm and Credly who serve over 2,000 enterprises and organizations combined today.

We want to help individual learners access the right solutions for them and help employers to attract, retain and develop the right talent. The key to doing so and our third competitive advantage is the ability to provide accurate, verified and trusted data on skills.

Skills are the new currency of the labor market. Employers and employees are moving away from traditional learning paths and talent solutions. Accurate, unbiased data on skills will help employers to know what they need and how to get it. The old CV or resume is long past its sell by date. We need to enable a world in which opportunity is based on real insights about what you can do, not inaccurate inferences from what you've done in the past.

And finally, linking all this together is Pearson's brand. Large enterprises are positive about our entry to this market. They already know our reputation for quality from products like TalentLens, VUE, BTEC and PTE. It's the knowledge that if you have a learning experience with Pearson, it will get you where you want to go. And if you receive a credential or a qualification from Pearson that it is worth something.

Now the transition that we're making is not a simple undertaking. We've spent the time since the division was formed last July, doing the hard yards to build the foundations that we need. We've integrated our existing businesses, together with our new acquisitions into a performance-focused structure, which will deliver revenue growth across our portfolio.

Our newly combined workforce qualifications business comprising BTEC apprenticeships and higher education qualifications already has scale. It will continue to grow in the U.K. market, and we see more opportunity to grow internationally using our data and analytics capabilities to work with government partners around the world to close their skills gaps.

And our new Workforce Solutions business combines our smaller, faster-growing assets together with Faethm and Credly, and our new products that will come on stream this year to create the engine room for rapid growth in our new B2B market.

We have a range of pilot and beta testing projects underway, including with key partners, that will help us to continue to refine our offering. We currently have a mix of direct sales and channel partnerships, which we expect to continue. And we are using our new acquisitions to build out a scalable enterprise sales force for our new connected products.

We will grow our customers and annual recurring revenue by leveraging Pearson's wider existing client relationships and the expansion of our product offering. Now while doing all of that, we've also been out winning new business and onboarding new clients, including 22 new corporate clients in the last 6 months, ranging from large consumer technology platforms to global financial services firms, amongst them, the likes of Standard Chartered and Sky TV.

In 2022, we anticipate Workforce Skills headline sales to grow significantly. The majority of growth due to the acquisition of Faethm and Credly with both businesses growing by more than 40% on an underlying basis.

Excluding acquisitions, we anticipate mid- to high single-digit underlying growth with higher growth in our smaller B2B-focused products and in international markets, and more modest growth in our core U.K. qualifications business.

Workforce is a high-margin business. And the key for us is growing scale. We will therefore be investing significantly in 2022 to accelerate our product road map and market position and expect margins to be broadly breakeven. By 2025, we expect the division to more than double in size and to reach margins in the low double digits as the business scales and our new investments mature. Our new KPIs will be our total number of enterprise customers, enterprise customer net retention rate and number of Workforce Skills registered users.

So to recap, we are confident we are positioning Pearson to capitalize in a significant way on the workforce skills opportunity with an end-to-end solution that will serve employers and workers in 1 integrated ecosystem, a trusted portfolio of products and services and a business that can make Pearson the market leader in much-needed labor and talent data.

This is an enormously exciting time as we play a critical role in moving Pearson's strategy forward. Thanks very much for listening. And I'll now pass over to Tim.

Well, thank you, Mike, and hello, everybody. I'm Tim Bozik, and I lead our Higher Education division and I co-lead our direct to consumer division with Lynne Frank. The headline for our Higher Education division is straightforward. We're moving to a place of stability, and we will drive digital growth in an expanded market.

Before I go into detail on that a bit about where the market and business stand today. While we operate our higher education business globally, over 80% of the revenue comes from the U.S., so I want to focus on that today. Our current total addressable market is defined by the number of students and the number of courses they take with required courseware or simply put, student enrollment and course enrollments.

Those students spend an estimated GBP 5 billion on those required materials. And while our business model is currently defined by winning course adoptions, we're also in a market that's becoming increasingly consumer-led. That means we have the opportunity to expand our addressable market beyond students who are enrolled in university and assigned courseware to anyone who needs to supplement their learning.

In just a moment, I'll walk you through how Pearson+, can help us do that. In 2021, our digital registrations dipped 7%, reflecting lower enrollments and more on-campus instruction. Our Pearson+ registered users were at 2.75 million and text unit volume, which is the combination of stand-alone print, print rentals and e-books stood at 5.4 million units, which was essentially flat to 2020, indicating secondary recapture amid lower enrollments.

For 2022, we expect sales to be down, but by less than last year and margins to stabilize as we drive cost optimizations. Now there are some key assumptions underpinning us. We expect student enrollment declines this spring, reflecting last fall's drop and the flow-through from that. And our plan also assumes continued declines from fall '22 at a lower rate, but that could improve.

We expect course enrollments to reflect those student enrollments. But while we've seen students taking fewer courses during the pandemic, universities in the U.S. still require the same number of courses to complete a degree, and students will need to catch up at some point. So we're going to pay very close attention to a potential uptick of those deferred courses.

Our product mix will continue to shift from print to e-books and Pearson+ and from bundles to digital-only. Print is now a relatively small portion of the business with diminishing downside which I'll speak to later. And we expect ongoing growth in both Inclusive Access and Pearson+.

Through 2025, we expect low to mid-single-digit revenue growth and margin improvements to the mid-teens due to the operating leverage and cost efficiencies. Now there are 3 key drivers that will lead to stabilization and digital growth for the higher education business.

First, we will continue to enhance our core products, Mastering, MyLab and Revel. These are widely adopted products because they solve customer problems. They provide great instructor tools and interactive learning experiences for students. This is the core of our business, and we've been investing to enhance the student learning experience using the capabilities of the Pearson's Learning platform.

Specifically, we're moving our Mastering and MyLab applications to the cloud to improve reliability and stability. That will be close to complete by the end of this year. We're also consolidating these platforms into a single application for more consistent user experience and faster innovation.

The next driver of our success is secondary recapture. Overall, the upside opportunity to recapture secondary consumption remains substantial especially as we continue to reduce secondary supply and ship the delivery to Inclusive Access and Pearson+.

It's important remember that underlying level, consumer choice is trending increasingly to digital, which leaves print with diminishing downside. On that point, it's important to remember a few key facts. Retrospectively, we sold considerably less print into the channel, nearly 6 million units in 2018 to 2 million in 2021. That reduces secondary supply.

Prospectively, our print mix is shifting across 3 commercial formats: rental, stand-alone sales and bundles. Rental title availability is rising for our highest volume titles. We'll have over 400 titles available in the rental program by fall '22 and nearly all of them by 2025.

And as a reminder, the titles in our rental program are available exclusively from us through partners. That means the secondary supply for our top volume titles will become obsolete. And for consumers who want print, we'll get paid.

The remaining stand-alone print sales, they're increasingly a long tail of titles with revenue we expect to decline but more steadily over time. And we expect bundles to go to 0 as consumers shift to a digital platform only, and they rent print if they want a physical text.

Now when that happens, the revenue loss from the roughly 500,000 bundles that we sold in 2021 is less than $25 million based on the price difference. That's built into our plan.

So with secondary supply and the associated downside reduced demand recapture will grow with Inclusive Access and Pearson+. So speaking of Pearson+, the third driver of our success will be the ability to scale the platform and expand the addressable market.

So why am I and all of us so upbeat about Pearson+? Well, first, we made a really good start. With the release that was just weeks before the start of fall classes, we had 2.75 million total registered users, including 133,000 paid subscriptions and over 1,600 titles available in service by the end of the year. Our App Store rating stands at an impressive 4.8 because we listen closely to customers and continuously improve the experience.

Further, we'll expand our market reach to Canada and other international regions starting in 2023. And we're also introducing 2 significant new services on the Pearson+ platform this year. These are services we believe we've got conviction that they'll increase the appeal of the product for any student who needs extra opportunities to learn, not just those who are assigned a Pearson eText.

In just a moment, you'll see a short download of the Pearson+ channels and our social features. Both those services are live in production pilots now and they're going to roll out further throughout the year. Some of the team who built and managed the product are here today. They're a terrific group with significant direct-to-consumer experience and accomplishments in direct-to-consumer product, design and tech. Some of you saw a live demo this morning, and I invite you to a presentation as they'll lead afterwards as well. So let's take a look now at the new futures by video.

(presentation)

Hello, everyone. I'm [Moshe] and I'm an SVP with Pearson product management organization, focusing on direct-to-consumer initiatives. While we're looking at the new Pearson+ homepage, I'm very excited to introduce 2 new Pearson+ features. Pearson+ social layer and Pearson+ Channels. Both features will take us 1 step closer towards our vision to make Pearson+ a must-have service for students.

While clicking the social badge on a microeconomic title, you can now see on screen how the social layer works. The social layer is a new user-generated data layer created on top of Pearson+ textbooks. It lets students ask questions, start discussions, post-links, images, videos exactly at the point they need it, when they need help with or when they have insights to share.

By creating an interactive community around our textbooks, we are launching a learning community for students while turning the learning experience into a more collaborative, more social and more fun. Switching gears to the second exciting feature we've just launched, Pearson+ Channels. On screen now, you can see 1 of our anatomy and physiology channels. We're launching Pearson+ Channels, utilizing Pearson's expertise in the learning space with a clear goal to become students go-to destination for learning, when they struggle or when they get stuck on any topic.

As you can see, what I click here, students have access to multiple short-form, high-quality videos explaining a wide range of concepts. Below each concept, students can use Pearson's proprietary practice questions to help them prepare for their exams.

You can see that the channel is organized by topics. So it is easy and intuitive for students to find any materials they need a system with. They can also use the search bar and get search results broken down by topics, videos and practice questions. We made the Pearson+ social layer available for channels as well. Students can see how many fellow students are using the channel at the same time they do.

The channels are designed for students to never feel stuck or alone while they are learning. While watching a video or solving a practice problem, students can start a discussion, reply to a comment and upload materials they find helpful.

This is how we use the power of the student community to curate the channel's content and keep it always relevant. We are very excited about the Pearson+ Channel's potential to become not only the go-to place for students to learn but also a main destination for content makers, including Pearson authors and other creators. Pearson+ Channels are a natural evolution of our textbook and courseware business and they move the Pearson+ appeal and value beyond just an assigned eText.

Ultimately, you could envision how people could learn or really study anything using our channels and how Pearson+ channels could expand as a hub for curated quality consumer learning beyond higher ed courses. Thank you.

All right. I hope you can see why we're so excited about channels and social. And I'm thrilled to announce today that we signed an agreement to acquire Clutch Prep. They are an online video-based learning service that will rapidly fuel our channels content with quality original video tours. The Clutch prep team has been at this for 10 years, creating a short-form video and practice library with remarkably simple explanations to help students get better grades and save time in the toughest college courses.

So just to recap before I hand back to Andy. The higher education business is on the right track for stabilization and growth. And we'll deliver that by maintaining the strength of our core products, continuing our aggressive pursuit of the secondary market and by scaling and enhancing Pearson+. I hope that gives you a sense of why we're confident and excited about this division and the potential it has to contribute to the future growth of Pearson. Thank you. Back to Andy.

Thanks, Tim. So in summary, Assessment & Qualifications is a source of strength and stability in the company and we expect that to continue in 2022 as that business maintains its broad, long-standing customer base, fed by the market demand for upskilling and reskilling.

Our virtual learning business is poised to benefit from the normalization of online schooling and from our strong foundation in OPM, which provides upside. Our ELL business aims to be the destination for committed English learners and we're pursuing that with institutional business and high stake assessments as well as a direct-to-consumer strategy.

You've also seen today the strategy for our Workforce Skills division which we will execute by bringing to market an end-to-end business solution that meets the learning and upskilling needs of both employers and employees.

And finally, you just heard from Tim talking about the path to stability and the digital growth for our higher education business, anchored by our trusted core products, the capture of the secondary market and the growth of Pearson+.

12 months ago, I laid out a strategy for this new Pearson, and I truly believe that we're at a pivotal and important inflection point in our evolution. Now as we move into 2022, my priorities are very clear.

Firstly, we're going to deliver sales and profit growth. Secondly, we're going to continue the focus on execution, quality and trust. We're going to further embed customer and consumer insights across the entire company and we're going to progress and scale Pearson+. As I have shared when we launched Pearson+ last July, I've always felt that higher education was just the starting point for a broader consumer offering.

It's now time to start seeing Pearson+ in a new light. Earlier today, I talked about how building a connected consumer and commercial strategy is one of the ways that we're going to win. Pearson+ will be the connected product experience to deliver that. And as you just saw in Tim's presentation, the team is already making great progress against that goal.

Going forward, we're going to share Pearson+ registered users and subscriptions at each of our prelims and interim results so that we can mirror the fiscal and academic year. We're building Pearson+ to be the premier digital ecosystem for lifelong learning, whether through school, university, work, languages or life skills.

Today, we've reached tens of millions of people. With Pearson+, we aim to scale to a growing addressable market of even more people and do it globally. Consumers need a way to discover, learn, build skills and show credentials, and they want a great user experience, and we're going to deliver that with a broader Pearson+ vision.

Now that's possible by drawing on the current assets of the company, including our recent acquisitions and also through new investments. We'll leverage our growing relationships with students, consumers, enterprises, and we're going to target their specific needs through a robust data infrastructure.

Now I think the possibilities are vast when we connect all of this into 1 experience to meet consumer-led learning where it happens. You can see some of that potential in today's demo of Pearson+ channels. And using that model, it's easy to imagine how we could deliver content and channels for everything from language learning to life skills.

Now when you add our diagnostics, assessments and credentials, Pearson has the ability to scale and to succeed, and that's what we're going to do. Pearson+ is the digital future of the company. I believe it has the potential to be transformational by creating an entirely new business generating incremental growth. Now you've heard today about the foundational strength of our core businesses and the opportunity over the coming years for our 5 divisions, Pearson+ has the potential to drive that growth beyond that. And I hope you now have a sense of where we're heading. I think it's exciting and Pearson+ will become the company's North Star.

While we execute today, we're working hard across the company to deliver a bright tomorrow and 1 that's focused on where the market is going, 1 that plays to our strengths and takes all the parts of this company and makes us 1 to drive growth for consumers and for shareholders alike.