British media group Pearson has reported a 17% fall in pre-tax profit after a year of heavy Internet investment but the results were at the high end of forecasts, boosted by a strong core business.
Pearson is the world's top education publisher and owns the Financial Times newspaper. The company moved to soothe concerns over its heavy Internet outlay, saying its online education business, the Learning Network, would break even by the end of 2003.
Pre-tax profit before goodwill and integration costs fell to £333 million in the year to end 2000, from £402 million in 1999, after digesting £196 million of Internet investments. Analysts had forecast pre-tax profit of between £320 and £332 million.
The group posted record profits across all its businesses, education, the Financial Times Group and the Penguin publishing group, and said it was in good shape to deliver another year of strong revenue and earnings growth.
Pearson shares have outperformed the European media sector by 45% since the start of 2001.
