【英语财经】为何培生仍然未获投资者青睐？ Pearson investors wary of acquisitions

The Chateau Latour vineyard went in 1989, the waxworks of Madame Tussauds were sold nine years later, followed by investments in Lazard and the TV production company that made Baywatch. Now, Pearson has parted with two of its last trophy assets: the Financial Times and a 50 per cent stake in the publisher of the Economist, for a combined ￡1.3bn.

But if John Fallon, Pearson’s chief executive, thought that a narrower focus would automatically win over investors, he may be disappointed.

Shares in

Pearson, the world’s largest education company, have fallen by

one-fifth since the end of March. Even selling the

FT Group

and the

Economist Group

stake for more than most analysts’ valuations of the businesses failed to buck the trend. “It is intriguing,” says David Reynolds, an analyst at Jefferies. “There is a perception that the impact of technology — and all things digital — is yet to run its course in educational

publishing.”

Some investors are questioning Pearson’s ability to benefit from this after four years without organic revenue growth. While the company now has the cash for large acquisitions, doubts surround its ability to buy shrewdly.

“There’s the glare of investors on them,” says one top 10 shareholder. “We’ve sat down and spoken to them about returns [on acquisitions].”

Another major shareholder warns: “There’s a lot of spaghetti to be sorted out, particularly in the US?.?.?.?The last thing you want to do at the moment is throw another acquisition in.”

Mr Fallon says Pearson is “on the brink of another period of concerted underlying growth”. He is trying to reframe Pearson into a pure education company that can roll out software globally, and sell more expensive learning systems instead of textbooks.

“Old Pearson” — as one analyst fondly remembers the company between about 2005 and 2010 — was buoyed by government spending on education and economic growth, and contract wins in the US. It spent billions of pounds acquiring businesses in digital education and emerging markets.

Since then, however, the company has come up against three strong headwinds. First is what the company describes as cyclical pressures, mainly in the US, where the group derived 60 per cent of its ￡4.9bn in revenues last year. These include an economic recovery that is too early-stage to drive college enrolments, and political opposition in some states to Common Core — a federal government-backed plan to implement common school standards across the country, for which Pearson is a key supplier.

Last month, Pearson said the pressures were “slightly worse overall than we expected at the start of the year”. Morgan Stanley analysts concluded that the “prospects of a cyclical upturn in 2016 look weaker” — noting that further US states could drop out of the Common Core programme.

Second is the shift from printed textbooks and materials to digital products and learning services. Pearson completed a two-year restructuring plan at the end of last year, which involved closing some book warehouses and reshaping sales teams. But this may not be enough, given that other media companies have struggled to make money from digital formats, says Simon Baker, an analyst at Société Générale.

Third is the legacy of rapid acquisitions, which has left Pearson with a variety of technologies and infrastructures. It has some 50 data centres in the US, and its learning software has often been built differently. Mr Fallon says this “spaghetti” will largely be untangled by the end of 2017, leading to lower technology costs and higher profit margins from the following year.

He argues that Pearson now has four areas of focus that will drive growth: virtual schools; online universities; private language schools, such as Wall Street English in China; and higher education coursework, including digital materials.

Investing in these products is Pearson’s priority. “They today make up half of our revenues; they will soon be 75 per cent,” Mr Fallon says.

Claudio Aspesi, an analyst at Bernstein, says Pearson is “finally addressing the integration of digital education businesses into a coherent set of products and services”.

Since 2010, Pearson has spent ￡2.8bn in cash on acquisitions. Two of the biggest — language school chain Grupo Multi and SEB, which sells learning systems — were in Brazil, a market championed by Mr Fallon that subsequently went into recession.

Mr Fallon has sought to assure investors that Pearson is “not in a rush” to make more purchases. Before 2010 “we were pushing the boundaries a little”, Mr Fallon admitted. Now he says: “We’re not looking at virgin territory. We’re looking at adding to growth platforms that we’ve already got.”

Some believe this means one rumoured target, the education software group Blackboard — whose private equity owners are eyeing a multibillion-dollar exit — is too big and too soon.

1989年脱手拉图酒庄(Chateau Latour)，9年后卖掉杜莎夫人蜡像馆(Madame Tussauds)，之后是退出对Lazard银行及曾出品《护滩使者》(Baywatch)的电视制作公司的投资。现在，培生集团(Pearson)出售了旗下最后的炫耀性资产中的两项：《金融时报》，以及《经济学人》杂志发行商50%的股权，加起来一共价值13亿英镑。

但如果培生首席执行官范岳涵(John Fallon)以为收窄经营范围就能自动赢得投资者的支持，他或许会感到失望。

自3月底到8月12日，这家世界最大教育企业的股票下跌了五分之一。即使出售金融时报集团以及经济学人集团股份的价格超出了大多数分析人士对这两家企业的估值，也未能扭转其股价下跌趋势。“这耐人寻味，”杰富瑞(Jefferies)分析师戴维?雷诺兹(David Reynolds)表示：“有这样一种看法，技术——以及一切数字的东西——的影响，在教育出版业还没有结束其演进过程。”

对此，一些投资者质疑，培生在4年未能实现收入有机增长后，是否有能力从中获益。尽管这家企业现在拥有进行大规模收购的现金，人们怀疑培生是否能够明智地进行收购。

“投资者对此密切关注，”十大股东中的一位说：“我们已经坐下来，和他们谈过（有关收购的）回报。”

另一名主要股东警告称：“有很多乱麻需要理清，尤其是在美国……此刻你最不想做的就是抛出另一笔收购。”

范岳涵表示，培生“正处于另一个协同潜在增长期的边缘”。他试图将培生重新定位为一家纯粹的教育公司，向全球范围内推广软件，卖出更昂贵的学习系统，而不是课本。

“老培生”——这是一位分析人士深情回忆起大约2005年到2010年间的培生时的爱称——曾因政府教育支出、经济增长以及在美国赢得的合同而受益。培生集团花费了数十亿英镑收购数字教育领域和新兴市场的企业。

然而，自那以后，培生集团遭遇了三大不利因素。第一是其所说的周期性压力，主要是在美国，去年培生集团49亿英镑的总收入中60%都来自美国。这些压力包括：美国的经济复苏还处于非常早期的阶段，因此无法拉动高校招生；一些州的政界出现反对“通用核心”(Common Core)课程计划的声音。该计划得到了联邦政府的支持，目的是在全国实施统一的学校教育标准，培生是该计划的主要供应商。

培生最近表示，这些压力“整体上比我们年初预期的略微糟糕”。摩根士丹利(Morgan Stanley)分析师的结论是，“2016年出现周期性好转的前景看起来更为暗淡”。他们指出，美国可能会有更多州退出通用核心计划。

第二是从纸质课本和材料向数字产品和学习服务转变的趋势。去年年底，培生完成了历时两年的重组计划，其中包括关闭一些存书仓库和改组销售团队。但是，法国兴业银行(Société Générale)分析师西蒙?贝克(Simon Baker)说，考虑到其他媒体公司要从数字格式中赚钱很困难，培生的行动或许还不够。

第三是快速收购的遗留问题，这给培生留下了许多不同的技术和基础设施。培生在美国大约有50个数据中心，其学习软件的制作往往各不相同。范岳涵称，这团“乱麻”大体上将在2017年年底理清，这将使往后年度的技术成本更低、利润率更高。

他表示，培生现在有四个重点领域来拉动增长：虚拟学校；在线大学；私立语言学校，比如中国的华尔街英语(Wall Street English)；高等教育课程作业，包括电子材料。

投资这些产品是培生的优先事项。“现在它们占我们收入的一半，很快就会占75%了，”范岳涵说。

伯恩斯坦(Bernstein)分析师克劳迪奥?阿斯佩西(Claudio Aspesi)表示，培生“终于着手将数字教育业务整合到一套井然有序的产品和服务中了”。

自2010年以来，培生已斥资28亿英镑现金进行收购。规模最大的收购中，有两项在巴西（连锁语言学校Grupo Multi和销售学习系统的SEB），这个范岳涵支持的市场之后陷入了衰退。

范岳涵力图让投资者确信，培生“不会仓促”进行更多收购。他坦言，在2010年以前，“我们稍微过了界。”现在他表示：“我们不是在寻求进入全新的领域，而是要对我们已有的增长平台进行添加。”

一些人认为，这意味着，一个传言中的收购目标——教育软件集团Blackboard——对培生来说太大、太早。拥有Blackboard的私募股权机构正在寻求以数十亿美元的价格转手。

译者/许雯佳