PEARSON PLC (PSON.L)

12.14GBP -0.86% (-0.11)

Over 1M: -6.6%

2026-08-25

12 12.5 13

28 Jul 31 Jul 5 Aug 10 Aug 13 Aug 18 Aug 21 Aug

Multiples & size

2025-12-31

Market cap 8.02Bp

P/E TTM 23.9×p

EV/EBITDA 18.0×p

EV/EBIT 18.0×p

P/B 2.2×p

P/S TTM 2.2×p

EPS TTM 0.51

FCF yield 7.8%p

Revenue growth +0.7%

Gross margin 52.0%

Operating margin 14.2%

Net margin 9.4%

FCF margin 17.5%

ROIC 8.5%

Payout 0.0%

Net debt/EBITDA 2.1×

52-week range

252 trading days

8.70 12.14 (77%) 13.17

Figures as at 2025-12-31, reported in GBP. The newest fact in the filings is dated 2026-01-01, 237 days ago. Nothing on this page is advice.

How it scores

Five questions, each answered by the measures under it. Every figure is the company's own; the bar beside it is where that figure sits among the companies read here — the top fifth, the bottom fifth, or somewhere between. Not among all listed companies, and for a valuation multiple the low end is the good end.

Quality

How much of the revenue is really kept — and what did it take to earn it?

4.6

SBC / sales 1.1%

OE margin 16.4%

Adj. EBITDA margin 15.3%

Oper. margin 14.2%

ROIC 8.5%

Valuation

What does the price ask for what the company earns, owns and pays out?

8.3

EV/OE 15.5×

EV/EBIT 18.0×

Resilience

Can the balance sheet absorb a bad year?

4.0

ND/EBITDA -0.12

Interest cover 5.2×

Growth

Is the business getting bigger, and is it getting more profitable?

1.1

Sales/sh Y/Y +0.7%

A measure absent from a block could not be computed from this company's filings. It is left out rather than scored as though it were bad, and the dimension is averaged over what remains. A score is measured against a fixed scale this model states; the bar is measured against the other companies, so the two can disagree — and where they do, that disagreement is the more interesting figure.

The ratios

The figures themselves rather than their scores — what somebody looking up PSON.L on one particular measure came for.

Ratio	Value
cash operating margin	15.26
ev ebit	17.97
ev owner earnings	15.49
ev sales	2.55
fcf margin	17.53
interest cover	5.17
net debt ebitda	2.14
operating margin	14.17
owner earnings margin	16.44
revenue growth	0.7
revenue growth per share	0.7
roic	8.46
rule of 40	14.88
sbc pct revenue	1.09

The figures, and where each came from

This is the part no other screener shows. Each figure below names the XBRL element it was read from, so it can be checked against the filing itself.

Figure	Value	XBRL tag	As at
capex	29,000,000	`PurchaseOfPropertyPlantAndEquipmentClassifiedAsInvestingActivities`	2025-12-31
cash	333,000,000	`CashAndCashEquivalents`	2026-01-01
equity	3,648,000,000	`EquityAttributableToOwnersOfParent`	2026-01-01
interest expense	98,000,000	`FinanceCosts`	2025-12-31
ocf	656,000,000	`CashFlowsFromUsedInOperatingActivities`	2025-12-31
revenue	3,577,000,000	`Revenue`	2025-12-31
sbc	39,000,000	`AdjustmentsForSharebasedPayments`	2025-12-31

What to be careful about

revenue is annual, not TTM
operating income is annual, not TTM
no usable diluted share count, so growth is measured on total revenue rather than per share; a company issuing shares to fund that growth reads better than it is
no forward EPS estimate; growth rests on filings only. Analyst consensus is not published in XBRL, so it has to be fetched from a data provider or set by hand in overrides.yaml as `eps_growth_2y`
durability DROPPED from the total: only 0 of 4 inputs could be computed (worst year, contracted coverage, gross margin stability, cash flow stability not tagged), so the score is not meaningful. Its weight is spread over the other dimensions
resilience rests on 2 of 3 inputs; not tagged: liquidity

See it scored yourself

The dashboard puts PSON.L beside other companies and lets you change what counts: the weight of each dimension, the value that earns a ten, and which of the 61 measures are included at all.