Pearson To Sell PowerSchool Unit To Vista Equity For Consideration Of $350 Mln

(RTTNews) - Pearson plc (PSO, PSON.L) said that it has agreed to sell its PowerSchool business to private equity firm Vista Equity Partners for a gross consideration of $350 million, payable in cash.

Pearson had announced its intention to explore a sale of PowerSchool in February 2015. PowerSchool, the leading provider of K-12 student information systems (SIS), supported 15 million students in 73 countries in 2014, and its flagship product, PowerSchool is the most widely used web-based SIS in North America. The transaction also includes other SIS businesses including PowerSchool SMS, Gradespeed and eSIS Forms. PowerSchool contributed $97 million of revenues and $20 million of operating income to Pearson in the 12 months to 31 December 2014. Over the same period, PowerSchool contributed approximately 1.2 pence to Pearson's adjusted earnings per share.

The transaction is expected to close during the third quarter of 2015. Evercore acted as financial adviser to Pearson on this transaction. Morgan Stanley acted as financial adviser to Vista.