"The improving trend of last year has continued into the first quarter, but the outlook remains very short-term," John Ridding told Reuters in a telephone interview.

Pearson shares fell 0.8 percent to 947.5 pence by 1107 GMT (6:07 a.m. ET), one of the weakest performers in the European media index. They had risen to an eight-year high on Monday.

Pearson said on Monday it expected to see some stabilization in advertising revenues at FT Publishing -- the unit that contains the Financial Times newspaper, FT.com, half of The Economist and other publications.

But it said advertising sales, which the education-focused group has whittled down to 3 percent of total revenues, remained highly unpredictable.

FT Publishing reported a 12 percent fall in 2009 sales to 358 million pounds ($533 million) and a 42 percent drop in adjusted operating profit to 39 million pounds.

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