Pearson PLC (LSE:PSON) shares fell after the education specialist said forewarned of the end of a major contract.
Its online program management partnership with Arizona State University would end in June 2023, the FTSE 100 group said.
It said the profit impact would be modest and said there was no change to its financial guidance for 2022.
Analysts at UBS said: "We think the end of this contract could therefore mean that the Virtual Learning segment within Pearson may not grow in 2023-24 (current forecasts for underlying growth of 6% in both years).
The end of the contract “will make investors more cautious on placing value on these revenues”, the analysts predicted.
“It is a reminder that under an online program management contract, the intellectual property sits with the university partner with the [manager] operating as a service provider.
The analysts also said it was “a concern that one of Pearson's largest contracts in this area was only minimally profitable given no change to guidance".
In order to generate meaningful profits from its online program management business, the company may therefore “need to invest more aggressively in online degree lead generation", the UBS team said, for example by building its own branded consumer destination for online degree programs.