As indicated recently by Reuters, McGraw-Hill Education did indeed file preliminary paperwork with the SEC last week to launch an IPO, probably before the end of the year. For filing purposes they use a placeholder value of $100 million, though the actual offering is expected to look to raise up to five times that amount in actual proceeds. For the first six months of 2015 MHE had sales of $670 million, with a net loss of -$256 million. In 2014, the company had sales of $1.856 billion and a loss of -$331 million. As of June 30, the company carried […]
Education
McGraw-Hill Education Said to Hire Underwriters for End-of-Year IPO
Consistent with reports from this spring — and rumors from 2014 — McGraw-Hill Education’s private equity owners Apollo Global Management look to be moving ahead with plans for an IPO. “People familiar with the matter” tell Reuters the company has hired Credit Suisse and Morgan Stanley as lead underwriters and “expects to launch the IPO at the end of the year” following back-to-school sales. The market will determine the company’s value, but the leakers continue to assert a range of between $5 billion and $6 billion, including debt — which continues to sound aggressive until proven otherwise. Apollo bought the company in […]
Blackboard Owners Hire Bankers to Sell Company
Software company Blackboard, a staple of high school and college classrooms, is exploring a sale, hoping for a valuation of up to $3.4 billion, Reuters reports. According to “people familiar with the matter” Blackboard’s majority owner Providence Equity Partners has hired Deutsche Bank and Bank of America to run an auction and two anonymous people suggest the target would be “a valuation between 14 times to 17 times EBITDA,” currently at around $200 million annually. Providence took Blackboard private in 2011 for $1.64 billion (and took on $130 million in net debt.)
eBooks: Kobo in Mexico, Amazon In NY Schools
Kobo is joining with Mexican publisher and retailer Libreria Porrúa (with almost 70 bookstores) and bookstore chain Gandhi (with close to 30 stores) to power a new ereading service for Mexican readers called Orbile. They plan to launch an ebookstore in September with a catalog that will include over 70,000 titles. Both Porrúa and Gandhi will sell Kobo devices in their stores. Separately, the New York City Board of Education has a pending three-year contract with Amazon for ratification that will pay the etailer at least $30 million for ebooks selected by individual schools. Amazon will also build a “unified ebook storefront” for the […]
Houghton to Buy Scholastic’s Education Technology Business for $575 Million
Scholastic announced it has signed a definitive agreement to sell its Educational Technology and Services business to Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Company for $575 million in cash. Scholastic expects to have net proceeds of $360 million to $370 million after taxes, fees and expenses. The business unit they are selling had sales of $249 million, with $40 million in operating income, for the fiscal year ended May 31, 2014 — with sales of $175 million and operating income of $17 million for the first nine months of the current fiscal year. The deal is expected to close in the current calendar quarter. Scholastic says it will “focus on […]
With First Full Penguin Random House Annual Results, Dohle Says “We Are Stronger Together”
Bertelsmann reported financial results for 2014 on Tuesday morning, providing the first look at a full year’s worth of performance for the merged Penguin Random House. (A year ago, the 2013 report incorporated only six months worth of Penguin’s sales.) The trade publishing giant had combined sales of €3.324 billion for the year, including Random House Germany, which is still owned entirely by Bertelsmann outside of the PRH joint venture. Operating EBITDA rose in line with sales, to €452 million, “driven by numerous major bestsellers, especially in the field of children’s books, as well as tie-ins to popular movies and TV series and […]