This 136 Year Old Publisher Just Triggered Dreadful Flashbacks With a $4.2B IPO Valuation…

Every time I hear “McGraw Hill,” I get an involuntary twitch in my left eyelid and the taste of mechanical pencil erasers in my mouth. Why? Because textbooks thick enough to knock a kid unconscious, filled with practice problems designed purely to break your will to live are the definition of childhood trauma. 

(Source: Giphy) 

In short, McGraw Hill, the 136 year old publisher is trying to cash in on all our shared PTSD by IPO’ing (again), gunning for a $4.2 billion valuation under the ticker “MH.” They’re slinging 24.4 million shares between $19 and $22 each, hoping to suck up $537 million in fresh cash. Which, is cool… but again, not their first rodeo. If you recall, the company’s been passed around private equity like a cheap bottle of Fireball at my in-laws. Apollo bought them for $2.5 billion back in 2011, tried to re-IPO the thing in 2015 and got the “close but no cigar” treatment. Platinum Equity picked them up in 2021 for $4.7 billion and now wants to pawn them off on the public markets while still hanging onto 87% of the company. Because of course they do.

(Source: Reuters) 

As for the financials, McGraw Hill raked in $2.1 billion in revenue in the fiscal year ending March 31, which is up about 7%. Good for them. Except… they still managed to lose $85.8 million. Which is less catastrophic than last year’s $193 million loss, but also: how the hell do you lose money selling overpriced PDFs to every school in America? Additionally, lurking in the footnotes is the fact that McGraw Hill’s got about $3.2 billion in debt, which feels a little hefty for a company whose primary product is torturing teenagers with geometry proofs.

(Source: Giphy) 

However, the real problem here is naturally every Wall Streeters favorite tit in 2025… AI. McGraw Hill admits right there in the filing that generative AI is a direct threat. Because if some chatbot can spit out homework assignments and quizzes, why would districts keep paying McGraw Hill billions for the same rinse-repeat content? Points for being honest. Translation: It’s basically the same thing as realizing you’ve been buying Evian for $4 when tap water was right there the whole time. Still, they claim 26 million paid digital users. And yet, I’d bet half of those are kids who’ve forgotten their login and are cursing the “forgot password” button for the 15th time.

(Source: Giphy) 

But alas, this IPO isn’t happening in a vacuum. The US IPO market appears to have found it’s balls again as Circle (the stablecoin degenerates) and Chime (the neobank) have been stirring investor loins. Even NIQ Global, that consumer data dinosaur formerly stuck inside Nielsen, wants a $7.26 billion valuation. The whole market’s awash in private equity-backed deals because those PE guys are itching to cash out after sitting on these companies through pandemic chaos, rate hikes, and Trump’s tariff whiplash. Platinum’s Equity is no different… they want a payday. And they are hoping investor sentiment is upbeat enough to overlook McGraw Hill’s decades-long history of being a private equity boomerang.

(Source: Giphy) 

Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley, and a bunch of other big names are underwriting. Which tells me either they believe in the pitch… or they’re all hedging bets so they don’t look like idiots alone if this bombs. With that said though, you can’t dismiss the fact that McGraw Hill built an empire selling kids the idea that every problem has one correct answer neatly boxed in at the back of the book. Meanwhile, their own fate is a giant multiple-choice question:

A) Investors lap up the IPO and McGraw Hill sails back into public markets like it’s 1998.

B) Everyone remembers how much they hated these textbooks and the stock tanks faster than your GPA after senioritis hits.

Either way, if this IPO pops, then we’ll know 100% sure that the IPO market is back and ready for vengeance. If not, well, it’s a textbook company that just gave a textbook lesson on “natural selection” during the age of AI. For now, keep your eyes on this story and place your bets accordingly. It’ll definitely be interesting to see how this sticks. Until next time, friends… 

At the time of publishing, Stocks.News does not hold position in companies mentioned in the article.