Rumor on the street is that Apollo is going to sell off the HED business to get back their money. Looks like another round of firing is coming. Brace for impact everyone!
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only d-mb when they are spot on. expand on your basic comments .... tell us what is not accurate.
@k6 I must have missed it; did anyone ask for your opinion which is riddled with inaccuracies and just d-mb comments.
Here's my view on the IPO, a sale, or whatever exit strategy Apollo ultimately chooses. If leadership spent years making the right decisions, growing the business, retaining talent, improving products, and creating value for employees, customers, and investors, then they deserve to benefit from their RSUs and equity programs. But if the path to liquidity is built on layoffs, cost cutting, shrinking support teams, pricing increases, territory chaos, restructuring after restructuring, and the loss of experienced talent, then why should executives be the only ones rewarded? That's the question employees should be asking.
Over the past few years, employees have been told to do more with less. Customers have been asked to pay more. Teams have been consolidated. Headcount has been reduced. Benefits have been reduced. Experienced colleagues have exited. Yet somehow the people making those decisions are positioned to receive the biggest rewards if an IPO or transaction happens.
That doesn't sit well with a lot of employees.
Personally, I don't care whether it's an IPO, a sale, or some other exit. What I care about is whether the people who created the value participate in the outcome. Because from where many employees sit, the people creating the value aren't the executives giving presentations. They're the reps protecting adoptions. They're the Customer Success teams keeping courses running. They're the product teams fixing issues. They're the operations teams holding things together. They're the people who survived every reorg and stayed focused on customers while leadership chased the next strategy.
If an exit happens, I hope the market, investors, and the board evaluate leadership based on actual results rather than slide decks, slogans, and EBITDA targets. At the end of the day, equity should be worth something because value was created, not because employees sacrificed while executives collected rewards.
That's the difference between leadership and financial engineering. If the company succeeds because customers were served, products improved, employees retained, and revenue genuinely grew, then everyone should benefit. But if the entire outcome is driven by cuts, layoffs, price increases, and accounting optics, many employees will have a hard time celebrating executives walking away with valuable RSUs while the people who endured the disruption are left behind.
That's what accountability looks like. Not rewarding promises, presentations, and strategy slides. Rewarding actual results.
MH and NK don't deserve a BIG payout
@j5 you mean the non-IPO
@gp why work for a company where 6 months into the fiscal you can’t see your numbers. It’s shady for a reason- which has a lot to do with the IPO
@hy it’s hard for them apparently. You have to have innovation and investors for this space to go IPO- there is nothing to invest in here.
@gp IPO is DEAD, do you really not understand the market? MH is still underwater from their IPO. What good will and IPO do if no one can sell? Gotta use your brain bruh.
@fc IPO is alive.
Also, Its Oct. 1st. can we see our sales? Can someone please stop hiding them, we want to know what we sold so far.
@ep hi Mr. IPO, glad to see you are still pushing your make believe and falsehoods. The IPO is dead - even Oura pulled their IPO, you think Cengage is going to IPO? If so, you are batsh-t crazy bro.
If there was an actual IPO failure, post the source. Not a rumor. Not a message board comment. An actual filing, press release, or financial news article.
What we've seen publicly is continued discussion of an IPO, continued restructuring, continued cost cutting, continued focus on EBITDA, and continued efforts to improve financial performance. Those are the actions of a company still preparing for an exit, not a company publicly admitting its IPO failed.
At this point there seems to be more evidence supporting 'the IPO is delayed or still being worked on' than 'the IPO failed.' Those are very different things
@e4 don’t you find it odd they started the ipo process in Jan and nothing has happened? Even MH has stopped fielding ?s about it and seems very disengaged.
back up this rumor with some facts
@ak they applied for their IPO back in Jan. It has failed. They are scrambling to stabilize and it’s not going to happen.
I'm not buying the "sell off Higher Ed" rumor. In fact, Higher Ed is probably the last thing ownership wants to sell.
People need to remember the history here. Cengage went through bankruptcy carrying roughly $5.8 billion of debt, ultimately restructuring and eliminating billions while emerging with a new capital structure.
Fast forward to today and the entire investment story is still largely built around Higher Ed. According to Cengage's own reporting, Higher Ed remains the company's largest segment by both revenue and EBITDA.
So ask yourself a simple question:
If you're Apollo, KKR, Searchlight, Apax, and the other investors looking for an exit, why would you sell the crown jewel?
The Work business is growing. The School business is shrinking. ELL is relatively small. But Higher Ed still generates the largest share of revenue and profit. That's the division investors would want showcased in an IPO, not carved off and sold separately.
What I think employees are witnessing is not preparation for a breakup.
It's preparation for an exit.
The layoffs, reorganizations, cost cutting, pricing increases, consolidation of business units, focus on EBITDA, and endless discussions about alignment all look far more like a company trying to improve its financial profile than a company preparing to dismantle itself.
Could there be more layoffs?
Absolutely.
Would that surprise anyone at this point?
Not at all.
But "more layoffs" and "selling off Higher Ed" are two very different things.
If anything, the frantic effort to stabilize revenue, push CUI, consolidate operations, and improve margins suggests leadership believes Higher Ed is the engine they need to get an IPO across the finish line.
Whether that strategy succeeds is a different debate.
But selling off the largest revenue‑producing division doesn't strike me as the most logical path for investors who still appear to be pursuing an exit through a public offering. Multiple reports have continued to describe an IPO as the intended exit path for current owners.
That’s the only choice now. I’ve never seen more of a cluster than this set up.