Coursera: The Education Disruptor Goes Public

seekingalpha2021-03-30

SummaryThe company is growing rapidly as a result of secular trends as well as the Covid-19 pandemic.It is operating in a huge addressable market that is likely to grow for the foreseeable future....

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Comments

DenDenBear
2021-04-14
DenDenBear
Reply and like thanks
PaperIsLight
2021-04-10
PaperIsLight
Nice
diggydog
2021-04-09
diggydog
I'm watching this one. Great business.
LoLoMiNi
2021-04-09
LoLoMiNi
How does this compare to 2U ?
kuehlapis
2021-04-05
kuehlapis
interesting [眼眼]
FTGR
2021-04-04
FTGR
Good to know..

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Buying when the company turns a profit is the safer bet.Coursera (COURS), the online learning platform founded in 2012 by former Stanford University computer science professors Daphne Koller and Andrew Ng, filed itsIPO prospectuswith the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The Mountain View, California-based company offers individuals access to over 4,000 Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) from 200 educational institutions and corporations. The company also offers over two dozen degree programs at prices lower than what a learner would pay at a traditional, in-person institution. As the company grows its offering, it will be able to compete head-to-head with other “online program management” (OPM) providers, such as 2U(NASDAQ:TWOU), which is already publicly traded, and Noodle Partners.Ng’sshareholder letter in the S-1articulated clearly just what the company is about:“We believe that education is the source of human progress. In today’s economy in which the skills needed to succeed are rapidly evolving, education is becoming more important than ever. As automation and digital disruption are poised to replace unprecedented numbers of jobs worldwide, giving workers the opportunity to upskill and reskill will be crucial to raising global living standards and increasing social equity. Online education will play a critical role, enabling anyone, anywhere, to gain the valuable skills they need to earn a living in an increasingly digital economy.”The filing lists Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs and Citigroup as underwriters. The number of shares and the price range of the proposed offering are yet to be determined.According to PitchBook data, Coursera’s most recent valuation in the private markets was $2.5 billion. To date, the company has raised $464 million in venture capital, most recently,$130 million in a Series F roundlast July. Coursera’s biggest institutional shareholders are New Enterprise Associates (18.3% of company stock), G Squared (15.9%) and Kleiner Perkins (9.2%).Operating ResultsThe company earned $293 million in revenues for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2020, up 59% from 2019. Net losses widened by about $20 million year-on-year, reaching $66.8 million in 2020. Revenues shot up as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic’s effect on traditional education. In tandem with rising demand, operating costs associated with the company’s services rose, largely driven by the freemium content and marketing expenses. Coursera added over 12,000 new degree learners across the two years ended December 31, 2020 at an average acquisition cost of just below $2,000. The number of registered users rose by 65% year-on-year in 2020. Coursera’s accumulated deficit since its founding stood at $343.6 million as of December 31, 2020. The company does not expect to turn a profit in the foreseeable future.The company’sCoursera for Campus,launched in late 2019to enable colleges to offer its library of MOOCs to their students, has been a key driver of recent revenue growth. At the start of the pandemic, Coursera made the program free to tertiary institutions until Sept. 30, 2020. Over 4,000 tertiary institutions from across the world signed up for the program, which, according to the company’s S-1 filing, makes it, “one of our fastest growing offerings”. As of December 31, 2020, over 130 tertiary institutions were paying for it.At this point, it is hard to predict what the end of the pandemic would have on the company’s operating results.The Strategy and Market OpportunityCoursera is one of the most disruptive firms in the world. It has a flywheel approach to value creation, with significant price-to-cost advantages versus its competition. The company reported that about half of its new degree students in 2020 had been previously registered with Coursera and that its average student acquisition cost was less than $2,000. Its average student acquisition cost is lower than the industry standard. The edu-tech platform is able to efficiently acquire learners at scale because of the huge number of free, high-quality courses that it offers in partnership with top educational institutions and corporations; its ability to personalize content based on its wealth of data; the strength of word-of-mouth promotion by learners; the profitability of its affiliate paid marketing channel.The platform offers a number of education tracks, for example:Specializations: A learner can pay between $39 and $99 a month for job-specific content across over 500 categories.MasterTrack Certificates: For a quarter to a year, a learner can earn a certificate issued by a university-issued certificate. Prices range from $2,000 to $6,000.Bachelor’s or Master’s Degrees: Fees range from $9,000 to $45,000.Coursera for Enterprise: Through this platform, businesses, educational institutions and governments can deploy content to their learners.In response to the Covid-19 pandemic, Coursera partnered with over 330 government agencies across 30 U.S. states and cities and 70 countries as part of itsCoursera Workforce Recovery Initiative, which gave governments the chance to offer unemployed workers free access to thousands of business, data science, and technology courses from companies such as Amazon(NASDAQ:AMZN)and Google(NASDAQ:GOOG)(NASDAQ:GOOGL).The company has 77 million registered learners, as well as over 2,000 businesses (including 25% of Fortune 500 companies) and 100 government agencies who paid for its enterprise offerings. The majority of its revenue (51%) was earned outside of the United States. Converting only a fraction of its 77 million registered users into paid users would change the economics of customer acquisition. The company’s present scale is a huge competitive advantage in the market.A learner’s curriculum is designed to be “stackable”, which is to say that a learner can go through a domain in an incremental fashion. The company is able to leverage the huge volume of data it has accumulated from its over 220 million enrollments to personalize content. So, for example, Coursera’s Skills Graphs can suggest paths for job skills.Coursera uses technology to drive down distribution costs, make content more affordable, extend access to less economically-endowed regions, help learners keep abreast of emerging skills, and grow its market opportunity. The Covid-19 pandemic has only accelerated secular trends towards the use of technology in education.The size of the addressable market is massive and it’s easy to see why.An August 2020 study by the United Nationsdemonstrates the degree of disruption brought on by the Covid-19 pandemic: of the 1.6 billion students in 190 countries covered in the report, or 94% of the world’s students, were prevented from going to school because of Covid-19 pandemic related school closures.In 2017, the World Bank indicated thatof the 200 million college students in the world, many do not have job-specific skills.The Covid-19 pandemic and prior secular trends suggest that the future of education is in blended classrooms, job-specific education and continuous, lifelong education. Online learning platforms like Coursera will be the primary means through which educational content is delivered.Globally, spending on higher education in 2019 was $2.2 trillion,according to HolonIQ. Spending on online degrees was $36 billion and is predicted to reach $74 billion by 2025.With a huge, existing learner base; a strong brand; and the significant advantages detailed above, Coursera is likely to grab a significant amount of the market’s growth. Of thescenarios for the future of education, it seems that Coursera will continue to grow.ConclusionCoursera seems poised to meet the challenges of a changing education landscape. With its vast, existing user base, its flywheel model, its competitive advantages, and its existence in a huge and growing addressable market, the company is likely to do very well. The company’s value proposition is compelling. However, long run success does not equate to a good investment in the short run. An unprofitable company like Coursera is likely to be very volatile on the markets until it reaches profitability. It is better to wait for Coursera to turn a profit before investing in the company.","kind":null,"is_publish_news":true,"is_publish_highlight":false,"is_publish_live":null,"is_publish_wemedia":null,"editions":null,"column":"","sentiment":"","news_tag":"","news_rank":0,"symbols":[],"gpt_button":1},"commentList":[{"id":344349900,"gmtCreate":1618380311000,"gmtModify":1704709928679,"author":{"id":"3576147606699436","authorId":"3576147606699436","name":"DenDenBear","avatar":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/01e983ba302bc271159224fa4bb390e6","vip":1,"crmLevel":3,"crmLevelSwitch":0},"htmlText":"Reply and like thanks","listText":"Reply and like thanks","text":"Reply and like thanks","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":0,"commentSize":0,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://ttm.financial/post/344349900","repostId":1163996400,"repostType":2,"isVote":1,"likeStatus":false,"favoriteStatus":false,"reportStatus":false,"tweetType":1,"langContent":"EN"},{"id":346609149,"gmtCreate":1618025913581,"gmtModify":1704706121264,"author":{"id":"3579513942149909","authorId":"3579513942149909","name":"PaperIsLight","avatar":"https://static.laohu8.com/default-avatar.jpg","vip":1,"crmLevel":4,"crmLevelSwitch":0},"htmlText":"Nice","listText":"Nice","text":"Nice","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":0,"commentSize":0,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://ttm.financial/post/346609149","repostId":1163996400,"repostType":2,"isVote":1,"likeStatus":false,"favoriteStatus":false,"reportStatus":false,"tweetType":1,"langContent":"EN"},{"id":348755816,"gmtCreate":1617967071935,"gmtModify":1704705418751,"author":{"id":"3575091423649914","authorId":"3575091423649914","name":"diggydog","avatar":"https://community-static.tradeup.com/news/476e481044aa54d1d955e8bc4b856dd4","vip":1,"crmLevel":7,"crmLevelSwitch":0},"htmlText":"I'm watching this one. Great business.","listText":"I'm watching this one. Great business.","text":"I'm watching this one. Great business.","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":1,"commentSize":0,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://ttm.financial/post/348755816","repostId":1163996400,"repostType":2,"isVote":1,"likeStatus":false,"favoriteStatus":false,"reportStatus":false,"tweetType":1,"langContent":"EN"},{"id":348732824,"gmtCreate":1617961868968,"gmtModify":1704705348230,"author":{"id":"3567689959878849","authorId":"3567689959878849","name":"LoLoMiNi","avatar":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/95f5762ae58c6404aba4062f7aa3dae6","vip":1,"crmLevel":8,"crmLevelSwitch":1},"htmlText":"How does this compare to 2U ?","listText":"How does this compare to 2U ?","text":"How does this compare to 2U ?","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":0,"commentSize":0,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://ttm.financial/post/348732824","repostId":1163996400,"repostType":2,"isVote":1,"likeStatus":false,"favoriteStatus":false,"reportStatus":false,"tweetType":1,"langContent":"EN"},{"id":349422555,"gmtCreate":1617633458177,"gmtModify":1704701177387,"author":{"id":"3574029017802033","authorId":"3574029017802033","name":"kuehlapis","avatar":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/732ffeea71fc0732b84f029cc0e8263e","vip":1,"crmLevel":3,"crmLevelSwitch":0},"htmlText":"interesting [眼眼]&nbsp;","listText":"interesting [眼眼]&nbsp;","text":"interesting [眼眼]","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":0,"commentSize":0,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://ttm.financial/post/349422555","repostId":1163996400,"repostType":2,"isVote":1,"likeStatus":false,"favoriteStatus":false,"reportStatus":false,"tweetType":1,"langContent":"CN"},{"id":349930938,"gmtCreate":1617515047824,"gmtModify":1704700173414,"author":{"id":"3567497553453071","authorId":"3567497553453071","name":"FTGR","avatar":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/ab47367525b6e6b9c6093ea906b80889","vip":1,"hat":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/b073a07f77dbe6b3bec6b12311fde6bd","crmLevel":2,"crmLevelSwitch":1},"htmlText":"Good to know..&nbsp;","listText":"Good to know..&nbsp;","text":"Good to know..","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":0,"commentSize":0,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://ttm.financial/post/349930938","repostId":1163996400,"repostType":2,"isVote":1,"likeStatus":false,"favoriteStatus":false,"reportStatus":false,"tweetType":1,"langContent":"EN"}],"isCommentEnd":false,"newsSizeData":{"likeSize":750,"commentSize":557,"repostSize":0,"favoriteSize":8,"likeStatus":false,"favoriteStatus":false},"APP":{"userAgent":"Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko; compatible; ClaudeBot/1.0; +claudebot@anthropic.com)","isDev":false,"isTTM":true,"deviceId":"web-server-community-laohu8-v3","version":"4.24.2","shortVersion":"4.24.2","platform":"web","vendor":"web","appName":"ttm","isIOS":false,"isAndroid":false,"isTiger":false,"isTHS":false,"isWeiXin":false,"isWeiXinMini":false,"isWeiBo":false,"isQQ":false,"isBaiduSwan":false,"isBaiduBox":false,"isDingTalk":false,"isToutiao":false,"isOnePlus":false,"isHuaWei":false,"isXiaomi":false,"isXiaomiWebView":false,"isOppo":false,"isVivo":false,"isSamsung":false,"isMobile":false},"href":"/m/news/1163996400"}