McGraw Hill (MH) priced its IPO at $17.00 – $2.00 below range – and sold 24.39 million shares – the number of shares in the prospectus – to raise $414.63 million on Wednesday night, July 23, 2025. The terms in the prospectus for McGraw Hill’s IPO had set a price range of $19.00 to $22.00. McGraw Hill’s stock opened flat at $17.00 at about 12:27 p.m. EDT today – Thursday, July 24, 2025 – on the New York Stock Exchange. At pricing, McGraw Hill had a market cap of about $3.25 billion. (Editor’s Note: This column, published Wednesday night, was updated at midday Thursday with news of McGraw Hill’s NYSE debut.)
Goldman Sachs, BMO Capital Markets and J.P. Morgan led the joint book-runners’ team, which included Macquarie Capital, Morgan Stanley, Deutsche Bank Securities and UBS Investment Bank.
The IPO’s pricing marked McGraw Hill’s return to life as a publicly traded company.
McGraw Hill (MH), based in Columbus, Ohio, was taken private in 2012 when Apollo Global Management, a private equity behemoth, bought McGraw Hill’s educational publishing unit for $2.5 billion. Three years later – in 2015 – Apollo explored an IPO for the textbook business, but did not go through with it. In 2021, Apollo sold the McGraw Hill educational publishing business to Platinum Equity, a private equity firm based in California, for $4.7 billion, according to the prospectus.
McGraw Hill, the magazine company and textbook publisher, had traded on the NYSE under the symbol “MHP” until 2012, when Apollo bought the educational publishing unit.
After the IPO, Platinum Equity will control McGraw Hill through its ownership of a stake that represents about 86.5 percent of the voting power of the company’s outstanding stock, according to the prospectus.
McGraw Hill (MH) describes itself in the prospectus as “a leading global provider of information solutions for education across K-12 to higher education, and through professional learning,” which includes medical school, according to the prospectus.
The publishing company was founded in 1888.
“It’s an ‘old school’ company – pun intended,” a leading IPO player said.
McGraw Hill pointed out in the prospectus that these are not the best of times for the educational publishing business. The company is facing some headwinds from the possibility that the U.S. Department of Education will be shut down.
From the prospectus:
“The current U.S. administration has expressed an intention to potentially dismantle the U.S. Department of Education. This may lead to changes involving the oversight of our industry resulting in a fragmented education system with varying standards and requirements across states in the absence of federal regulations and oversight. The nature, timing and political effects of potential changes to current federal policy, (as well as to the) legal and regulatory framework affecting our industry remain highly uncertain. At this time, it is unclear what policies, if any, will change and whether uncertainty in this regard will adversely affect our operating environment. Any unfavorable developments in government regulation of education or the U.S. Department of Education could have an adverse effect on our results of operations and financial condition.”
McGraw Hill (MH) is not profitable, according to financial statements in the prospectus: The company reported a net loss of $85.8 million on revenue of $2.1 billion for the 12 months that ended on March 31, 2025
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