=Laureate (LAUR) : 8-month performance

Laureate (LAUR) began trading on Nasdaq on 1 Feb 2017

• Laureate works with more than 70 institutions in 25 countries.
• Laureate was taken private in a $3.8 billion deal in 2007 by a group of investors that included Snow Phipps Co and Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. That partnership will continue to control the firm after the stock offering, according to the SEC filing.

Laureate Education CEO Douglas Becker, Nasdaq CEO Adena Friedman and Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh cheer Laureate's IPO.

Laureate on Times Square. (Photo via Nasdaq/Facebook)

1 and 3 weeks after IPO

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Headquartered in Harbor East, Laureate has grown into the largest global network of degree-granting higher-education institutions, owning and operating 71 universities in 25 countries, many in emerging markets. The firm employs more than 67,000 people globally and about 1,130 at its offices in Baltimore and Columbia. It is one of the few “B Corp” companies, those certified as meeting standards of social and environmental performance and accountability, to go public.

The company was born out of Sylvan Learning Corp., a tutoring company Becker and his business partners acquired in 1991. By that time, Maryland native Becker, who attended the Gilman School and was accepted at Harvard University but never attended, already had achieved entrepreneurial success. At 19, he developed the wallet-sized “LifeCard,” which was encoded with a person’s medical history and adopted by health insurers.

Laureate Education files for a $1 billion IPO

Baltimore-based Laureate Education announced that it wants to sell stock to the public for a second time, perhaps raising as much as $1 billion.

• Laureate Education (LAUR) files for an $100M IPO. The deal size could eventually be pushed to as high as $1B, according to Renaissance Capital.
• The for-profit education company reported revenue of $4.414B in 2014 and operating income of $299.5M. Also of note, Laureate Education has a close prior association with Bill Clinton and the Clinton Global Initiative.
• KKR (NYSE:KKR) was a lead investor in the group that took Laureate private in a $3.8 billion deal in 2007.

The company said Friday in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that it wants to raise at least $100 million in an initial public offering, though that number is likely to change. A Bloomberg News report in April said Laureate was interviewing banks for a $1 billion offering in the U.S. that would have valued the company at about $5 billion.

A for-profit educational provider that owns universities across the globe, the company has not yet determined the number of shares it will offer or at what price, and has not yet determined which stock exchange it would be listed under.

Laureate serves more than 1 million students at 88 institutions in 28 countries. It was founded in 1989 as Sylvan Learning Systems, a provider of supplemental and remedial education services, and first went public in 1993.

Sylvan Learning acquired its first college, Universidad Europea de Madrid, in 1999, spun off its tutoring business in 2003 and changed its name to Laureate Education in 2004 as its focus shifted.

The company was bought out in 2007 for $3.8 billion by a consortium of investment funds and other investors led by its chairman and CEO, Douglas L. Becker. Investors included Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. and Citigroup Private Equity.

At the time, Becker said the deal was necessary so the company could aggressively expand in Asian markets, such as China, South Korea and India. He relocated to Hong Kong to lead those efforts.

"We went private with the intention of accomplishing some very specific objectives and, having achieved these goals, we believe it is time for us to re-establish ourselves as a publicly traded company," Becker wrote in a letter to potential investors. "Being public brings the highest level of transparency, and will enable us to more easily raise capital to support our mission which, at its core, is about expanding access to higher education through greater scale."

The company would use the infusion of capital to grow, Becker wrote.

"We want to best ensure that we always have capital to grow and bring the benefits of our education programs to more students," he said.

Anastasia Pronin, a spokeswoman, said the company would not be offering further comment while the process was underway.

The company also filed on Friday to convert from a traditional corporation to what is known as a public benefit corporation domiciled in Delaware, though it will keep its Harbor East headquarters. The change means the company must balance the financial interests of its stockholders with the benefits to those served by its educational offerings.

Former President Bill Clinton served as the company's honorary chancellor since 2010, being paid $16.5 million, according to the Bloomberg report. Clinton left the position earlier this year after his wife, Hillary, officially launched her campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination.

The company has lost money every year since 2010, according to its SEC filing, losing $158.3 million last year on $4.4 billion in revenue. Through the first six months of this year, it lost $171 million on nearly $2.2 billion in revenue.

The losses can be attributed in part to the nearly $4.7 billion in debt the company carries related to its buyout and acquisitions. Last year it made almost $386 million in interest payments.

Laureate Education plans IPO

(Reuters) - Laureate Education Inc, the world's biggest for-profit education chain, is in talks with banks for an initial public offering, a person familiar with the matter told Reuters.

The IPO, however, is not expected before 2016, the person said on Thursday.

Laureate Education has been meeting potential underwriters for the IPO of $1 billion, which could value the company at about $5 billion, Bloomberg reported earlier on Thursday, citing people familiar with the matter.

This is Laureate Education's second attempt to go public.

The company, which has former U.S. President Bill Clinton as its honorary chancellor, had picked banks for an IPO in 2012, Reuters had reported then, citing sources.

Laureate Education has more than 80 campus-based and online universities offering undergraduate and graduate degree programs to over 950,000 students globally, according to its website.

Laureate Education eyes IPO up to $750 million

(Reuters) - For-profit higher education company Laureate Education, which has former U.S. President Bill Clinton as honorary chancellor, has picked banks to lead an initial public offering that could raise as much as $750 million, according to people familiar with the matter.

Laureate has chosen Morgan Stanley (MS.N) and Barclays (BARC.L) to lead the proposed offering, the sources said. Citigroup (C.N) is also an active bookrunner in the IPO, they added.

The Baltimore, Maryland-based company, which was bought by a consortium led by its chief executive, Douglas Becker, and private equity firm KKR & Co LP (KKR.N) for $3.82 billion in 2007, is expected to file an IPO registration document after June, the sources said.

They added that no decision had been made on the size of the offering, but the IPO could raise $500 million to $750 million.

Representatives for Laureate, KKR, Morgan Stanley, Barclays and Citigroup declined to comment.

Sources told Reuters on March 29 that Laureate was in the process of appointing investment banks for an IPO.

Laureate Education runs a network of 60 accredited campus-based and online universities offering undergraduate and graduate degrees to more than 675,000 students around the world, according to its website.

About half Laureate's revenues come from Mexico, Chile and Brazil, where post-secondary enrollment is growing faster than in the United States and international schools are less regulated, according to a recent Standard & Poor's note.

The consortium that bought Laureate in 2007 also included investment firms Citigroup Private Equity, S.A.C. Capital Management LLC, SPG Partners, Bregal Investments, Caisse de depot et placement du Quebec, Sterling Capital, Makena Capital, Torreal S.A. and Southern Cross Capital.