Pearson Valuation Multiples

Constellation Software is an acquirer, manager, and developer of vertical market software, or VMS, businesses globally. VMS differentiates from horizontal software in that it provides mission critical solutions within a specific industry for customers in a particular market. Constellation operates through a decentralized model in which each business operates as its own independent entity. Managers of individual businesses are incentivized to optimize their business for returns on invested capital and revenue growth. Excess cash generated by the individual businesses is repatriated to portfolio managers who focus on allocating as much capital as possible on new acquisitions. As of 2025, Constellation consisted of over 1,000 individual businesses and 64,000 employees.

Wolters Kluwer is a global provider of professional information, software solutions, and services in health; tax and accounting; environmental, social, and governance; finance; compliance; and legal. More than 60% of revenue is generated in North America and around 30% is from Europe.

News Corporation is a diversified media and information services conglomerate with significant presence in the US, the UK, and Australia. Key mastheads include The Wall Street Journal, Barron's, New York Post, The Times, The Sun, The Australian, Herald Sun, and The Daily Telegraph. Its 61%-owned REA Group is the dominant property listings platform in Australia. In addition, it owns Harper Collins, one of the largest book publishers in the world, and has a sizable US digital property advertising business, Move. The 65% interest in Foxtel, the Australian pay-TV and streaming provider, was sold in April 2025. The sale to global sports streaming platform, DAZN, was struck at more than 7 times Foxtel's EBITDA.

Informa PLC is an international events, digital services, and academic research group. Through various brands, products, and services, it connects businesses and professionals with the knowledge they need. The group's reportable segments are Informa Markets, Informa Tech, Informa Connect, Informa Festivals, and Taylor & Francis. The Informa Markets segment generates the highest revenue, connecting buyers and sellers across various specialist markets, including boating, pharmaceuticals, food, fashion, and infrastructure. This is achieved by delivering transaction-focused live events, such as exhibitions, specialist digital content, and targeted digital services, including data-driven demand generation products. It generates half its revenue from North America, followed by Asia.

Tyler Technologies provides a full suite of software solutions and services that address the needs of cities, counties, schools, courts and other local government entities. The company’s three core products are Munis, which is the core ERP system, Odyssey, which is the court management system, or CMS, and payments. The company also provides a variety of add-on modules and offers outsourced property tax assessment services.

The New York Times Company is an American media company headquartered in the New York Times Building in Manhattan, New York City, and the publisher of The New York Times and The New York Times International Edition. Alongside its news report it owns The Athletic, a subscription sports news site bought in February 2022 for $550 million, the word game Wordle, acquired in January 2022, and podcast producer Serial Productions, acquired in 2020. The company earns most of its revenue from digital and print subscriptions, supplemented by digital and print advertising. In 2025 it added 1.4 million net digital subscribers, including 450,000 in the fourth quarter, to reach about 12.8 million, and its digital revenue topped $2 billion for the first time, driven by roughly 14% growth in digital subscription revenue; fourth-quarter digital advertising rose about 25% to $147 million. The newspaper was first published on September 18, 1851, by Henry Jarvis Raymond and George Jones. The company introduced a website paywall in 2011 and has since sold About.com and The Boston Globe to concentrate on its subscription model. Meredith Kopit Levien has been chief executive since 2020.

New Oriental Education & Technology is a prominent private education provider in China, offering a wide array of educational services. These include overseas test preparation and consulting services, high school academic tutoring, nonacademic tutoring, and intelligent learning systems and devices. Additionally, the company holds a 57% ownership stake in East Buy, a leading player in the livestreaming e-commerce market.

TAL Education Group is a smart learning solutions provider in China. It operates a few business lines including enrichment learning, high school academic tutoring, learning technology, and content solutions. Among those business lines, TAL focuses on enrichment learning and content solutions.

Duolingo Inc is a technology company that develops a mobile learning platform to learn languages and is the top-grossing app in the Education category on both Google Play and the Apple App Store. Its products are powered by sophisticated data analytics and artificial intelligence and delivered with class art, animation, and design to make it easier for learners to stay motivated master new material, and achieve their learning goals. Its solutions include the Duolingo Language Learning App, Super Duolingo, Duolingo English Test: AI-Driven Language Assessment, Duolingo For Schools, Duolingo ABC, and Duolingo Math. It has four predominant sources of revenue; time-based subscriptions, in-app advertising placement by third parties, and the Duolingo English Test, and In-App Purchases.

Laureate Education is an international higher-education group founded in 1989 as Sylvan Learning Systems and historically headquartered in Baltimore, Maryland. Its institutions provide undergraduate and postgraduate qualifications through campus-based and online programmes. The network serves students across professional fields including business, health sciences, engineering, technology, design and hospitality. Revenue primarily comes from tuition and related education services paid by students, sometimes supported by public financing programmes. Laureate entered international higher education through Universidad Europea de Madrid in 1999 and expanded online education through Walden University in 2001. It sold its principal school-age education operations in 2003 and adopted the Laureate Education name in 2004. A KKR-backed consortium took the company private in 2007. By 2015 the network included more than eighty institutions across multiple regions, combining owned schools, controlled nonprofit institutions and selected management arrangements. The company became a Delaware public benefit corporation in 2015.

Topicus com Inc is engaged in the development, installation, and customization of vertical market software and the provision of related professional services and support for customers across several diverse markets, mainly in Europe. Its revenue consists mainly of software license fees, maintenance and other recurring fees, professional service fees, and hardware sales. Geographically, the company generates maximum revenue from its business in the Netherlands, and the rest from other markets.

Graham Holdings Company is a diversified holding company with operations spanning educational services, television broadcasting, healthcare, manufacturing, automotive dealerships, and other businesses. The Company's education activities are conducted through Kaplan, whose services include academic preparation programs for international students, English-language programs, exam preparation, and career and academic advisement. These services are provided to students, schools, and colleges, both domestically and outside the United States. It operates through seven reportable segments: Kaplan International, Kaplan Higher Education, Kaplan Supplemental Education, Television Broadcasting, CSI, Manufacturing and Automotive, with key revenue coming from the Education and Automotive segments.

Springer Nature AG & Co KGaA is a research, educational, and professional publisher providing content to communities through a range of platforms, products, and services. It offers journals, books, platforms, databases & and solutions. The company includes three Segments: Research, Education, and Health. The company operates in the Americas, APAC, Germany, and Other EMEA regions. The majority of revenue is generated from the research segment in America.

Adtalem Global Education is a Chicago-headquartered provider of postsecondary education in healthcare, business, and technology fields. It oversees institutions like Chamberlain University, Ross University School of Medicine, DeVry University, and Becker Professional Education, enrolling students in nursing, medical, accounting, and IT programs across the United States, Caribbean, and Brazil.

Grand Canyon Education Inc is a publicly traded education services company dedicated to serving colleges and universities. GCE's university partner is Grand Canyon University, an Arizona non-profit corporation that operates a comprehensive regionally accredited university that offers graduate and undergraduate degree programs, emphases, and certificates across nine colleges, both online and on the ground at its campus in Phoenix, Arizona, and at four off-site classroom andlaboratory sites. The Company generates all of its revenue through service agreements with its university partners.

Stride Inc is an American online educational company. It offers alternative programs to traditional on-campus schooling. It also operates state-funded virtual charter schools around the United States. The educational programs for K-12 students are usually monitored by parents and provide virtual classroom environments where teachers meet with students online, by phone, or in-person. The company's contractual agreements with various school districts to offer its curriculum programs provide a majority of the company's revenue. The company lines of business are Managed Public School Programs, Institutional and Private Pay Schools and Other.

East Buy Holding Ltd is a live-streaming platform that focuses on selecting premium products for customers. The company operates in three reportable segments: Private Label Products and Livestreaming E-Commerce, College Education, and Institutional Customers. The majority of its revenue comes from private label products and the direct e-commerce segment, i.e., direct online commerce with private label products sold to individual customers and providing commission services.

FibraEduca Management SC invests in real estate opportunities in the education sector. The company seeks investment opportunities in the education sector with administrative efficiency to generate returns to investors.

Kadokawa Corp is a Japan based publisher and digital content platform provider. It is involved in various businesses such as publishing, film, publishing rights, digital contents, planning, development and operation of network entertainment service, and contents and operation of video- sharing website.

Bright Horizons Family Solutions Inc provider of early education and child care, family care solutions, and workforce education services that help working families and client employees personally and professionally. It provides services under multi-year contracts with employers that offer early education and child care, back-up care, and educational advisory services as part of their employee benefits package. The company has three business segments; full-service center-based child care, backup care, and educational advisory services. The majority of the revenue is generated by full-service center-based child care, which includes traditional center-based child care and early education services. Other services provided by the company include in-home child and elder care, and Others.

Exponent Inc is a science and engineering consulting firm that provides solutions to complex problems. The company's consultant team is composed of scientists, physicians, engineers, as well as business and regulatory consultants. The company currently operates through two segments. The engineering and other scientific segments, which account for the majority of revenue, provide servicing encompassing biomechanics, biomedical engineering, buildings and structures, civil engineering, construction consulting, etc. The environmental and health segment covers chemical regulation and food safety, ecological and biological sciences, environmental and earth sciences and others. The company generates almost all of its revenues from America.

Jiangsu Phoenix Publishing & Media Corp Ltd is a China-based publishing company. The company operates four segments. The Publishing segment covers the publishing and distribution of textbooks, teaching aids, general books, audio-visual products, and vocational education software. The Issuing Division handles the wholesale and retail of teaching materials, teaching aids, general books, audio-visual products, and cultural supplies. The Other segment includes new media businesses such as software development, film and television production, digital asset management, cloud services, and investment management. The Headquarters segment oversees distribution management, procurement, settlement, group publication distribution, textbook bidding, and publishing business management.

Xinhua Winshare Publishing & Media Co Ltd is engaged in integrated cultural operations specializing in the creative content production of publications, education services, cultural consumption services, supply chain services, and capital operation. Its activities are editorial and publishing of publications, sales of publications in physical stores and the internet, distribution of textbooks and supplementary materials, education information and equipment services, etc. It is through two operating segments; the Publication segment, which includes publishing books, periodicals, and audiovisual products, and the Distribution segment, which comprises the distribution of textbooks and supplementary materials. The group generates a majority of its revenue from the Distribution segment.

Lagardere SA is in the business of content publishing, production, broadcasting, and distribution. It is also engaged in the travel retail business with various brands such as Relay and Aelia Duty-Free, and other selective distribution brands. The company operates through divisions: Lagardere Publishing, Lagardere Travel Retail, and others.

China South Publishing & Media Group Co Ltd operates in the publishing and media industry. The company offers publishing products, including books, newspapers, periodicals, audio and video products, electronics, network, comic, and animation.

China Literature Ltd is an investment holding company. The company along with its subsidiaries provides online reading services, copyright commercialization, writer cultivation and brokerage, and operation of text work reading. It generates its revenue from Online reading through self-owned platform products. it operates in two segments: Online business and Intellectual property operations and others. The Online business segment that derives the majority of revenue comprises online paid reading, online advertising, and game publishing. The Intellectual property operations and other segment include licensing and distribution of film and television properties, copyrights licensing, sales of adaptation rights and scripts, sales of physical books, and in-house online games operations.

COL Global Co Ltd is a digital cultural content industry group in China. Its core businesses include digital content production, copyright distribution, IP derivatives, and intellectual property protection.

China Science Publishing & Media Ltd is a China based company engaged in providing publishing services. It offers books, journals, newspapers, literature and data, online publishing, import and export and printing services. For overseas distribution, the company uses Science Press brand.

Zhejiang Publishing & Media Co Ltd is engaged in the publication, distribution and printing of books, periodicals, audio-visual products and electronic publications.

McGraw Hill is an American education company that publishes curriculum and course materials and sells adaptive learning software to schools, universities and professionals. Its roots go back to 1888, when James H. McGraw bought the American Journal of Railway Appliances, and to the 1909 merger of his and John A. Hill's publishing operations into the McGraw-Hill Book Company. The K-12 business provides core, supplemental and intervention curricula to US schools; Higher Education sells digital courseware such as the Connect platform and the ALEKS adaptive learning system alongside e-books and print materials; Global Professional serves medical and engineering learners; and International sells in more than 100 countries. The McGraw-Hill Companies sold the education business to Apollo Global Management for $2.4 billion in 2013, Platinum Equity bought it for $4.5 billion in 2021, and it completed an initial public offering on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker MH on 24 July 2025. The company reports about $2.2 billion of annual revenue and 4,200 employees, and digital products generated about 61% of revenue in the first quarter of fiscal 2026. It is headquartered in Columbus, Ohio and led by chief executive Philip Moyer.

John Wiley & Sons Inc is a publisher and a trusted leader in research and learning. The company segment includes: Research, which includes the reporting lines of Research Publishing and Research Solutions, and Learning includes the Academic and Professional reporting lines and consists of publishing, courseware, and assessments. Its industry-principal content, services, platforms, and knowledge networks are tailored to meet the evolving needs of its customers and partners, including researchers, students, instructors, professionals, institutions, and corporations. The company empowers knowledge-seekers to transform today’s obstacles into tomorrow’s brightest opportunities. For more than two centuries, the company has been delivering on its timeless mission to unlock human potential.

Shandong Publishing & Media Co Ltd provides publishing services. The company owns and manages publishing houses, periodical presses, printing enterprises, printing materials company, and logistics company. Geographically, the activities are carried out through China.

TX Group AG is a Swiss company with a network of digital platforms. It offers information, orientation, entertainment, and services to its users every day. The company provides newspapers and magazines. The company's operating segments include TX Markets; Goldbach; 20 Minuten; Tamedia and Group and Ventures. It generates maximum revenue from the Tamedia segment.

Perdoceo Education Corp is an American for-profit education company that focuses on quality postsecondary education online to a diverse student population, along with campus-based and blended learning programs. The company's important segments include the American InterContinental University, the University of St. Augustine for Health Sciences, and Colorado Technical University. These universities provide undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral degree programs focusing on business, technology, management, and social services, with the majority of the students enrolled in programs offered fully online. The majority of the its revenue comes from the Colorado Technical University segment.

Youdao Inc develops and markets software applications. It engages in developing technologies to provide learning content, applications, and solutions. The firm operates in three segments: Learning services, Smart devices, and Online marketing services. The majority of its revenue comes from the Learning services segment, which generates revenues from online courses, mainly including Youdao Premium Courses, NetEase Cloud Classroom, and China University MOOC. The learning products segment includes sales of smart devices such as the Youdao Dictionary Pen and the Youdao Pocket Translator. Geographically, all of its revenue is generated from the People's Republic of China.

Founded in 1981, Blackbaud provides software solutions designed to serve the "social good" community, including nonprofits, foundations, corporations, educational institutions, healthcare institutions, and individual change agents. Through M&A and organic product development efforts, the company has also moved into related areas outside core fundraising, notably into K-12 schools. The firm enables more than $100 billion in donations annually across a customer base in excess of 40,000 customers in over 100 countries.

Louis Hachette Group is engaged in Publishing, Travel Retail and Magazines and Online Media.

Alef Education Holding Plc is an EdTech company that designs impactful learning experiences for students customized to different curriculums. The company operates in three segments: The Education solution segment, which provides customers the right of access to the Group’s learning platform. The Support and services segment includes ancillary services such as IT infrastructure setup and maintenance support and services, and the Financial investments segment pertains to the maintenance of the investment portfolio for returns based on market dynamics. The majority of its revenue is generated from the Education solution segment.

Sanoma Oyj is a learning and media company. The group publishes magazines and newspapers along with educational learning literature and services. It operates in two segments: Learning and Media Finland. Sanoma's learning products and services enable teachers to develop the talents of every child to reach their full potential. The company offers printed and digital learning content as well as digital learning and teaching platforms for primary, secondary and vocational education. The Finnish media business of Sanoma provides information, experiences, inspiration, and entertainment via multiple media platforms: newspapers, radio, television, events, magazines, online, and mobile channels. The company's publications include Helsingin Sanomat, IltaSanomat among others.

Strategic Education Inc. is an education services company that provides access to high-quality education through campus-based and online post-secondary education offerings, as well as through programs to develop job-ready skills for high-demand markets. The company operates through wholly-owned subsidiaries Strayer University and Capella University, both accredited post-secondary institutions of higher education located in the United States, as well as Torrens University, an accredited post-secondary institution of higher education located in Australia. It provide employees with access to affordable and industry relevant training, certificate, and degree programs. The reportable segments of the company are U.S. Higher Education, Australia/New Zealand and Education Technology Services.

Offcn Education Technology Co Ltd is China's multi-category vocational education institution and civil servant entrance examination training company. The company serves the younger demographic including college students and university graduates throughout mainland China.

Advtech Ltd is a South Africa-based company engaged in education and training services. The company has three primary business segments, Schools, Tertiary, and Resourcing. The Schools segment offers pre-primary, primary, and secondary educations services. The Tertiary segment provides diploma, degree, and post-graduate services. The Resourcing segment provides permanent, temporary, and contract staffing solutions. These staffing positions are in several areas such as information technology, network finance, accounting and finance, engineering, and advertising.

China Publishing & Media Holdings Co Ltd is a specialized and large-scale publishing group. The company's publishing business mainly includes book publishing, newspaper publishing, electronic audio and video publishing and related copyright business.

Visual China Group Co Ltd is engaged in providing digital visual content and visual solutions to customers in media, commercial, and consumer sectors. It services include Copyright removal, rights protection agent, Sports, Entertainment and Digital marketing, and Special shooting.

Anhui Xinhua Media Co Ltd operates as a publishing and printing company in China. Its businesses include publication and distribution logistics services, import and export business, real estate development, advertising, film and television media, hotel management, financing lease, e-commerce and other fields.

Chinese Universe Publishing And Media Co Ltd are engaged in the publishing, printing, and distribution of materials, newspapers, periodicals, and audiovisual publications in China. A company extends is business in new media and online education, Internet games, digital publishing, Internet of Things technology applications, international copyright transactions.

Cengage Learning Holdings II Inc is an educational technology, content, and services company operating in the higher education, professional, K-12, English language teaching (ELT) and library spaces. It has five reportable segments on the basis of products and customers provided by each segment: Cengage Academic (U.S. Higher Education, International Higher Education, and Secondary Education), Cengage Work (ed2go and Infosec), Research, ELT, and Other (Australia K-12 and Milady). Research, ELT, and Other are reported together as a core business unit titled Cengage Select.

National Co for Learning and Education is a provider of educational and learning services based in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. It is engaged in ownership, establishment and management of private schools for general education (pre-university) in addition to investment in sport and entertainment along with sport clubs for school students. The company offers educational complexes that accommodate more than 15 thousand students, distributed in all stages from kindergarten, primary, intermediate and high school, according to the national curriculum and international curricula, with scientific laboratories on one hand, and entertainment facilities and sports clubs on the other hand. The company's business segments include Al-Rayan schools, Al-Rawabi schools, Al-Nuzha schools among others.