McGraw Hill, one of the largest education publishers in the world, has announced it is being sold to Platinum Equity for $4.5 billion by private equity giant Apollo Global Management. The transaction comes 8 years after Apollo initially acquired the company in 2013.
Since that 2013 acquisition, Apollo has attempted to transform McGraw Hill into a company designed to flourish in the digital era. Six acquisitions were completed in the last 8 years in order to help drive digital and recurring revenue growth at the publisher.
This strategy appears to have succeeded, as last year, digital sales amounted to over $1 billion in revenue and accounted for 60% of overall revenues. Platinum Equity is hoping to drive this scalable business model even further, investing in organic growth and completing additional acquisitions of businesses to operate under McGraw Hill.
While the transaction does need to go through regulatory approval, both parties expect the deal to be completed this summer.