Earlier this week, the Department of Education’s Office of Inspector General published an investigative program advisory report on “Online Education Fraud Rings”. The report was sent to Federal Student Aid (FSA) and...
READ MORE >PAA Research will host a conference call at 2:30PM ET Wednesday October 5th with Deanne Loonin of the National Consumer Law Center, one of the best known and most influential non-profit consumer...
READ MORE >Key Observations from ESI’s 2Q11 Results and Summer Term Enrollment IntakeESI reported a headline revenue and EPS beat for 2Q11, but we think most investors are likely to be focused on the rapid deceleration in new student starts witnessed in the Summer term. Despite the revenue...
READ MORE >For the past six weeks, we feel like we have been “spitting into the wind” when it comes to our bearish call on stocks in the for-profit postsecondary education sector. Despite our best efforts...
READ MORE >Approximately one-month ago, we published a report entitled “Connecting the Dots on ESI’s Increasingly Worrisome Off-Balance Sheet Exposure – The Potential Daisy Chain of Events”. Apparently our comprehensive and detailed...
READ MORE >In the 6 trading days following APOL’s earnings release, the shares of publicly traded for-profit postsecondary education companies have rallied anywhere from 10-20% compared to a modest sell-off of (-0.2%) for...
READ MORE >In the two years since we initially introduced ESI as a short idea a great deal has changed for both the company and the for-profit postsecondary education sector at large. We would summarize the...
READ MORE >Details of the Department of Education’s Gainful Employment regulation were released this evening. The full regulation will likely be published tomorrow on the Department of Education’s website here or here, or ultimately in the Federal Register by Friday...
READ MORE >In a move that has received little fanfare thus far, yesterday Senators Durbin (D-IL), Franken (D-MN), and Whitehouse (D-RI), along with Representatives Cohen (D-TN), Davis (D-IL), Miller (D-CA), and...
READ MORE >In a move that has received little attention among investors in the for-profit postsecondary education space, approximately 10-days ago, the Appropriations Higher Education Committee in the House of...
READ MORE >ESI report 4Q10 earnings and the results of their spring term enrollment intake. Overall the company reported revenues and EPS of $383.2 million and $2.91 compared to consensus of $383.3 million and...
READ MORE >For an industry that has distinguished itself in the equity markets as a consistent source of trading opportunities, the “whip-saw” action in the for-profit education sector in the first four months of the year has...
READ MORE >In a move that has been largely overlooked by most investors in the for-profit postsecondary education space, Governor Jerry Brown (CA-D) signed Senate Bill 70 into law on March 24, 2011. While SB 70 includes many other elements aimed at reducing unwieldy budget deficits in...
READ MORE >There was a time not too long ago when investors in the for-profit postsecondary education sector viewed those institutions that generated a high percentage of their revenues from Pell Grant funding...
READ MORE >From what we can gather, few investors if any have paid close attention to the progress of the various securities class action suits filed against almost every one of the publicly traded for-profit postsecondary education companies. We are...
READ MORE >Call us crazy, but we have been eagerly anticipating the release of ESI’s 10-K filing for several weeks now. The company finally released its 2010 10-K filing on Friday, 2/18/11 after the market close. We have to admit, we are somewhat disappointed. On...
READ MORE >The Department of Education released “trial” 3-year cohort default rate data this morning on an national level and institution by institution basis. Before we get into a discussion of the national level data and some of our findings on a school...
READ MORE >Today the US Department of Education released data on the number of Free Applications for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) submitted during 4Q10-11 (calendar fourth quarter of 2010). In our view the FAFSA data provided by...
READ MORE >For an industry that has distinguished itself in the equity markets as a consistent source of trading opportunities, the “whip-saw” action in the for-profit education sector in the first few...
READ MORE >Before we get into our discussion of our expectations for ESI's upcoming 4Q10 earnings results we wanted to highlight a few changes that we have made to our publishing process that should result in an improved experience for you, our valued...
READ MORE >At the risk of dating ourselves, we couldn't help but think of Faith No More's edgy rock tune from the late 1980's "Epic" when STRA's negative pre-announcement hit the tape late Friday afternoon."What is...
READ MORE >We want to eliminate any potential confusion immediately: As far as we know, ESI is not currently subject to an investigation from the SEC. It is not uncommon for the SEC's Division of Corporate Finance to issue comments on a...
READ MORE >Over the past several months there has been a growing bifurcation in the for-profit postsecondary education industry between those companies that have enacted significant "self regulation" measures in order to improve compliance with...
READ MORE >Over the past few weeks, three large, publicly traded for-profit postsecondary education companies reported earnings. The general feedback from each company (APOL, CPLA, and ESI) has been fairly similar: 1) new student starts have...
READ MORE >Long time followers of our research know that we have been bearish on the earnings prospects and consequently the share price potential of ESI for quite some time. In light of our views on the stock, it shouldn't come as a huge surprise that our...
READ MORE >ESI's third quarter results and fall term enrollment intake add further credence to our argument that the higher education "moonshot" in demand has come to an end. Below we discuss some of our key observations from the...
READ MORE >ESI will release 3Q10 earnings tomorrow morning and host a conference call at 11AM. We wanted to make sure all of our subscribers had our estimates heading into the earnings release. Here are our key assumptions. THEY DO NOT INCLUDE THE POTENTIAL IMPACT OF GAINFUL EMPLOYMENT.Fall Term Intake We...
READ MORE >For the past 6-7 months we have argued that the definition of a credit hour could become a significant regulatory issue in the higher education space, one that has generally overlooked by most investors. As a reminder, upon the passage of NegReg 2009 the Department of Education will...
READ MORE >Investing in the for-profit education sector over the past 2-3 months has been almost entirely about one's ability to tap into various DC lobbying groups, read the "tea leaves" from public statements from...
READ MORE >Volatility has always been a hallmark of the publicly traded for-profit education companies. In the ten+ years we have been following the sector, the number of trading opportunities have been seemingly...
READ MORE >SELL/SHORT
$4
SELL
$50
SELL/SHORT
$45
SHORT
$18
SELL/SHORT
$5
SELL/SHORT
$42
LONG
$75
LONG
$128
SELL/SHORT
$50
SELL/SHORT
$50
LONG
$5.50
SHORT
$50
SHORT
$28
LONG
$65
LONG
$37
PAIR TRADE
$10
PAIR TRADE
$30
LONG
$35
SHORT
$35
SELL/SHORT
$10
SHORT
$101
SHORT
$15
SHORT
$0
SHORT
$9
SHORT
$0
PAIR - LONG BGG/SHORT TTC
25%
PAIR - LONG BGG/SHORT TTC
25%
SHORT
$14.00
SHORT
$22
SHORT
$15
SHORT
$20
SHORT
$31
SHORT
$35
SHORT
$30
PAIR - LONG KNL/SHORT MLHR
25%
SHORT
$100
LONG
$8
LONG
$20
SHORT
$22
PAIR - LONG CSGP/SHORT LOOP
40%
LONG
$35
SHORT
$275
SHORT
$0