Analyzing Coursera (NYSE:COUR) & McGraw Hill (NYSE:MH)

Coursera (NYSE:COUR) and McGraw Hill (NYSE:MH) are both consumer discretionary companies, but which is the superior investment? We will contrast the two companies based on the strength of their profitability, earnings, dividends, analyst recommendations, risk, valuation and institutional ownership.

Insider and Institutional Ownership

89.5% of Coursera shares are held by institutional investors. 16.3% of Coursera shares are held by insiders. Comparatively, 1.2% of McGraw Hill shares are held by insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that endowments, hedge funds and large money managers believe a company will outperform the market over the long term.

Analyst Recommendations

This is a breakdown of current recommendations and price targets for Coursera and McGraw Hill, as provided by MarketBeat.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Coursera	1	3	7	1	2.67
McGraw Hill	1	2	11	1	2.80

Coursera currently has a consensus price target of $8.55, suggesting a potential upside of 51.38%. McGraw Hill has a consensus price target of $18.47, suggesting a potential upside of 40.26%. Given Coursera’s higher probable upside, equities research analysts plainly believe Coursera is more favorable than McGraw Hill.

Valuation & Earnings

This table compares Coursera and McGraw Hill”s gross revenue, earnings per share and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Coursera	$757.50 million	1.26	-$51.00 million	($0.67)	-8.43
McGraw Hill	$2.10 billion	1.20	$35.32 million	$0.20	65.83

McGraw Hill has higher revenue and earnings than Coursera. Coursera is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than McGraw Hill, indicating that it is currently the more affordable of the two stocks.

Profitability

This table compares Coursera and McGraw Hill’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Coursera	-15.39%	-1.72%	-1.07%
McGraw Hill	1.68%	57.92%	6.54%

Summary

McGraw Hill beats Coursera on 9 of the 13 factors compared between the two stocks.

About Coursera

Coursera, Inc. operates an online educational content platform in the United States, Europe, Africa, the Asia Pacific, the Middle East, and internationally. It operates in three segments: Consumer, Enterprise, and Degrees. The company offers guided projects, courses, and specializations, as well as online degrees; and certificates for entry-level professional, non-entry level professional, university, and MasterTrack. It offers its products to individuals, enterprise, business, campus, and government. The company was formerly known as Dkandu, Inc. and changed its name to Coursera, Inc. in April 2012. Coursera, Inc. was incorporated in 2011 and is headquartered in Mountain View, California.

About McGraw Hill

At McGraw Hill, our purpose is to unlock the potential of each learner at every stage of life. Our mission is to support educators, learners and professionals around the world with trusted, high-quality content and digital solutions that use data and learning science to adapt to each student as they progress towards their goals. McGraw Hill is a leading global provider of information solutions for education across K-12 to higher education, and through professional learning. We harness the power of content, data-driven insights, and learning science to deliver personalized learning experiences and drive positive outcomes throughout the entire learning lifecycle. We believe that we have positively impacted hundreds of millions of learners and educators with our personalized learning solutions to support learning at scale worldwide. On an annual basis, we serve approximately 60 million learners and educators. We believe McGraw Hill is one of the most trusted and recognized education brands in the world. Based on the results of a third-party survey that we commissioned in the fiscal year ended March 31, 2025, we believe that, in the United States, on average, 89% of K-12, higher education and medical school students, faculty and administrators would consider McGraw Hill for their classes. Understanding how learning happens is critical to building effective learning solutions, like ALEKS, which has leveraged data science and machine learning to enhance learning outcomes for over 25 years. Over the last decade, we have invested more than $2.0 billion in developing a suite of market leading digital learning solutions. We utilize our data analytics capabilities to generate continuous feedback loops that drive product and go-to-market innovation, which allows us to simplify workflows while creating meaningful learning experiences that are tailored to the needs of each learner. At McGraw Hill, we recognize that the integrity of educational content is of utmost importance, especially as generative AI becomes more integrated into the learning process. With the proliferation of AI-generated generic content, the risks of inaccurate and low-quality information are heightened, which is why our proprietary content is rigorously researched and designed to meet the highest quality standards. We aim to offer vetted content and data-driven learning solutions that educators and learners can trust. With approximately 1,500 sales professionals worldwide as of March 31, 2025, we believe our global sales force is one of the largest in the education sector, underpinning our ability to serve learners, educators and professionals at scale across the learning lifecycle. Our principal offices are located in Columbus, Ohio.