Publisher McGraw Hill targets $4.2 billion valuation in US IPO

By Ateev Bhandari and Pritam Biswas

(Reuters) -U.S. publisher McGraw Hill is targeting a valuation of $4.2 billion in its IPO, the company said on Monday, joining other private equity-backed firms looking to take advantage of improved investor sentiment.

After a tariffs-driven freeze, activity in the U.S. IPO market has ramped with overwhelming investor interest for new listings of companies such as stablecoin issuer Circle Internet Group and digital bank Chime Financial.

Platinum Equity-backed McGraw Hill is looking to raise up to $537 million from 24.39 million shares priced between $19 and $22 apiece.

The move comes nearly 13 years after the textbook publisher was taken private for $2.5 billion by PE giant Apollo, which also attempted to re-list McGraw in 2015.

The company was sold to private equity investment firm Platinum in 2021 for $4.5 billion.

Relatively high interest rates, sticky inflation, and geopolitical turmoil have fueled a large backlog of PE-backed companies looking to go public.

Consumer intelligence company NIQ Global, backed by private equity firm Advent, also launched its U.S. IPO roadshow on Monday, targeting a valuation of $7.26 billion on a fully diluted basis.

"We are seeing private equity sponsors increasingly willing to take markdowns in order to secure liquidity, while the IPO window is open," said Kat Liu, vice president at IPO-focused investment indexes IPOX.

However, the IPO window "feels more tactical than structural", and "sponsors may be accelerating (listing) timelines to get ahead of potential volatility," Liu said.

McGraw Hill is one of the most recognized names in the publishing industry, with 99% of U.S. public K-12 districts and 82% of U.S. higher education institutions using its products, according to company filings.

The company revealed a 7% rise in revenue to over $2 billion for the year ended March 31.

It aims to trade on the NYSE under the symbol "MH".

(Reporting by Ateev Bhandari and Pritam Biswas in Bengaluru; Editing by Harikrishnan Nair and Shinjini Ganguli)

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