Not long after online education company Coursera posted a strong initial public offering for investors, its stock began trading at a very high level with a double-digit gain.
It opened last week on Wednesday at an impressive $39, which was around 18% higher than its initial offering price of $33. Clearly, investors had a high level of faith in not just the company, but in how essential it’ll be for the public in the coming future. According to Coursera, its offering of 15.73 shares was initially expected to be priced somewhere from $30 to $33.
14.66 million of Coursera’s shares are being sold by the company itself, with 1.07 million being offered from selling holders. Once everything is diluted, there will be 162.7 million outstanding shares after the offering. This is set to give the company a whopping $5.4 billion market value at their offering price.
All of this confidence in Coursera is not unwarranted in the slightest. Throughout 2020, the company had a revenue of $293.5 million, which was a 59% climb from the previous year.
However, Barron’s CEO Ken Hahn doesn’t believe that the company will be able to sustain this impressive growth. But he still commended the practicality of their company and the fact that they started to “started to change the marketplace”. He also believes that they’ll manage to maintain a solid short-term profit.
Ultimately, Coursera has been a huge breakthrough for people who wanted to learn new skills while being quarantined during the pandemic. Expect the company to post new strong numbers over 2021.
