教育视频领域的大流行并购

We've entered a new era in which well-capitalized companies gobble up less-successful competitors that have something to offer. 音乐停止了, 随着学校基本恢复正常运作, there will be fewer chairs available for educational technology providers. Companies that failed to gain sustainable market share during the past year of unprecedented mandatory school closures face uncertainty in a future in which remote instruction decreases to somewhere closer to pre-pandemic levels.

Each of these ill-fated companies was started with a dream and driven along by smart people putting their best efforts into realizing those dreams. Many of them were created with bright ideas that became useful features, and those companies provide value in an acquisition through intellectual property (IP). Others may have offered run-of-the-mill products that were marketed well but not quite well enough; 他们为买家提供了额外的客户. 都提供有才能的人才.

Three transactions impacting instructional media delivery have already been initiated in the past two quarters. 这些交易是资本化方法的范例 that are well-suited for different phases of a company's growth and as datapoints for trends in streaming media in education.

首先是K1投资管理公司之间的合作, LLC and Panopto to accelerate Panopto's growth in a conventional (for 科技，至少是)私募股权交易. This capitalization immediately resulted in the acquisition of Ensemble Video, the company that provided the Ensemble video management system (VMS) in 2005. 据我所知, this was the first VMS designed for the education sector just before the explosion between 2006 and 2007 that saw iTunesU, 创作, and Panopto hit the market for managing the delivery of video in schools. This acquisition seems to be a good fit from an IP/personnel standpoint, 因为这两个平台都是基于Windows服务器技术构建的.

The second major transaction was Kaltura's initial public offering (IPO), which raised 该公司及其风险投资伙伴获得1.5亿美元. 最初的IPO计划定于今年早些时候, 但出乎意料的疲软的投资者市场推迟了股票发售. 招股说明书摘要来自创作向美国证券交易委员会提交的知识产权文件是任何关注这个行业的人的必读书目吗, as it is a strikingly clear-eyed take on the state of the educational video business as we exit the pandemic.

The final exemplar transaction is 2U's purchase of the edX platform for $800 million, which was announced at the end of June and set off a flurry of controversy and summertime hot takes. A pair of well-informed and complementary analyses are Dhawal Shah's, from 中央班的报告迈克尔·费尔德斯坦的，来自 eLiterate. 2U is a company that primarily serves as an online program market (OPM), recruiting potential students to online post-baccalaureate degree programs and boot camps that are run mostly by universities in the U.S., U.K.美国和澳大利亚.

The acquisition of edX is about building out a customer base and an international brand: Aside from branding elements, 学生数据, 和现有的网站, 没有edX的IP易手. 为购买提供资金, 2U paid almost half of the value with cash on hand and the rest with a very favorable Term Loan B. (这个词贷款B是类似气球抵押贷款的制度, in which small payments are made over a period of a few years with the full balance plus interest due at the end of that term. The major difference is that a single-family property doesn't typically generate $80 million of annual revenue.) The $800 million sale price is being paid into the as-yet-unnamed new nonprofit corporation being created by edX's founding institutions, 哈佛和麻省理工.

该非营利组织的使命是支持，除此之外, the development of next-generation learning experience platforms, including the Open edX open source learning management system that edX is built on and that also powers HarvardX; a new Open edX instance at MIT called MITx; and manufacturingworkforce.org这是麻省理工学院(MIT)与美国大学(u.s. university of sciences)合作的项目.S. Department of Defense that was announced on the same day as the 2U acquisition. 它的资金包括在3美元.200万赠款.

With video proving itself among the most critical and impactful educational technologies over the past year, it stands to reason that these next-generation learning experience platforms supported by MIT and Harvard's nonprofit will show a rejuvenated focus on video technology.