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

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

Insider and Institutional Ownership

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

Analyst Recommendations

This is a breakdown of recent ratings and target prices for McGraw Hill and Coursera, as reported by MarketBeat.com.

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

McGraw Hill presently has a consensus target price of $18.47, indicating a potential upside of 58.04%. Coursera has a consensus target price of $8.55, indicating a potential upside of 46.70%. Given McGraw Hill’s stronger consensus rating and higher probable upside, equities analysts plainly believe McGraw Hill is more favorable than Coursera.

Profitability

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

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
McGraw Hill	1.68%	57.92%	6.54%
Coursera	-15.39%	-2.08%	-1.32%

Earnings & Valuation

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

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
McGraw Hill	$2.10 billion	1.06	$35.32 million	$0.20	58.42
Coursera	$757.50 million	1.30	-$51.00 million	($0.67)	-8.69

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.

Summary

McGraw Hill beats Coursera on 10 of the 13 factors compared between the two stocks.

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.

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.