In the following video, Ronald Packard, CEO and founder of K12, sits down with Motley Fool analyst Matt Argersinger and explains some of the perception challenges facing his company.
When Matt asks why K12 stock trades for less than its IPO price, Packard says it's been dragged down by the fallout from for-profit college stocks as well as strong political forces that favor the status quo. Nonetheless, he says, K12 has exceeded all of its revenue growth and EBITDA growth expectations.
Packard says K12 has been attacked by many entrenched forces that don't like that the company offers students choices. He states that K12's success -- it now has 130,000 students -- has attracted more critics.
Describing his student population, Packard says he "sees more than half of his students coming in below grade level," making for test scores that are worse today than they were five years ago, and he says K12 needs to "fix" them.
Poor test scores in K12's schools have hampered stock performance, but Packard ends the video by arguing that they are a "function of [the] demographics, not of what [K12] does."
