Based on the aggregated intelligence of 130,000-plus investors participating in Motley Fool CAPS, the Fool's free investing community, education provider Strayer Education (Nasdaq: STRA ) has received a distressing two-star ranking.
With that in mind, let's take a closer look at Strayer's business, and see what CAPS investors are saying about the stock right now.
Strayer facts
|
Headquarters (founded)
|
Arlington, Va. (1892)
|
|
Market Cap
|
$2.54 billion
|
|
Industry
|
Education Services
|
|
Trailing-12-Month (TTM) Revenue
|
$396.3 million
|
|
Management
|
CEO Robert Silberman (since 2001)
COO Karl McDonnell (since 2006)
|
|
TTM Price-to-Earnings (STRA and S&P 500)
|
31.7 and 14.1
|
|
Competitors
|
Apollo Group (Nasdaq: APOL )
DeVry (NYSE: DV )
|
|
CAPS members bearish on STRA also bearish on
|
General Motors (NYSE: GM )
salesforce.com (NYSE: CRM )
|
|
CAPS members bullish on STRA also bullish on
|
Google (Nasdaq: GOOG )
General Electric (NYSE: GE )
|
Sources: Capital IQ, a division of Standard & Poor's, and Motley Fool CAPS.
Over on CAPS, some 39% of the 88 All-Star members who have rated Strayer believe the stock will underperform the S&P 500 going forward. Among the entire bear population are greenwave3 and All-Star TheHuney, who is ranked in the top 0.5% of our community.
In late January, greenwave3 wrote that the Strayer bear case boiled down to price: "A clean balance sheet, but the P/E and P/book are not supported by attractive metrics. Loan defaults amid a deteriorating economy are a source of worry."
Last month, TheHuney schooled a Strayer bull to the many risks that remain:
It's not going to grow at 20% per year with 10% unemployment. People are speculating that the for-profit ed companies somehow benefit from the poor economy, but it's just the opposite. Most of their students already work full-time and they use these companies in order to get a degree on extremely flexible terms. Anyone who is unemployed and has a brain is going to go to a state university and pay lower tuition; a state degree is more valuable anyway.
Plus, people fail to note the two major reasons these for-profit eds have taken off is because (a) an overly friendly administration that overlooked some of the shadier practices in the sector and (b) the booming economy that pretty much guaranteed that people with junk degrees could get jobs with that degree.
What do you think about Strayer Education, or any other stock for that matter? Make your voice heard on Motley Fool CAPS today. More than 130,000 investors are waiting to hear what you have to say. CAPS is 100% free, so simply click here to get started.
RSS Headlines
Fool UK