Higher education company Strategic Education (NASDAQ: STRA) will be announcing earnings results this Thursday morning. Here’s what to look for.
Strategic Education missed analysts’ revenue expectations by 0.6% last quarter, reporting revenues of $321.5 million, up 2.9% year on year. It was a satisfactory quarter for the company, with a decent beat of analysts’ EBITDA estimates but a miss of analysts’ domestic students estimates. It reported 86,339 domestic students, flat year on year.
Is Strategic Education a buy or sell going into earnings? Read our full analysis here, it’s free for active Edge members.
This quarter, analysts are expecting Strategic Education’s revenue to grow 2.8% year on year to $314.5 million, slowing from the 7% increase it recorded in the same quarter last year. Adjusted earnings are expected to come in at $1.30 per share.
Analysts covering the company have generally reconfirmed their estimates over the last 30 days, suggesting they anticipate the business to stay the course heading into earnings. Strategic Education has missed Wall Street’s revenue estimates twice over the last two years.
Looking at Strategic Education’s peers in the education services segment, some have already reported their Q3 results, giving us a hint as to what we can expect. Bright Horizons delivered year-on-year revenue growth of 11.6%, beating analysts’ expectations by 2.9%, and Laureate Education reported revenues up 8.6%, topping estimates by 3.7%. Bright Horizons traded up 18.2% following the results while Laureate Education’s stock price was unchanged.
Read our full analysis of Bright Horizons’s results here and Laureate Education’s results here.
Debates around the economy’s health and the impact of potential tariffs and corporate tax cuts have caused much uncertainty in 2025. While some of the education services stocks have shown solid performance in this choppy environment, the group has generally underperformed, with share prices down 7% on average over the last month. Strategic Education is down 10.6% during the same time and is heading into earnings with an average analyst price target of $103.33 (compared to the current share price of $75.03).
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