McGraw-Hill Announces Organizational Changes to Better Support U.S. Business

NEW YORK, Nov. 17, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- McGraw-Hill today announced a number of significant organizational changes to drive closer alignment of strategy and planning between the company's K-12 and Higher Education businesses. Peter Cohen, currently president of the company's K-12 group, assumes the newly created position of Group President of U.S. Education. In this capacity, he will be responsible for McGraw-Hill's U.S. K-12, Higher Education and Assessment groups. Each of these groups will retain their independent market facing and sales operations.

In conjunction with this new structure, Christine Willig, formerly the K-12 group's senior vice president of products, is promoted to be the new President of the company's K-12 group. Ellen Haley continues in her role as president of the company's assessment group. Brian Kibby, currently president of the Higher Education group, has decided to leave the company. McGraw-Hill will name a president of the Higher Education group at a later date.

"Peter is a super colleague and outstanding business leader and I am really pleased to have him in this new pivotal role. Our platforms and products increasingly support both K-12 and higher education, so having one group president of our K-20 market will help speed and ensure consistency of our decision making, especially as it pertains to development," explained David Levin, president and chief executive officer of McGraw-Hill. "The increasing focus on college and career readiness to ensure students are ready to compete in a global economy has been of growing importance across the educational spectrum and is in some ways blurring the lines between K-12 and higher education."

In addition to the organizational changes, on Friday, November 14th, the company reported continued strong growth across many of its key digital platforms YTD through September 30th:

• Total digital cash revenues grew 29% to 31% of total cash revenues and Higher Education digital cash revenues grew 18% to 39% of total cash revenues
• Connect, the digital teaching and learning environment used in Higher Education, both increased unique users 16% YTD to 2.8 million and deepened engagement levels with 53 million student assignments submitted and 6 million instructor assignments created so far this year
• LearnSmart, a suite of adaptive learning products, was up 40% to 1.8 million unique users YTD
• ALEKS, the math adaptive learning platform acquired in 2013 with offerings across K-12 and Higher Ed was up 28% to 1.6 million unique users
• Cash revenues from McGraw-Hill Professional's Access Platforms globally grew 9% from $22.5 million to $24.6 million
• International digital cash revenues grew 53% from $15 million to $23 million driven by accelerating digital adoption

McGraw-Hill consists of the following operating businesses:

• Higher Education, Professional and International (incorporated as McGraw-Hill Global Education Holdings), which reported $941 million of cash revenue through the first nine months of 2014
• K-12 and Assessment (incorporated as McGraw-Hill School Education Holdings), which reported $798 million of cash revenue through the first nine months of 2014

On a combined basis, McGraw-Hill reported $1.7 billion of cash revenue through the first nine months of 2014, an increase of $45 million (2.6%) vs. the prior year period.¹

¹Excludes purchase accounting adjustments from acquisition in 2013.

[Note to Editors: McGraw-Hill believes Cash Revenue is the most appropriate revenue metric for the business due to the increasingly material component of our revenue from digital sales which may be deferred for GAAP purposes. Cash revenue provides an appropriate comparison across all periods.]