Education is a Racket (LAUR)

School’s In Out!

Gone are the days when a lad could apprentice with someone who knew his craft, learn the trade—whatever it might be, doctoring, lawyering, masonry or otherwise—and get on in life.

Now, everything is board-sanctioned, government-decreed and bloody expensive.

And why?

Because it’s a racket.

Education is now a way to cash in on people’s need to see a recognized stamp of approval on some “professional’s” license for this or that.

Sylvan Learning Systems changed its name to Laureate Education, Inc. (NASDAQ:LAUR) in 2004, but the crimes continue unabated through today, with the theft occurring throughout North and South America for ‘degrees’ in higher education that won’t help anybody do nothing.

Let Alone Write With Proper Grammar

So, let’s have a look at some fundamentals before we get to the chart:

• To begin, P/E is ridiculous at 22.79x last year’s earnings.  How ridiculous?  Analyst consensus is for that number to be HALVED by this time next year (to 11.83).
• There’s no dividend.
• P/B is 2.29.
• And sales have declined on average by a massive 17.90% per annum over the past FIVE years (maybe there’s some hope for you people, after all).

Anyway, that’s all a very roundabout way of demonstrating that it’s a textbook case of momentum investors getting carried away with their cockamamie theories about how stock prices should move given earnings revisions, blah, blah, blah.

Yes, it all works wonderfully… until it doesn’t.

In our view, that time has now arrived for all those highly decorated cum laudes on Wall Street (and elsewhere) who’ve been playing the momentum game for nearly a year now, to be taken to the woodshed for a drop-yer-pants-and-hand-me-the-switch whoopin’.

Look at the chart—

May G-d decide in our favor.

Many happy returns,

Matt McAbby

Follow @HughLOHaynew