Thread regarding Cengage layoffs

IPS nailed it on this one. Take a look at the latest report,

Greetings,

We are now paying close to 10% interest on our debt. Those Trumpets have attempted to stop our EdTech blitzkrieg by unfairly raising the rates for bleeding edge companies.

We must stay strong. Don’t worry, I’m not being deported.

Your y wedding about offshoring. I'm with ed2go and in the last quarter, they hired and trained up 10 Enrollment Reps from a call center in the Philippines. That's about 10% of the people who do that job.

Feel free to argue amongst yourselves who is least relevant in this rapidly decaying company and industry. I worked for Gale and my point was that it’s a company that is 20 years behind a Ed publishing industry that is itself years behind in terms of tech and relevancy. There were huge amounts of jealousy and resentment from Gale folks toward the textbook side when I worked there and it looks like nothing has changed.

Both sides of the business will be gutted like a fish in 10 years. Though I think a company that sells to libraries is probably going to decline much faster.

Gale has been producing digital products like databases used in schools and libraries for years. Way before there were digital books in other parts of the company.
If you want to place blame for Cengage’s economic downfall, look at the Executive Team and MH. He’s been CEO for a decade now.

@cgnb+1jbKgMzn Textbooks are not cutting edge but at least some people read them on occasion. Imagine it’s 2022 and you’re still publishing encyclopedias.

Don’t know why everyone dumps on Gale. It’s not like the printed textbooks produced in other area of Cengage are cutting edge.

@5lfw+1jbKgMzn. Gale was amazing. Two weeks after starting my new position there, I realized that I had made a terrible mistake.

It was a complete echo-chamber....like what was going on the world with, Google or Wikipedia was irrelevant. Because Gale's content was vetted. Bawhahahaha. I used Infotrac in college, before the internet and the people at Gale acted like it was this brand new, revolutionary product.

The sycophants constantly fawning over the President were literally disgusting, as was he.

It was like that scene in Christmas Vacation where the CEO marches into the conference room, with all bu-t kissing minions in tow. He always had his seat at the end of the table, was a disgusting heavy breather and generally creeped normal people out.

I have to give credit where credit is due. He made lots of dough for several years, then took a package after the Apax deal went down. He's the one laughing.

@5lfw+1jbKgMzn I worked at Gale and it is was the saddest, most pathetic business I have ever seen. Their core business was encyclopedia content that became obsolete in the early 90s. They thought that repackaging it as digital somehow made it relevant despite the fact that the open web is a thing that exists. The majority of content the company produced was seen by no one aside from a handful of dusty librarians that were the company's customer base. I'm not exaggerating that either....you had entire teams working on print encyclopedias of obscure subject matter that would be reviewed by a librarian once and then put on a shelf never to be seen again. It was the most bizarre business model I have ever seen.

And librarian conferences (there are multiple) are exactly what you imagine them to be.

It boggles my mind that Gale is still a going concern.

People act like the Thomson crew were genius...and they were for fleecing APAX for $7 billion or so but wow did they make some dog cr-p acquisitions...Gale, Net G, Prometric immediately come to mind.

Plenty to cut. Look at the massive sales downsize Wiley did five or six years ago - entire field sales force liquidated. Inside sales handles all accounts, with a couple of small "strike teams" hitting the field to close. And then there are those office locations in Mason and NYC. Who needs a Mason when you have an Independence? Oh yeah, and then there's Gale, anybody wanna buy that?

Fun times.

I find the investor update calls intolerable but I’m going to listen to the next one to see how MH spins it. There’s nowhere to hide at this point.

The balance sheet has been a mess for years but finance has been able to keep it paper clipped together by kicking out bonds and renegotiating terms. But those were cheap money days which are gone. They could be reliving 2012 all over again once those notes come due.

We are still hiring for Inside Sales in Northern Kentucky. I think these reports are irrelevant. We are looking forward to a strong year of sales.

It’s somewhat of an irrelevant report due to the fact that it’s April- June. But the debt, which is an albatross that never goes away and increasing rates/libor are huge problems. Thank you APAX!

The next report is going to be huge as it will encompass back to school sales. If it’s bad, Cengage is officially screwed. There’s nowhere to grow and very little to cut.