Intriguing(?) IPOs: NIQ Global Intelligence (NIQ) and McGraw Hill (MH)

Two familiar company names transforming themselves for the digital age. One looks better positioned than the other

The Death of Socrates, Jaques-Louis David, 1787, oil on canvas (Metropolitan Museum of Art)

One common phrase you hear these days is “AI will kill the [X] industry”. The number of industries this phrase applies to seems to grow by the day.

Professional services and education are two industries investors have mentioned as victims of AI. While AI may certainly disrupt the industry, it may be a little early to declare that the businesses in these respective industries are on their deathbeds.

In the past couple of weeks (I’m still catching up from some time off), two legacy professional services companies have gone public: Data analytics company NIQ Global Intelligence (formerly NielsenIQ) (NYSE: NIQ) and education publisher McGraw Hill (NYSE: MH). Both have been in their respective businesses for decades, but the past few years have involved significant investments in digitization and artificial intelligence to defend their turf.

Now that all the spending is (largely) complete, the private equity owners of these two companies are bringing both to the public markets in hopes that these investments will pay off.

Let’s dig in.