SCHLScholastic Corporation
Is it safe?
Mostly sound, with a caveat: comfortable debt (AA), but big price swings.
Rock-solid balance sheet, low leverage. A rule of thumb on leverage, not a credit rating.
Large price swings, high volatility. Worst drawdown -65% · now 19% below its 52-week high.
Where this answer is blind. Altman sits structurally low for utilities and pipelines; Beneish runs high for fast growers, since sales growth alone lifts it; banks and REITs are excluded.
Can SCHL take a bad year?
Scholastic Corporation carries $68M of net debt at 0.97× EBITDA: a load its earnings can carry.
Net debt · as at Q1 2027 · under two and a half years of EBITDA, comfortable
- Net debt / EBITDA
- 0.97×
Net debt / EBITDA · 2.93× a year ago · the load is coming down
- Cash runway
- 5+ years
Cash runway · burning $3.6M a quarter at the current rate
- Annualised volatility
- 46%
Annualised volatility · roughly twice as jumpy as the market
Details›
- Total debtQ1 2027
- $175M
- Cash and short-term investments
- $107M
- Net debt
- $68M
- EBITDA, trailing twelve months
- $70M
- Operating profit, trailing twelve months
- $15M
- Debt / equity
- 0.27×
- Total debt / EBITDA
- 2.49×
- Annualised volatilitytwo years of daily moves
- 46%
- Worst drawdown on file
- −65%
- Below its 52-week high
- 19%
Balance sheet from SEC filings; drawdown and volatility from end-of-day closes; Altman Z from the filed statements.