IDP Education drops out
Investors now expect that a material amount of IDP's revenue from the last six months now won't materialise.
The transformation of IDP Education from market darling to smouldering wreck is all but complete. Since hitting its share price peak of $37.50 in late 2021, some $9.4 billion of market capitalisation has been smoked and the multitude of hedge funds that shorted the stock have booked profits that make Croesus look like a total pauper.
The share price collapse is awful bad luck for IDP's chairman of 18 years, Peter Polson, who announced his plan to retire at the AGM last October but will not formally pass the baton to his successor until next week. Polson's 50,000 IDP shares are worth at least two Maseratis less today than they would have been had he sold in better times.
Incoming chair Tracey Horton is left to clean up Polson's pieces – yet another woman lured out onto the glass cliff. She will need to deploy all of her skills to keep IDP afloat. The company is now in the grip of an existential crisis, and I use that term in the literal sense. Its very existence is on the line. One wrong move now and IDP will be like Monty Python's Norwegian Blue Parrot, pining for the fjords.