PowerSchool Holdings Inc. has been on a hiring tear since it went public early in the summer, topping 3,000 employees this week, nearly 400 more than at its initial public offering in July.
“Our momentum was very strong, and it relates to long-term growth,” CEO Hardeep Gulati told the Business Journal. "Our growth will be strong for years to come.”
The growth doesn’t include the Folsom-based cloud-based education software company’s planned acquisition of Kickboard, a New Orleans-based behavioral health education technology company. That deal, announced last week, has yet to close.
Gulati said PowerSchool (NYSE: PWSC) also plans to keep all of Kickboard’s employees.
In addition to its 395 new employees since July, PowerSchool still has 250 openings, he said.
Some 50 of those new hires are based at the company’s Folsom headquarters, and that location still has 50 openings, Gulati said. PowerSchool employees are primarily still working remotely because of the pandemic, but the company plans to start having a blended in-office and remote workforce in the coming months.
Gulati said PowerSchool is poised for more growth as economic stimulus funding from previous allocations and the just-approved federal infrastructure plan include funding for prekindergarten learning programs.
The company has 13,000 school districts as customers, and it also has charter schools and private schools, he said.
Its software is used to support school administrators with a variety of programs that eliminate manual processes for everything from daily attendance to counseling to grades. PowerSchool also provides an online platform for virtual learning, and offers supports to teachers, parents and students with online lesson plans. The company offers analytics and assessment products, as well as career counseling and college search. The acquisition of Kickboard will add social and emotional student health support with an evidence-based approach that can measure problem issues and support outcomes. Gulati said the emotional and social supports are more essential in light of the pandemic, which has been an ongoing "trauma on kids."
In September, PowerSchool reported that through some of its products, the company reaches 45 million students, representing 70% of all K-12 students in the country, and customers on average use two of PowerSchool’s 15 products. Gulati said that during the third quarter, PowerSchool was able to cross-sell 300 more customers with additional products.
The company's second quarterly earnings release since its initial public offering in July beat the guidance it gave Wall Street on key metrics, and PowerSchool raised its guidance for the end of the year, Gulati said.
The company beat the top end of its guidance for third-quarter revenue by $6 million and it beat EBITDA, or earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, guidance by $1 million.
PowerSchool's third-quarter revenue rose 29% to $149 million.
Also, since going public, PowerSchool has repaid approximately $849 million of debt, including the entirety of the outstanding balance of a bridge loan, a revolving credit facility and other debt it incurred in acquisitions over the past two years. It used both IPO proceeds and cash from operations to pay down the debt, the company said.
PowerSchool’s IPO in July raised $766.1 million, net of underwriting costs and commissions, and was the largest IPO by a Sacramento area company in memory.
