This month we take a look at publicly quoted e-learning companies. The last few months have been interesting times for publicly quoted e-learning companies.

In the LMS market the picture is mixed with Saba down 25% over the last 6 months and SumTotal on a steady rise which has seen their share price grow by nearly 40% in the last year.

Sumtotal

In the rest of the market the picture is far less encouraging.

Huveaux , owners of Epic, saw their share price plummet recently. Huveaux's share price is down 40% in recent weeks, as shown below.

This forced Thirdforce to issue a release to reassure the market that they were not in the same market space as Huveaux. Thirdforce PLC said its operations continue to perform to its expectations, adding that the recent profit warnings from Carter & Carter PLC and Huveaux PLC were due to factors specific to them and have no direct implications on Thirdforce. However, following a sharp rise in May Thirdforce's share price has fallen back to below where it was at the start of the year.

Intellego's share price is down nearly 50% over the last year, though this is in part we understand due to bedding down a recent acquisition and is expected to improve.

The interesting thing is that there appears to be a lot of activity in the market. The smaller e-learning companies such as ourselves and others are very busy.

The fall in prices also hasn't discouraged acquisitions, maybe it has encouraged them due to lower prices! Most recently LRN, US compliance specialists, acquired Fuel.

Four years ago the UK bespoke space was heavily dominated by companies such as Epic, Fuel, Adval and Knowledgepool. The first two have now been acquired and the latter two have gone into receivership. This is clearly not a market for the faint hearted!