The UK Premier League starts on 22 August and INTO University Partnerships curtain raiser to its trial with University of South Florida comes at a pre-trial conference on 18 August (with the non-jury trial scheduled for 21 September). All the most recent results from its most recently reported UK and parent company are also now available. It’s a good moment to see how the company’s home and away form is going.
A Bit ‘Spursy’ at Home1
The struggle for home form continues. The Consolidated Statement of Comprehensive Income for 2024/2025 shows INTO’s loss for the year at £20.1m compared to a £4.2m profit the year before. Underlying “exceptional items” made up £7.5m of the loss and are mainly of “restructuring severance” at £4.7m and “disputes” at £2.8m. As usual the company Key Performance Indicators focus elsewhere with Adjusted turnover and Adjusted EBITDA near stable at £190m and £18.7m respectively.
The restructuring has seen a reduction in the number of employees earning over £100,00 – down from 58 to 44 – although the number earning over £245,000 remains at six. It seems reasonable to presume that most of the £2.8m on disputes was spent on the USF case so that number will have an echo into 2025/26 and then the current year.
Sadly, the reporting for individual joint ventures no longer has the indicator of the average number of students so we have to make do with financial performance to consider outcomes. Total operating profit for the six UK based joint ventures in the year to 31 July 2025 fell from £9.7m to £5.1m with the University of Exeter flipping to negative alongside UEA and Queens.
INTO Stirling bucked the general trend with a rise in operating profit year on year. But the joint venture still had an £8.6m drawdown on its loan facility, provided by both partners, of £10m. INTO loans to the joint ventures now total nearly £9m, up from under £6m two years ago, with INTO Exeter receiving a loan for the first time in 2024/25.
In its financial statements for 2024/25 the University of East Anglia notes that it had made adjustments on the £6.45m of loans it had outstanding with the joint venture to reclassify £3.5m as a capital investment. The “..joint venture’s financial position and uncertainty around recoverability..” meant that the university had made full provision for never receiving the remaining £2.95m.
The real question for INTO may be whether any of the current loans outstanding to the joint ventures will be recovered.
The picture is not improved by adding in INTO’s wholly owned companies at Manchester, London and Lancaster. Taking all of these operational entities into account the operating profit fell from £18m to £9m year on year.
INTO also outlined that, at 31 July 2025, £27m of its £35m revolving credit facility provided by HSBC UK Bank plc was drawn compared to £20.2m a year earlier. Completion of a new facility was conditional on a £5m shareholder cash injection, provided through subordinated loan notes. That loan appears to have been made by Andrew Colin’s company Espalier Ventures on 30 April 2026.
The current strategy seems to rest largely on growth of INTO Qualifications launched in July 2025. It essentially an RQF level 3 award framework which gives access to INTO’s network (and possibly other universities). Locations for delivery are London, Dubai, China (8 locations), Nigeria, Kazakhstan, Bangladesh and India with, it appears, licensing out to third parties for delivery in some cases. The University Study Centre in Dubai appears to be highlighted on INTO’s student portal.
A Bit Sheepish Playing Away2
The price of the ongoing legal battle with the University of South Florida is clear from INTO’s accounts and the near-term enrollment outlook for the remaining joint ventures does not look rosy. Back in November 2025 I looked at the ongoing enrolment situation in the US and specifically at INTO’s joint ventures with Drew, Oregon State, UAB and George Mason. The IEE’s Spring Snapshot indicated that 63% of institutions surveyed predicted further decline in enrollments in Fall 2026 with only 11% anticipating an increase.
The most obvious and optical change for INTO in the US has been that, as predicted, George Mason University has developed its own pathway operation to support “non-native English-speaking students”. INTO appears to have some sort of continuing recruitment engagement but the GMU website is clear that the building is now the Angel Cabrera Global Center and that “those beginning their program in fall 2026 should consult the George Mason catalog”.
That probably leaves INTO with three full joint venture partnerships in the US:
- There is plenty of discussion about the future of Drew University with a land-sale and housing development package likely to provide short-term relief on operational expenses while the longer-term budget deficits are tackled. One must presume that the “material weaknesses in internal controls” identified at audit in 2025 have been resolved. None of this is likely to be of direct consequence in the hunt for international students but stability may help. INTO Drew had around 60 enrollments in 2024 compared to some 150 in 2020.
- Oregon State University is facing a $14m budget gap this year and is raising prices for undergraduate and graduate students while cutting costs “strategically”. In Spring 2026 the headcount on INTO programs was 168 which represented a 42.7% decline on the previous year’s 293. It is difficult to see things improving greatly.
- University of Birmingham at Alabama seems to be moving along quite merrily and investing in development that is transforming the local area. The broader Birmingham, Alabama story and its growth as a “..top US metro area for young college graduates” is interesting as the role of universities in economic development comes into sharper focus. However, the recent international recruitment news is less helpful.
INTO’s accounts also indicate that loans to the four universities (including GMU) at the end of July 2025 stood at £11.5m (the figure is stated in GB Pounds in the accounts).
INTO now shows 20 US university “partnerships” on its website including several institutions that have had previous arrangements with other pathway operators. It has also purchased Kings Education (although the announcement on the Kings website is a bit more Delphic about the “strategic agreement”) which claims a presence on six US campuses. It remains to be seen whether this patchwork of activity can overcome the current challenges for US enrollment.
For now, the legal dispute with USF may be the biggest game in town for INTO. The filings and counter-filings have continue unabated but whether it will go to court or there will be a last-minute settlement remains a question. With a damages claim of $71.6m involved the stakes are high for all concerned.
In Other News
There are a few other points that came up during the research for this piece. In no particular order:
- The New York Times published an article claiming that “Private Equity is Stuck with 33,575 Unsold Businesses”. Everyone is aware of the way Study Group has changed hands in recent times but Leeds Private Equity are still sitting on their £66m stake of 25% in INTO. The deal happened in 2013!
- Since 2014, Huron Consulting Group has invested $40.9m in Shorelight Holdings in the form of 1.69% convertible debt. It was considered to be worth $33.8m at fair value in June 2026 (a small decline on December 2025). The convertible notes will mature in January 2027 – just five months away.
- The INTO website is not always a good guide to senior personnel changes. Nick Adlam and Annalisa Gigante both left the board in December 2025 but are still shown on the website. John Baskerville, still listed on his LinkedIn as General Counsel, had been appointed to the board in April 2025 but left it in June 2026.
NOTES
As always this is a review based on public documents with an attempt to interpret them reasonably. Any authoritative comments or corrections on matter of fact will be considered and acted upon appropriately.
The sub-heads are a bit of an artifice (as usual) but the rationale is:
- Tottenham Hotspurs home form in 2025/26 saw only 3 wins in 19 games – that’s just 15%. The statistics on fixtures for the Premier League that season show that the home team won 42% of the time in 2025/26 and the away team winning 31% of the time. It’s a big difference to 20 years before when the home team won 51% of the time in the 2005 season.
- Derby County, nicknamed The Rams, hold the record for the fewest away points in a 38-game Premier League season. In 2007-08 they secured just three points from three away draws. The team’s nickname honours its links with the First Regiment of Derby Militia whose mascot was a ram.
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