Coursera’s Adjusted Earnings Rise as Cash Flow and Enterprise Customer Count Fall

Coursera’s third-quarter results put three trends side by side: adjusted earnings rose, cash generation weakened and the combined Coursera-Udemy enterprise customer count declined. The online learning company’s fourth-quarter forecast calls for less revenue than it reported in the third quarter.

Coursera closed its purchase of Udemy on May 11, 2026, and its financial statements include Udemy’s operations from that date. The year-earlier financial figures do not. Changes in revenue, adjusted EBITDA and net loss are therefore not like-for-like comparisons for the combined businesses.

Insider Monkey, writing on Yahoo Finance, reported a forward price-to-earnings ratio of 6.91 and counted 27 hedge funds holding Coursera stock in its second-quarter 2026 database. It also reported that shares fell nearly 19% following the quarterly report.

Adjusted EBITDA rose while cash flow declined

Coursera reported third-quarter revenue of $376.7 million, compared with $194.2 million a year earlier. The 94% increase reflects the addition of Udemy rather than a like-for-like measure of the two businesses’ sales.

Adjusted EBITDA was $61.5 million, up from $15.6 million, and the adjusted EBITDA margin increased to 16.3% from 8.0%, according to the company’s earnings release. At the same time, the GAAP net loss widened to $25.6 million from $8.6 million. Both periods’ profitability figures reflect the acquisition-related difference in scope. GAAP gross margin was 58.4% in the latest quarter, while non-GAAP gross margin was 63.7%.

Operating cash flow fell to $15.5 million from $33.9 million, and free cash flow declined to $4.6 million from $26.6 million. Coursera said the latest operating cash flow included $6.7 million in merger and integration payments and $21 million in merger-related personnel and severance payments. There were no such payments in the prior-year quarter.

Coursera has also been buying back shares. It repurchased approximately 18.1 million shares for $102 million during the third quarter, including commissions. For the first nine months of 2026, it repurchased approximately 34.6 million shares for $192 million.

By October 28, the company had repurchased more than $215 million in shares since announcing the program in May, with capacity remaining under its $500 million authorization.

Comparable enterprise customers fell 4%

The company’s customer metrics provide a different comparison from its financial statements. Coursera said it applied a unified methodology to historical combined Coursera and Udemy metrics. Those measures therefore may not be comparable to the financial figures, which include Udemy only after the acquisition closed.

On that combined basis, enterprise customers numbered 11,897 at September 30, down 4% from 12,338 a year earlier. Enterprise net retention was 93% in both periods. The retention measure compares recurring revenue from the same enterprise customers over 12 months, incorporating expansion, contraction and departures but excluding new customers. It is not simply a count of customers retained.

Paid consumer subscribers rose on the combined metric. Subscriber growth did not remove pressure elsewhere in the consumer business: Insider Monkey reported that growth in core subscriptions was more than offset by weakness in individual certificate subscriptions and Udemy’s transactional products.

For the third quarter, Coursera recorded $200.9 million in enterprise revenue and $175.8 million in consumer revenue. The respective year-earlier figures were $63.9 million and $130.3 million, but those financial comparisons, unlike the combined customer metrics, are affected by the acquisition’s timing.

Coursera targets integration savings by year-end

Coursera’s fourth-quarter revenue outlook is $358 million to $366 million, below its third-quarter revenue. It also projects fourth-quarter adjusted EBITDA of $55 million to $59 million. For 2026 as a whole, the company narrowed its revenue range to $1.229 billion to $1.237 billion and targeted an adjusted EBITDA margin of approximately 14%.

Coursera said actions representing more than $150 million in annualized gross cost savings support a $115 million annual run-rate net synergy target. Management plans to reach that rate by the end of 2026, within eight months of the deal closing, instead of the original 24-month timeline. The company expects only part of the annual run-rate benefit to appear in its 2026 results.

Coursera also previewed Project Helix, an AI-native platform intended to connect learning with verified proof of skills. The company expects it to be broadly available to enterprise customers in the first half of 2027.