Boston, MA 07/12/2013 (wallstreetpr) – Bridgepoint Education, Inc. (NYSE:BPI), a for-profit education company owned primarily by Warburg Pincus LLC, experiences an increase in its share price to the highest level the last four years, primarily due to the accreditation approval received from the company’s Ashford University on July 10, 2013. Share of the San Diego-based college company gained around 55% this year. The Western Association of Schools and Colleges granted to the University an accreditation for a period of five years, after the company responded to various concerns related to its operations.
It is worth noting that the accreditation approval for Ashford University was denied last year, as the college failed to meet the required standards in such different areas as the retention of students and the maintenance of the group of full-time faculty for the University among others. The recent accreditation approval attained after complying with the standards was deemed effective at removing the substantial overhang that had been keeping the college company down for a long time. A BMO Capital Markets Analyst in New York assigned a “market perform” rating to the stock of BPI, which is almost equivalent to a “hold”. Furthermore, an analyst at Barrington Research in Chicago upgraded the stock to “outperform”.
Bridgepoint Education, Inc. (NYSE:BPI) closed at $15.92 on Thursday, recording an increase of 26.25% in its share price for the day. The stock price fluctuated from a low value of $14.73 to a high one of $16.75 per share. The company currently has a 52-week low of $8.11 and a 52-week high of $16.75 per share and 54.11 million outstanding shares in the market, with institutional ownership of 95% of the total equity capital. Trading volume stood at 5.71 million shares on Thursday with an average one for Bridgepoint at 278,453.00 shares per day.
