Angela Selden
Analyst · Lake Street Capital Markets
Thank you, Jack. Good afternoon and thank you very much for joining American Public Education, Inc. third quarter 2026 results call today. I'm very pleased to report that we exceeded our guidance on revenue, net income available to common stockholders, adjusted EBITDA and diluted earnings per share. This is a continued result of the strong moat we've built in our Military+ division, where active duty enrollment is rebounding, enrollment in veterans and families continues to see double-digit growth and the overall student value proposition of no out-of-pocket cost for undergraduate active duty military and a strong return on educational investment for veterans and families continues. We've also built a strong moat in Health+, where our campus nursing and online health revenue continues to grow at double digits, with enrollment growth and modest price increases as the tailwinds for health professionals continue to drive student demand for our education in the markets we serve. Here are the headlines: Military+ net course registrations grew 3.8% to approximately 103,800, above our guidance range. Health+ revenue grew approximately 9%, with the mix shifting to campus nursing with low-teens growth driving performance. We're also pleased with the strong mid-teens revenue growth in the quarter for online health care. Total revenue was muted by Online+ non-health care revenue growth in low single digits. Total APEI revenue grew 3.6% year-over-year to $169.1 million, above the high end of our guidance range of $164.5 million to $167 million. This does not include the approximately $6 million of Military+ revenue that shifted into the fourth quarter due to registration timing, as we previewed on our last earnings call. Net income available to common stockholders grew 6% to $5.9 million and diluted earnings per share grew 6.7% to $0.32, both above the high end of our guidance ranges. Adjusted EBITDA was $17.5 million, exceeding the high end of our guidance range of $14 million to $17 million. As we anticipated when we provided guidance, adjusted EBITDA and margin were below the prior year, reflecting an increase in selling and promotion expenses that supported registration and enrollment growth, along with several nonrecurring events, including the revenue timing shift and the marketing optimization investments we outlined last quarter. Further, we experienced an increase in bad debt, primarily as a result of delays in Title IV disbursements following the institutional combination. We also believe that this is a temporary matter. We also more than doubled our pace of our share repurchases in the quarter. Finally, the third quarter was the beginning of our operating as a single Higher Learning Commission accredited institution, the American Public University System. As a reminder, this combination allows us to simplify our operations, to expand our health care platform, to enhance academic choice for students and opportunities for faculty, to strengthen our financial position and to improve our regulatory compliance and risk management. Turning our attention to full-year 2026, we are raising full-year guidance on revenue, net income available to common stockholders, adjusted EBITDA and diluted EPS, reflecting the momentum of the business and our strategy. This is driven by the growth in our Military+ division, where our midpoint guidance reflects approximately 25% net course registration growth in Q4, a strong performance as compared to last year's partial Q4 government shutdown. This also reflects continued growth in our campus and online health revenue and mix shift. With those headlines, I'll provide additional details on our 2 segments and give you an update on the work we committed to last quarter: marketing optimization, institutional combination synergies and our student lifecycle platform, which we are implementing in collaboration with Salesforce. I'll then turn it over to Ed Codispoti, APEI CFO, for more details on financial results and comments. So let's start with Health+. Overall, Health+ revenue grew 9% to $86.4 million, driven by a mix shift to campus nursing, which increased low double-digit rates and which reflects our continued success in executing our Fill the Back Row strategy, along with a modest tuition increase in the second half of 2025. Our new Orlando campus continues to track ahead of initial expectations, including our recent introduction of an evening LPN program. Our second Detroit campus is now facing a 1-quarter delay in opening, an unexpected result of our accreditor change due to the combination. Hondros's former accreditor, ABHES, had approved the new location prior to our combination. Now HLC, our new accreditor, requires its own separate approval and this process is currently underway. Fort Lauderdale remains on pace to open in Q4 2027 and overall we remain on track with our trailblazer initiative to open 2 new smaller-footprint campuses each year for the next 4 years. As a reminder, opening these smaller-footprint campuses gives us continued growth over the next 5 years. By successfully executing on our Fill the Back Row strategy with our existing campuses, these new campuses will also allow us to create revenue momentum and margin expansion, as we expect each to reach cash flow break-even in 18 months and full utilization in 4 to 5 years. Now turning to Military+. Our Military+ net course registrations grew 3.8% to approximately 103,800, above our guidance range of 101,000 to 103,000. Military+ revenue of $82.7 million was flat year-over-year, affected by approximately $6 million in registration revenue that shifted into the fourth quarter, as we discussed during our last earnings call. Our military and military-affiliated learners remain the engine of this segment. Veteran and military family registrations grew at double-digit rates and active duty registrations returned to growth, led by the Army. As a reminder, our full-year guidance does not assume a resolution to the Middle East conflict. With our continued strength in the Army enrollments, the branch from which the largest number of our students come, a resolution to the conflict can support additional growth. As we turn our attention to marketing, last quarter we shared that we had launched an end-to-end evaluation of marketing efficiency and effectiveness across all student segments and channels with a third party. We are implementing recommendations around organizational efficiency, marketing spend shifts, overall marketing optimization and expect to see continued improvements into 1H '27 and beyond. In the third quarter, selling and promotion expense was 24.7% of revenue, as compared with 22.1% in the prior-year period, and general and administration expense increased due to the investments to optimize our marketing, process and organization. We made these investments intentionally and the increased costs were taken into account in our guidance. Our results, including these increased costs, exceeded that guidance. Now let's turn our attention to the combination synergies and the student lifecycle platform. We'd like to share more about the cost synergies resulting from our institutional combination. I want to highlight 3 buckets. First is the integration of Rasmussen University and Hondros College of Nursing, where we have a target of $5 million of recurring cost synergies in 2027 and beyond, including campus and academic operational synergies and cost savings from consolidated buying of books, materials and from other contracts. These savings are included in our already published 4-year plan. Second, the cost synergies between Health+ and Military+ have a target of $9 million in recurring savings in 2028 and beyond, primarily from productivity gains in admissions, financial aid, leadership and other academic shared services. These savings are also included in our already published 4-year plan. We continue to evaluate our revenue synergies in 2 categories: the opportunity for Hondros students to enroll in Rasmussen nursing and online programs; and revenue synergies from our student lifecycle platform implementation. Our implementation of SLP with Salesforce remains on track for its initial go-live with our Health+ segment in early 2027, beginning with student support and admissions. As a reminder, the implementation costs have already been included in our previously stated 4-year plans. The anticipated benefits, including improved retention, better student services and lower cost to serve, represent an incremental upside to the already published 4-year plan. We will quantify the benefits of this upside on a future call. With that, I'll turn the call over to Ed to discuss our third quarter financial results, capital allocation and our outlook in more detail.