Elizabeth Boland
Analyst · Bank of America. Please proceed with your question.
Yes. Gary, let me just maybe lead off and Stephen can speak to maybe the broader strategy and how we're thinking about it beyond the financial performance and that element. But I think that we would look at the earliest years of this strategy, if you will, in the urban centric. Starting in 2013, we now, as you say, have a number of classes that are mature. And I -- if you've got a bell curve of 10 to 12 centers and how they're performing, we are pleased that they are hitting those returns that we show in the investor deck.Some of them have a higher revenue profile even in that $2.5 million average view because of where they are located and the tuitions that they can command. But in terms of a gross margin in the range of 20% to 25%, those earliest classes as a group are, in fact, in that range, not to say every center is in that range because we do have some that are on a much slower slope of ramping up and will take longer to get there.So, I think in the round, we're feeling like it's working well, and we are establishing both a footprint of well-recognized, high-quality centers, and we're focused in the right kinds of geographies to continue to deploy the strategy, both with the operations team that is dedicated to this. So, we have a dedicated division that's focused on the new centers that are opening. It's not each operator getting up to speed with what's different about this kind of a center.And as a result of that, we've got -- we think -- the right amount of attention on the operational side of it. But it's true that the -- we'll have ways of these like we remarked about it in the prepared comments, but 17 centers in some of these locations, they do generate a substantial preopening loss. I'd say that might be one difference that we see.Some centers have a higher preopening and ramp-in loss than a typical prototype because of the rents that they come in. So, that may be a bigger drag, a slightly bigger drag than we would have envisioned at the early stages of this strategy. And hence, the comment today that there's a couple of million of an effect from that in this fourth quarter. But Stephen, the strategy?