Daniel M. Hamburger
Analyst · First Analysis
Thanks, Joan, and thank you all very much for joining us today. In my remarks, I'll summarize our results for fiscal year 2013 and I'll provide segment highlights, ending with DeVry University and an update on the turnaround plan. After Tim and Pat provide a review of our financial results, I'll come back and share our vision for the future and then we'll open it up to questions. So total revenues for fiscal 2013 were $1.96 billion, down 5% from last year. Half of DeVry is DeVry University, where revenues continue to be down. The other half, Healthcare, International and Professional, is relatively strong. Our long-term formula of quality plus diversification equals growth is helping us as we work through the cyclical weakness in the United States. Our focus on quality drives student outcomes and lowers regulatory risks, and our diversification in high-growth career fields, degree levels and geographies, all that positions us for long-term growth. We manage costs aggressively in response to the drop in revenues and we've reduced our expenses over $100 million this year. While our net income from continuing operations and before discrete items was down 18%, we ended the year with a strong balance sheet and solid cash flow. With that overview, let me look to the segments and begin with Medical and Healthcare. Our revenues and earnings grew nicely. New student enrollment declined at DeVry Medical International, not due to the market demand, but because of turnover within enrollment management at Ross University Med School. This operational issue has been addressed and we're expecting solid enrollment for September. To accommodate the growth we expect, we're going to open a new building at American University of the Caribbean in January. This new building will house state-of-the-art simulation centers, labs and a new testing center. In recent months, we've expanded our medical school's clinical education affiliations as well. We've added location -- rotations at Winthrop University Hospital in New York; St. Joseph Mercy Oakland Hospital outside Detroit; and West Suburban Hospital outside Chicago. At Ross Medical School, students are now going to have 2 options for completing the foundations of medicine portion of their degree that's traditionally offered over 4 semesters. Students can now choose to complete this coursework over 5 semesters, which will help them better manage their course load and increase student success. This academic track was developed successfully by our Dean, Dr. Joe Flaherty, when he was the Dean at the University of Illinois Medical School. We go on to Chamberlain College of Nursing, where our strong enrollment growth kept pace with the overall market growth in fiscal 2013, despite challenges from increased competition. We were competing effectively, even with lower-priced state schools, students value the quality and the highly regarded degree associated with the Chamberlain name. During the fourth quarter, Chamberlain signed an agreement with Catholic Health Initiatives, CHI. The agreement expands access to Chamberlain's post-licensure programs to nurses across the CHI system. It's a big system that includes more than 75 hospitals and 40 long-term care facilities. Chamberlain has nearly 200 such agreements with hospital systems across the United States. Think about Chamberlain's campus expansions, which include both new campuses and expansions at existing sites where there's strong demand, while we're expanding our Atlanta and Chicago campuses, increasing capacity by about the size of 2 new campuses. In the meantime, we're laying the groundwork for 3 to 4 campus openings that should occur in fiscal 2015, pending approvals. Chamberlain recently received approval from the Higher Learning Commission, HLC, for our Family Nurse Practitioner, or FNP program. We're planning to launch that in September. Our market research indicates strong demand for FNPs. We continue our record of strong academic outcomes at Chamberlain, with an overall NCLEX first-time pass rate of 92% for calendar year 2012. Moving on to Carrington, where we're making good progress on our turnaround plan. As part of Carrington's plan, we're narrowing our program focus. We thus suspended recruiting for certain non-core programs, we did see slightly lower new student enrollment in the fourth quarter, but for the year as a whole, new student enrollment was up almost 18%, demonstrating our commitment to quality in the classroom and student outcomes. In addition, we've successfully improved enrollment trends through stronger brand awareness and a dedicated contact center. Next, let's go on to the International and Professional Education segment. Note the new segment name as we're in the process of divesting Advanced Academics to focus on growth in our core post-secondary education markets. I'll ask Tim to give a little more color on that decision when he speaks. DeVry Brasil revenues grew 78% this fiscal year in local currency, 59% in U.S. dollars, to come in just shy of $100 million this year. On July 1, we completed the acquisition of Faculdade Differential Integral, or Facid, which serves about 2,500 students and focuses on healthcare programs. Our business development team had been talking to the owners of Facid for over 3 years, and they agreed to sell to DeVry exclusively. DeVry was Facid's acquirer of choice because of our dedication to quality and to student outcome. What's really interesting about Facid is that along with the healthcare and the law programs that it offers, it's our first medical school in Brazil. We're very excited about the opportunities for synergies and best-practice sharing across our 3 medical schools. I'm pleased to report that Faculdade do Vale do Ipojuca, or Favip, which we acquired in late 2012, has exceeded the expectations of our acquisition plan. Favip is one of the fastest-growing institutions in Northern Brazil. And just to remind you, it offers degree programs in the areas of law, psychology, engineering and nursing. When you take it all together, we expect to serve more than 30,000 students at DeVry Brasil this fiscal year. Becker Professional Education had a good year, grew about 4%, both organically and through acquisitions. Becker also signed new partner agreements with Deloitte Saudi Arabia and Deloitte India, an agreement with Grant Thornton in the United Arab Emirates. Becker is a very international organization. As planned, we also officially changed the name of Falcon Physician Reviews, which we had acquired, and changed that to Becker Professional Education, harmonizing our brand strategy there. Let me turn now to DeVry University. Clearly, we're facing challenges here. Some of you will remember that we had similar enrollment declines almost 10 years ago and we were successful in executing a turnaround plan. Well, we're confident we'll be successful again. That's because DeVry University's value proposition is fundamentally strong. It's a career-focused institution that provides exceptional service and support to students. A recent Gallup poll found that the factor adult Americans say is most important in selecting a college is the percent of graduates who find a good job. And this is what DeVry University does. The latest numbers are in, and DeVry University's employment statistics increased more than 90%. 90% of our graduates in the active job market are employed in their field of study within 6 months of graduation, and they're earning an average of over $43,500. That's higher than the median family household income of our students before they enrolled at DeVry University. Employers see value from DeVry University, as they repeatedly hire our graduates to fill their jobs. They send their existing employees to us for continuing education as well. New students from our corporate and government partnerships have grown more than 20%. Today, we have more than 400 agreements in place. We work with corporations, including Walmart, Xerox, Allstate and others. Three of our DeVry University campuses placed in the top 100 for return on investment in a ranking by PayScale, and they rated over 1,000 institutions. PayScale's report examined the return on investment given the cost situation and the payoff in lifetime earnings. And out of that, we have 3 in the top 100. Student satisfaction is high as well, as evidenced by high and increasing Net Promoter Scores. We were one of the first universities to use the NPS methodology, popularized by outstanding organizations like American Express and State Farm, who are well known for providing high levels of customer service. DeVry University's NPS is on par with these organizations. So our value proposition is strong, but our recent enrollment results at DeVry University are not where we want them to be. To improve our performance, we're executing a 5-point turnaround plan. One, further improve academic quality; two, align our cost structure with enrollment levels; three, regain enrollment growth; four, make targeted investments to drive future growth; and five, manage all the change while developing our team. I'd like to update you on points 2, 3 and 4 of this plan. In aligning our cost structure, we're managing aggressively in a challenging environment with the entire organization focused on increasing efficiencies. Near term, we're able to significantly reduce costs through staffing adjustments and by lowering variable costs. Midterm, we're optimizing our real estate footprint. For example, we consolidated locations within markets such as Atlanta, Chicago and L.A. where we have multiple campuses. Longer term, we're focusing on process redesign and restructuring, both to lower cost and to make them more variable, while at the same time improving service quality. How do you that? Well, one way is through centralizing areas by human resources and student finance to leverage scale efficiencies. Moving to regaining enrollment growth. The biggest factors depressing demand at DeVry University, as well as the overall education market in the U.S., continue to include prospective students' lack of confidence in the job market and in the ROI of college. The plan to increase enrollment starts with sharpening the communication of DeVry University's value proposition, which is educational quality, career outcomes and exceptional student support. We'll more aggressively communicate this value proposition, including new, more focused advertising. Our plan includes investing $20 million more in media spend in fiscal '14, increasing our weeks on air by about 50%, and we're funding this from other marketing areas, so our overall marketing spend will be flat. We recently increased a call to action campaign, providing a new Career Catalyst Scholarship of up to $20,000 for eligible students enrolling for the September session. And we're optimizing the DeVry University website to drive increased site visits and convert more of those inquiries to applications. We're seeing results from these efforts already. Affordability is top of mind for students, so we've frozen DeVry University tuition this year, and we're also making more strategic use of scholarships with 2 clear objectives: tracking new students and improving student persistence. The Career Catalyst Scholarship program achieve -- aims to achieve both. It is attractive to new students and it's been awarded in progressively higher amounts over a 3-year period to motivate retention. Our plan to regain enrollment growth also includes enhancing the effectiveness of our recruiting process. Part of this is via technology enhancements, which is new software to better coach our admissions advisers to respond to the unique needs of each individual student. In addition, we're optimizing our inquiry routing process to improve conversion rates from inquiry to application. And then Point 4 of our turnaround plan, making targeted investments to drive future growth. Currently investing in the development of new programs, such as new competency-based degree programs. For this program, this is going to help students who qualify, it will allow those students to complete their degree more quickly and at lower costs. Above all, quality drives everything we do. You may recall that last quarter, we announced DeVry University received reaffirmation of its institutional accreditation from the HLC, the Higher Learning Commission. Our investment in quality was again validated as DeVry University earned specialized accreditation of its business and accounting degree programs from the ACBSP, that's the Accreditation Council of Business Schools and Programs. DeVry University is 1 of just 9 institutions that have achieved separate accounting accreditations since the council began offering that in 2009. Our commitment to quality also gained Carrington confirmation of its accreditation, for the next 6 years, from the Western Association of Schools and Colleges, or WASC. As you can see, DeVry's institutions demonstrate if you deliver quality for students, you'll be recognized by accreditors and regulators. I'd also like to note that this year, DeVry University is celebrating the 40th anniversary of our Keller Graduate School of Management, which has graduated more than 50,000 students in its 4-decade history back in 1973. With that overview, let me turn it over to Tim for a discussion of the financial results.