Operator
Operator
Good day and welcome to the Third Quarter 2015 DeVry Education Group Results Conference Call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference call over to Joan Walter, Senior Director of Investor Relations. Please go ahead. Joan Walter - Senior Director-Investor & Media Relations: Thank you, Amy, and good afternoon, everyone. With me today from DeVry Education Group's leadership team are Daniel Hamburger, President and Chief Executive Officer; Tim Wiggins, our Chief Financial Officer; and Pat Unzicker, our Chief Accounting Officer. I'd also like to remind you that this conference call contains forward-looking statements with respect to the future performance and financial condition of DeVry Education Group that involves risks and uncertainties. Various factors could cause actual results to be materially different from any future results expressed or implied. These factors are discussed under Risk Factors and elsewhere in our quarterly reports and Form 10-K for fiscal 2014 filed with the SEC and available on our website at www.devryeducationgroup.com. DeVry Group disclaims any obligation to update any forward-looking statements made during this call. Additionally, during the call, we may refer to non-GAAP financial measures, which are intended to supplement, but not substitute for our most directly comparable GAAP measures. Our press release, which contains the financial and other quantitative information to be discussed today, as well as a reconciliation of non-GAAP to GAAP measures, is also available on our website. Telephone and webcast replays of today's call are available until May 9. To access the replays, please refer to today's release for more information. And with that, I'll turn the call over to Daniel. Daniel M. Hamburger - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Thanks Joan and thank you all very much for joining us today. DeVry Education Group's strategy of quality, plus diversification, plus long-term focus continues to differentiate us. During the quarter, DeVry Group as a whole experienced strong growth in total post-secondary enrollments. This growth was driven by our diversification into Healthcare and International institutions. And it's in this context that I'd like to focus our call on the announcement we made in today's release regarding DeVry University. In prior quarters, we discussed our cost management and our shift to a programmatic strategy for the institution. Today, we are announcing the next phase of our strategy, to transform DeVry University and return it to growth. This involves focusing on fewer markets, updating the brand, differentially investing in local markets where we have the best competitive positioning and implementing new student-focused teaching and service innovations designed to attract today's students. Over the past three quarters, we put a new leadership team into DeVry University, and that team has conducted a deep dive analysis of our students, our employer partners and our programs. We also brought in outside experts to help us assess the market, competition and our operating model. The result of this process is a strategy with both urgent, near-term actions to improve enrollments and transformational investments to increase our competitiveness and differentiation over the long term. In the near term, our goal is to maintain positive economics and to reset the institution for growth. Let me highlight three key actions that are underway. The first involves our physical footprint. We've identified a set of markets where we have relatively stronger competitive positions and these markets will differentially invest in local communications and enhanced marketing plans. This is in contrast to our prior national marketing approach. At the same time, 14 locations or about 20% of our campuses will move to an online-only model. These locations were carefully selected because our research showed that many students in these markets are now studying online. The reduction of our campus footprint and related staff reductions will free up significant resources to enable this differential investment strategy in the remaining local markets. Second, we're reducing our cost structure in other areas. For example, even as we increase spend in the local markets, we'll reduce overall marketing spend by almost $35 million. In total, we project over $125 million of savings in fiscal 2016. And note that from fiscal 2013 through fiscal 2015, we'll have reduced DeVry University's cost by more than $300 million by aligning our cost structure with enrollments, while continuing to enhance quality and service. So combined, we'll have reduced our cost structure by more than $425 million by the end of next fiscal year. And third, we relaunched the DeVry University brand. Our new communications campaign emphasizes how DeVry University is different on purpose. There's a link to one of the elements of the campaign in today's results announcement. We're emphasizing what DeVry University is known for, which is careers and care. Students give us a great deal of credit for our ability to deliver strong career outcomes and for the care and support we provide them to help them achieve these outcomes. The new messaging is designed to clearly establish a distinct voice for the brand and to instill pride in the students we serve. Taken together, these and other near-term actions are designed to maintain positive economics in fiscal 2016. Now beyond these near-term actions, our goal is to transform DeVry University, bolstering our value proposition and student experience. This will help us to better compete in the ever-changing higher education landscape. I'll highlight four strategies here. First, we'll differentiate our teaching and service model by employing new technologies. Something all our students want is to attend class when it's convenient for them. So we're leveraging our network of multiple campuses as one. If students don't find the class they want when they want it at their campus, they'll be able to attend class virtually at another location at a time more convenient for them. We're partnering with Cisco Systems to invent this new Connected Classroom learning experience. Directional microphones, telepresence video technology, two-way interactive smartboards, all combined so that students in multiple locations feel like they're in one combined section, because they are. This technology is unique to DeVry University and Cisco. We've already piloted Connected Classroom and students love it. Other new educational technologies include one that enables faculty to bring math concepts to life using graphing, simulations and tablet-based handwriting recognition. And we've invested in partnership with a leading business incubator based in Chicago, and that's 1871, to launch our own incubator, DV X Labs. We're investing in these innovative technologies to ensure DeVry University is differentiated by the teaching and service experience we provide our students. And this builds on our long tradition of innovation to make education more accessible to students with diverse needs and backgrounds. And second, through our programmatic focus, we're ensuring each program's content and features are designed to best meet the needs of that program's students and employers and that we better communicate the value proposition of each program. Our comprehensive review has identified programs where we have a strong position and can differentially invest such as Keller, accounting, technology, and degree completion. Where we're further along in this process, we're seeing better results. For example, we've enhanced our focus on our Bachelor of Technical Management program for degree completers. We saw positive growth in this program in March. Third, we'll improve the affordability of our programs. Here, we'll optimize our pricing and scholarships, identify ways to help our students shorten the path to their degree and improve the communication of price and value through all the touch points that students have with DeVry University. And fourth, we deepen our employer relationships by providing a more integrated solution to help employers attract, develop and retain the best talent. We're bringing our career services and employer education capabilities together to create an integrated focused team that we call Workforce Solutions. For Rite Aid, we've created an online retail management associate degree program to power their high-potential employees to move into leadership roles. DeVry University has a differentiated platform to build on here with very strong career services and continuing education partnerships, with over 400 employers. Increasingly, we also see opportunities for DeVry University to leverage employer relationships that other DeVry Group institutions have as well. At present, we have about 4,000 students from leading employers such as Walmart, Verizon, JPMorgan Chase and Boeing. We're taking these decisive actions to improve enrollments and to transform DeVry University for the ever-changing higher education market. By restructuring the university's footprint, we're generating the resources to differentially invest in the markets and programs where we have stronger competitive positions, supported by our strong university brand. And we're placing the institution on a path for growth by differentiating our teaching and service model, enhancing affordability and deepening our employer relationships. We're confident in this plan. We have the right team in place, some of the same leaders who oversaw the successful turnaround at Carrington. In the past 12 months, more than 36,000 students chose DeVry University to help them achieve their career goals. Now, that's a strong testament to the quality and value of our programs and a strong foundation on which we're building. Many shareholders have told us that there's tremendous latent value to be unlocked at DeVry University as we return to growth. We agree and are deeply committed to this plan and to realizing that academic and economic value. While we're implementing this strategy at DeVry University, we're equally committed to continued growth by diversification in our Healthcare, International and Professional institutions. At Chamberlain College of Nursing, we experienced solid growth and invested in new campuses during the quarter. Our new Las Vegas and Detroit area campuses had strong openings in January. And we began accepting applications for our North Brunswick, New Jersey campus, which is a co-location with DeVry University. This brings us to four new campuses for the year, ahead of our original goal, and 17 in total. We continue to develop our pipeline of potential markets across the country and expect two to three new openings in fiscal 2016. Now there's some analysis that's been written out there about the outlook for Nursing, and it's very general and very broad. Looking at the programs and students Chamberlain serves, we believe the demand for nursing education is strong and growing. Nursing continues to rank as the fastest growing job category among all health professions. There's a significant supply-demand imbalance for nurses educated at the Bachelor's level and above. The associate degree market for Nursing continues to grow as well, which drives future demand for our RN to BSN program. A recent study published by the Georgetown University Center in Education projects that the supply of nurses will fall short of the demand by about 200,000 by 2020. There's an aging population and an expanded need for nurses with advanced degrees to provide primary care, including changes emanating from the Affordable Care Act. All of these factors lead us to believe the market for nursing is strong. Let me move to DeVry Medical International, and I realize our enrollment report last quarter was a bit below where we wanted it to be. And I want you to know we're extremely focused on this. We're feeling good about the progress we're making and we'd expect to have a better report card in the upcoming classes. Actions the team is taking include a new marketing approach, organizational changes to provide more focus and support to each of the medical schools and enhanced scholarships aimed at attracting high-quality applicants. We've seen progress with an increased number of inquiries. And we're confident these actions will improve our conversion rate as well and support our long-term target of low-single-digit enrollment growth. I'm pleased to report that graduates of Ross University School of Medicine and American University of the Caribbean School of Medicine earned more than 1,050 residency positions at hospitals in the United States and Canada. These new physicians will continue their training at prestigious institutions like the Cleveland Clinic in Florida, Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City, and Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, among many others. Excuse me, I'm going to need to call on one of these doctors pretty soon if I don't get better from this cold. At Ross University School of Veterinary Medicine, we set a strategy to broaden our clinicals to hospitals outside the U.S. to enrich our students' educational experience and to extend the capacity of our clinical network. I can now report that students began taking clinicals in Australia this past quarter. And later this year, students will be able to take clinicals at partner institutions in Ireland. At Carrington College, revenue grew by nearly 3% during the quarter. Carrington has now experienced four quarters in a row of growth, which demonstrates our ability to set an institution back on the path for long-term growth. And our diversification strategy is also paying off at our International and Professional Education Segment. Brazil continues to face a slowing economy and has reduced government spending in the FIES student loan program. So you may be wondering how are we doing there and what's the outlook? At DeVry Brasil, revenue grew 39% and we reported record enrollments this quarter. Given the conditions, we think our organic enrollments may grow less than originally planned, more like high-single-digit new student enrollment growth versus low teens, but still leading to double-digit revenue growth with tuition increases, and flowing through to corresponding earnings growth. We recently completed our largest acquisition to date in Brazil, Damásio Educacional. Damásio is a leader in bar exam test preparation with a network of 220 learning centers throughout Brazil, as well as a highly regarded law school. This transaction opens a new growth opportunity for us, namely, to transplant programs via Damásio's network, and it diversifies us further into non-FIES revenues. By almost every measure, academic results, enrollment results, student satisfaction, colleague engagement, we're on track to have our best year ever in Brazil. And with that, let me turn it over to Tim. Timothy J. Wiggins - Chief Financial Officer, Treasurer & Senior VP: Thanks, Daniel, and good afternoon everyone. In the third quarter of fiscal 2015, revenue from continuing operations was $490 million. Year-to-date, revenue from continuing operations totaled $1.437 billion, with all of our post-secondary institutions growing revenue except DeVry University. Total costs from continuing operations for the quarter were $433 million, up 1.6% from last year. For the nine months, costs excluding special items totaled $1.283 billion, relatively flat to last year, actually down 0.2%. We reported net income of $47 million for the quarter and $110 million for the nine-month period. This resulted in earnings per share of $0.72 for the quarter and $1.68 year-to-date. Year-to-date net income from continuing operations and excluding special items was $125 million and earnings per share from continuing operations was $1.92. Our effective income tax rate was 13.2% for the quarter and 13.7% year-to-date. We expect that our effective income tax rate from operations for the fourth quarter will be in the 14% to 15% range. With that overview, let's now shift to our operating segment results. Starting with the Medical and Healthcare segment, revenue of $225 million was up 10% during the third quarter. Segment revenue was up 13% in the first nine months, driven by growth at Chamberlain and Carrington. Operating income for the Medical and Healthcare segment in the quarter was $46 million, representing an increase of 2.5% from the prior year excluding special items. During the first nine months, segment operating income grew 12%, excluding special items. This was driven by solid growth at Chamberlain and continued improvement at Carrington. Chamberlain revenue grew 25% for the quarter. New student enrollment grew 3.5%. And total students grew more than 27%, which is overlapping very strong post-licensure growth last year. There continues to be strong demand for both our pre-licensure and post-licensure degree programs. Given that demand, we should end the year with more than $360 million of revenue, up more than 25%. Looking to fiscal 2016, we expect new student enrollment growth for the full year at Chamberlain to be in the range of 4% to 6%, with total enrollment projected to grow in the mid teens. You'll recall the larger percentage increases Chamberlain has experienced over the last several years, so let me comment on the dynamics here. First, we do have the law of large numbers phenomenon taking place. Second, we're overlapping the introductions of two highly successful programs last year, the Family Nurse Practitioner, or FNP, and Doctor of Nursing Practice or DNP. These continue to have high demand, but we've anniversaried through their initial startup phase. And third, demand has been so strong that we decided to cap new student enrollments in our FNP program for now to ensure we continue to meet clinical capacity needs. Stepping back, we expect mid-teens revenue and earnings growth for Chamberlain in fiscal 2016. Carrington revenue grew 3% during the water and 2.5% in the first nine months. In the quarter, new students declined 2.7% and total students declined 1.5% as a result of fewer class starts this quarter versus the same period last year. On a year-to-date basis, new student enrollment grew 1.1% and total enrollment declined 0.5%. Carrington was profitable at the institutional level for the quarter and for the nine-month period. Turning to the International and Professional Education segment, revenue of $61 million increased 20% in the quarter. For the first nine months, segment revenue increased 13%. At Becker, revenue declined a little less than 1% during the quarter and 5.4% year-to-date. The decrease was primarily the result of continued softness in the number of CPA exam candidates, but we believe Becker declined less than the CPA market overall. Revenue at DeVry Brasil grew nearly 39% in the quarter versus prior year. The increase at DeVry Brasil was driven by organic growth and the acquisitions of FMF, Faci and Damásio which joined our organization this fiscal year. New student enrollments increased by more than 105% and total students grew nearly 78%. Excluding these acquisitions, new and total enrollment grew 13% and 14% respectively, underscoring continued strong demand for post-secondary education in Brazil. The segment's operating income was $4.6 million, down $1.7 million reflecting revenue softness at Becker. And finally, within the Business, Technology and Management segment, revenue was down approximately 16% during the quarter and 13% for the first nine months. This is a result of lower enrollments and lower undergraduate revenue per student, which was down about 0.3% in the quarter. The segment generated operating income of nearly $17 million for the first nine months compared with $27 million last year, excluding special items. Looking ahead to the fourth quarter, we expect revenue for DeVry Group to decrease about 1% to 2% year-over-year, with declining revenue at DeVry University offsetting revenue growth at our other institutions. We expect operating costs to be up slightly versus prior year as a result of cost reductions at DeVry University being offset by new campuses at Chamberlain, the recent acquisitions at DeVry Brasil and increase in DeVry University marketing, all to support revenue growth. The Gainful Employment regulations are set to become effective on July 1. As most of you probably know, the actual data that will be used to implement the regulations is not available until June 2016. We're evaluating scenarios based on estimates and preliminary data. So we can't say anything for sure at this point. But looking at the information we have, we estimate that under 10% of the programs across DeVry University and Carrington College are at risk to fail the test. We've identified a number of actions we think can be taken to bring these programs into favorable territory within the time remaining to do so, while maintaining quality and value to students. Among the alternatives we're considering would be to increase our use of scholarships. Were we to go that route, we would estimate the cost to be in the $12 million range for fiscal 2016 and it would fall in the first quarter. So while we've done our analysis and we're prepared, we have yet to make final decisions about the alternatives under consideration as there are still pending events and data that could impact the final decision. The points I want to emphasize here is that we're dealing with a limited number of programs, we have time and we have options. And we're confident no matter the outcome, we'll maintain our strong record of compliance. I'll now turn the call over to Pat to talk more about our balance sheet and financial position. Patrick J. Unzicker - Chief Accounting Officer & Vice President-Finance: Thanks, Tim. And good afternoon, everyone. Cash flow from operations for the first nine months of the year was $209 million. Our cash and cash equivalents were $402 million at March 31, up from $397 million last year. Our net accounts receivable balance was $150 million, down 7% from the prior year as a result of lower revenues at DeVry University. Year-to-date, bad debt as a percentage of revenue was 2.8%. Our capital spending for the first nine months was $64 million, driven by investments in our Medical and Healthcare and International institutions to drive future growth. We expect capital spending for the current fiscal year to be in the range of $95 million to $100 million, which is lower than our original expectations as we continue to be an efficient user of our shareholders' capital. Recently, we entered into a new $400 million revolving credit agreement. It has a five-year term and replaces our prior $400 million dollar credit facility at market-competitive rates. And with that, we welcomed two new banks to the agreement. Our credit facility is a key element of our capital structure to provide access to resources to pursue growth opportunities. We continued our cost reduction efforts during the quarter, resulting in the recording of a $7 million pre-tax restructuring charge relating to workforce reductions and real estate optimization primarily at DeVry University. As we move into the next phase of our strategy, to transform DeVry University, we expect to incur additional restructuring charges during the fourth quarter of this year and into fiscal 2016. Overall, our solid financial position and cash flow generation in the first nine months of the year gives us the continued financial flexibility to support our strategy of quality, plus diversification, plus long-term focus. Now, let me turn the call back over to Daniel. Daniel M. Hamburger - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Thank you, Pat. And to wrap up, we're taking aggressive action to improve DeVry University's performance. By restructuring DeVry University's footprint, we're generating the resources to differentially invest in the markets and programs where we have a strong position supported by the DeVry University's strong brand. And we're placing the institution on a path for growth by differentiating our teaching and service model, enhancing affordability and strengthening our employer workforce solutions. We're confident that this strategy, together with the sustained expansion of our Healthcare, Professional and International institutions, will drive ever-improved student outcomes and DeVry Group's future growth. So with that, we're eager to take your questions. Joan? Joan Walter - Senior Director-Investor & Media Relations: Thank you. Amy, I'd like to ask you if you'd please give the participants the instructions to ask a question. But first, I was to say in response to the feedback that we've received, and in order to get to as many participants as possible, we ask that everyone limit themselves to one question and perhaps a follow-up. And if you have additional questions, just please jump back into the queue. Amy?