Lisa Wardell
Analyst · Piper Jaffray. Please proceed with your question
Thanks, Joan. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us on today’s call. As you can probably tell from my voice, Q1 is over and fall has arrived. During the first quarter, we faced some extraordinary challenges at Adtalem, as we confronted the impact of two back-to-back Category 5 hurricanes at our medical schools in the Caribbean. I could not be more proud of the strength of our entire organization, the perseverance of our leaders and the determination of our students and colleagues, which were all quite evident in the weeks that follow these devastating events. These disasters demonstrated our resiliency and allowed us to pressure test both our crisis response plans and our business continued abilities. We evacuated both the AUC and RUSM communities of students, faculties and colleagues with everyone safe and accounted for in the weeks that followed. In addition, we were able to continue the September semester for both of our medical schools. A testament to two institutions and our home office team, who worked cross functionally and tirelessly for the good of our medical students and the entire Adtalem portfolio. While I’m proud of our team for driving our transitional effort, it goes without saying that our hearts go out to those communities throughout the Caribbean and the United States, who suffered major damage and the loss of community members and who, clearly, face a long road to recovery. We’re continuing to assess the damage to our infrastructure and manage the expenses associated with the evacuations and temporary relocations of the medical schools. Just as I applaud the team’s crisis response, I’m equally grateful for the rest of our organization, which has continued to focus on our priorities and the execution of our operating plan. I’m pleased to report that our first quarter results were ahead of our plan, excluding the impact of the hurricanes. We continued to benefit from the cumulative effects of the expense reductions we’ve taken during the past year, which have led to increased operating leverage. As the global higher education industry continues to experience increased demand and a shift in education delivery modalities, we’re strategically adapting to the environment and expanding our presence in our core vertical, Medical and Healthcare, Professional Education and Technology and Business. Our portfolio remains focused on evaluating the value – on elevating the value proposition, we delivered to each of our student segments by communicating to students in a way that resonates with their needs and lifestyle, while further strengthening our end-demand program offerings in our three core verticals. We’re also managing a more disciplined product life cycle. And strategically expanding our offerings, as we gain a better understanding of what employers need to acquire, develop and retain talent. All of these initiatives are aimed at addressing the significant workforce skill gaps that are prevalent in our society globally. I’m also pleased to report that Adtalem’s student commitments, which we announced one year ago, recently underwent an independent third-party review and have now been fully implemented. These commitments reflect our results to take a leadership role in improving transparency and accountability in higher education. Based on past standard higher education policies, including reduced independence on federal financial aid and greater transparency for students regarding borrowing practices and academic program outcomes. Among other accomplishments, the review confirmed that Adtalem’s institutions were all under the 85% voluntary federal funding threshold goal, we established last year, including Department of Veterans Affairs and Military Tuition Assistance Benefit. I’m very proud of my colleagues from across our organization, who work together to deliver these unique commitments to our students. Building on our already strong foundation of policies and practices, we were determined to set new standards to help students achieve their education and career goals. We’re generating healthy cash flows and we’re maintaining a strong balance sheet. And we’ll continue to strategically manage our capital allocation, delivering returns to our owners to increase share repurchase activity and investments in academic quality and growth initiatives. The Medical and Healthcare segment remains a substantial vertical for Adtalem, given the breadth of our institutions, our strong brand and the attractive long-term global growth opportunities. Our Medical and Healthcare institutions represent a little more than 75% of our operating income. Chamberlain is well positioned to pursue the supply demand imbalance in nursing and other healthcare professions, and to address the needs of our aging population and the increasing demand for skilled healthcare professional. We’re focused on leveraging Chamberlain’s reputation, resources and university establishment to diversify the school’s offerings and pursue additional growth channel. Our Masters of Public Health program is performing ahead of plan, and we’re broadening our programs to fully capitalize on this sector opportunity. We’re all very excited about the recent publication of a book written by Chamberlain University’s President, Susan Groenwald, entitled Designing and Creating a Culture of Care for Student and Faculty, The Chamberlain University College of Nursing Models. The book describes Chamberlain Care, the unique organizational culture and work climate developed at Chamberlain University and to a great extent adopted across the Adtalem portfolio. It serves as a guide for any organization seeking to make culture and structural changes to improve student or employee satisfaction, engagement and achievement. We believe it will strengthen Chamberlain’s brand and add to the very strong reputation of the institution. At our medical and veterinary schools, we’re pleased to report that, before the hurricane, new student enrollment was tracking to show growth in the low-double digits for the September class, reflective of the changes we’ve made in marketing and admissions over the past month. We’re also pleased to see recent increases in the average TPAs for the incoming students at both of our medical schools, with averages in the 3.2 range. We’re consistently attracting talented and hard-working students, who are committed to becoming successful MD. Students from AUC are continuing their studies in the United Kingdom. While about 6% decided to take a break for the semester, 94% of students resumed class on September 29, at the campus of University of Central Lancashire. In January, we’re planning to hold classes for first, second and third semester students at AUC and St. Martin, pending the results of our ongoing analysis to determine whether our campus and the St. Martin infrastructure are ready for students’ returns. Fourth and fifth semesters students will remain in the UK, where they will take advantage of an expanded number of clinical partners. We are grateful to have UCLan, which is providing our students and faculty with quality lab and classroom facilities as our partner. Our Ross campus on Dominica as well as infrastructure of the entire island experienced significant damage, which will take time to address. To ensure continuity of our program, in mid-October, we moved our students to temporary classrooms on a crew ship, which is docked at St. Kitts and Nevis. We appreciate the government of St. Kitts for facilitating our ability to dock at the St. Kitts court in close proximity to our Ross University School of Veterinary Medicine. Approximately 78% of our students have stayed with us for the September semester, attesting to their determination to pursue their career goal of becoming a medical doctor as well as the quality of the education we provide and our disaster response, which provided the continuity they needed to get back on track for the semester. About two-thirds of those students, who took a break this semester have indicated their intent to return in January of 2018. Patrick will provide more detail on the financial and enrollment impact of the hurricanes in a moment. Our Professional Education segment delivered healthy growth in revenue and operating cash flow during the quarter. Becker remains a solid business with an attractive long-term growth profile, given its leadership in CPA test preparation as well as its focus on growing its continuing professional education program. Becker’s excellence in education is demonstrated by the fact that 90% Elijah Watt Sells Award recipients in 2016 prepared with Becker’s CPA Exam Review course. This is an outstanding achievement when you consider that more than 100,000 candidates sat for the exam. In total, since its founding Becker has helped more than 1 million candidates pass the CPA exam. Assessing to the quality and effectiveness of the organization’s program and teaching methods. Mehul Patel, our new professional education vertical leader is focused on leveraging Becker’s reputation and large alumni base to extend our presence and gain share in the continuing Professional Education arena. The market for CPE-related courses is estimated to be $700 million in addressable opportunity in the U.S. alone, where we currently have only a 1% share. We have a right to win in this market, and see considerable upside over the long-term, as we strategically leverage Becker’s reputation and diversify our peer mix. In fact, Becker recently signed a continuing education contract with one of the top accounting firm. The largest such deal ever signed by Becker for continuing education courses. ACAM, which we have owned since July of 2016 is a leader in serving a very underpenetrated global market for accounting fraud prevention, which is estimated to be between $2 billion to $3 billion market globally. As an asset-like member organization, the business provides attractive margin growth potential to three core revenue streams; membership, certification, and conferences. For prospective, ACAMS has now approximately 56,000 registered members, representing a 40% year-over-year increase. And the recent ACAMS conference in Las Vegas attracted over 2,500 attendees, up 8% year-over-year, with participation from sponsors and exhibitors increasing 10%. Post-conference survey feedback from attendees was exceptional. We expect ACAMS to deliver at least 20% on a compounded basis for the next five years, employing about $100 million business by 2021. In addition, we continued to build international momentum for the core ACAMS products, which present significant upside to the current model. In our Technology and Business segment, Adtalem Brazil continues to represent a solid growth opportunity with high academic standards and strong national rankings, educating more than 110,000 students through 14 institutions. We’re committed to strategically launching new programs aimed at addressing supply demand imbalances across the country as well as pursuing distance-learning opportunities. This past summer, the Brazilian government changed regulations on opening and operating distance-learning businesses across the country. The approval process for launching these facilities was streamlined, making this segment more economically attractive to larger institution. This is a very large market opportunity. Adtalem Brazil will begin offering a group of bachelors and associate degree program via distance-learning in February. These programs will be offered under the Unifavip brand and will be launched through the Damásio network of 220 learning centers, which has the infrastructure and staff in place to support distance-learning degree. Our leadership in Brazil continues to deliver improving profitability and solid cash flows despite ongoing macroeconomic challenges. As the Brazilian economy shows improvement, we are well positioned to further expand margins, given the operating leverage in our model. In our US Traditional Postsecondary segment, we’re continuing to roll out that past program that DeVry University through new shorter, stackable programs and a streamlined marketing organization. Our DeVryWORKS initiative has been an increasingly larger contributor to DVU stabilization. The program has gone from 3% to 4% of new enrollments one year ago to about 14% of new enrollments today. We continued to manage our expenses and move to further decrease our real estate footprint. We are in the process of consolidating an additional eight campuses, which will reduce our footprint to 51 campuses. At Carrington, we’re beginning to see the benefits of the institution’s revived marketing initiative. It’s been about six months, since Carrington repositioned its marketing strategy, and we’ve seen a steady increase in the number of inquiries. We’re starting to see positive signs that give us confidence that new student enrollment will begin to stabilize in the second quarter of this fiscal year. In terms of curriculum, we’re continuing to focus on adding shorter, stackable quality program. Our Phlebotomy program had a successful launch in Reno in August. The program is 12 weeks in length, has a relatively low tuition rate and its non-title force. So it’s very much in line with our payer diversification strategy. We’re adding continuing education program such as question that support dental assistance and hygienist as well as an IV certification course. This allows for additional Non-Title IV revenue and aligns that program with the needs of healthcare organization and workforce partners. Now, let me turn the call over to Patrick for the financial review.