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Element Solutions Inc (ESI)

Q3 2015 Earnings Call· Thu, Nov 5, 2015

$38.87

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Greetings, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the ITT Educational Services, Inc. 2015 Third Quarter Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. Joining us today from the management of ITT Educational Services, we have Kevin Modany, Chief Executive Officer; and Rocco Tarasi, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Before we begin, ITT Educational Services, Inc. wishes to remind you that this conference call may include forward-looking information. Actual results may differ from the information presented during this call. For additional information, please review the section on forward-looking information contained in the news release dated November 05, 2015 or in the company's public filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Thank you, Mr. Modany. You may begin.

Kevin Modany

Management

Thank you. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen and thank you for joining us on this conference call to review our 2015 third quarter financial and operating results. Joining me on the call this morning is our Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Rocco Tarasi. On the call today, we will provide prepared comments regarding the financial and operating results that we released earlier this morning in addition to providing an update on our few other corporate matters. As has been our practice, recent practice we will not be taking any analyst questions at the conclusion of our prepared remarks. I wanted a [Indiscernible] instead of giving me a warmer results that we have reported in today’s release. New student enrolment in the three month ended September 30, 2015 decreased 18.4% compared to the three months ended September 30, 2014. We should note the beginning in the three months ended September 30, 2015 we revised our definition of a new student to exclude any student who was a first time student and was enrolled in our online degree program who did not continue to attend classes and answer our program on study beyond the first 15 days when the program starts or 30 days if the student was only enrolled in courses that are taught over a 12-week period. The impact of this change to our new student definition was to reduce new student enrolment for the third quarter of 2015 by 488 students as compared to what would have been reported under the prior definition. As we now modified the definition of a new student in the third quarter of 2015, new student enrolment would have declined by 15.8% compared to the same period in the prior year. We should point out that our accounting policies for revenue recognition…

Rocco Tarasi

Management

Thanks, Kevin. I’ll begin my comments with a review on the few of the financial metrics for the third quarter of 2015. Revenue decreased $39.4 million or 16.2% to $203.2 million in the three months ended September 30, 2015 compared to $242.6 million in the three months ended September 30, 2014. The primary factor that contributes to this decrease was a 13.7% decrease in total student enrolment as of June 30, 2015 compared to June 30, 2014. Cost of educational services decreased $24.3 million or 20.6% to $93.3 million in the three months ended September 30, 2015 compared to $117.5 million in the three months ended September 30, 2014. The primary factors that contribute to the decrease were, a decrease in compensation of benefit cost resulting from fewer employees, a decrease in core supplies as a result of lower total student enrolments and a decrease in campus operating cost resulting from fewer locations. Student services and administrative expenses decreased $15.8 million or 15.7% to $84.6 million in the three months ended September 30, 2015 compared to $100.4 million in the three months ended September 30, 2014. The principle causes of this decrease were decreases in bad debt expense, media advertising expenses and compensation and benefit cost. Bad debt expense as a percentage of revenue decreased to 3.4% in the three months ended September 30, 2015 compared to 6.9% in the three months ended September 30, 2014 primarily as a result of a reduction in internal student financing from utilization of the Opportunity Scholarship and other institutional scholarships and rewards. In the three months period ended September 30, 2015 we reported an impairment charge of $5.2 million for the impairment of goodwill related to our acquisitions of the corporate training businesses at SCOPA and Benchmark Learning. The amount of the impairment…