Good morning, and welcome to the ITT Educational Services, Inc. 2016 First Quarter Earnings Conference call. I would now like to turn the conference over to Nicole Elam. Please go ahead.

Greetings, ladies and gentlemen. 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 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 April 26, 2016 or in the company's public filings with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. Thank you, Mr. Modany. You may begin.

Thank you, Nicole. And good morning everyone, and thank you for joining us on this conference call to review our 2016 first quarter financial and operating results. Joining me on the call this morning as usual, is Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Rocco Tarasi. On the call this morning, I’ll start things off by providing comments regarding our first quarter operating results. Following my comments Rocco will provide an overview of our financial results reported in this morning's release. After Rocco’s comments I will then provide a very brief legal and regulatory update, as well as a few thoughts on various influential factors impacting our current operating environment. Consistent with our recent practice we will not be taking any analyst questions following our prepared remarks. Let’s get started by reviewing the enrollment results that we reported in today's release. New student enrollment in three months ended March 31, 2016 decreased 16.4% compared to the three months ended March 31, 2015. Our advertising efforts in the first quarter generated prospective student inquiries in line with our expectations and our marketing plans; however we continue to experience a decline in the conversion rate of those perspective student inquiries to new student enrollments. We continue to believe the decrease in the perspective new student conversion rates for the first quarter of 2016 compared to the first quarter of 2015 in recent prior periods were a result of perspective students, greater sensitivity to the cost of postsecondary education, and uncertainty about value of the postsecondary secondary education due to the prolonged economic and labor market disruptions. In addition, we believe that the current media and political environment is also negatively impacting our new student enrollment results. I’ll speak to this point a little later in the call. Further we believe our new…

Thanks Kevin. I will begin my comments by noting that while the new student enrollment challenges discontinued in the first quarter of 2016 we also continued to be good stewards of our resources and maintained our focus on cost containment and rightsizing our operations, in line with the changes in our total student enrollment. I’d like to provide a more detailed look at a few of the financial metrics for the first quarter of 2016 compared to the first quarter of 2015. Starting first with the income statement; revenue decreased $38.5 million or 16.7% to $191.5 million in the three months ended March 31, 2016 compared to $230.0 million in the three months ended March 31, 2015. The primary factor that contributed to this decrease was the 16.3% decrease in total student enrollment as of December 31, 2015 compared to December 31, 2014. Cost of educational services decreased $10.9 million or 10.5% to $92.6 million in the three months ended March 31, 2016 compared to $103.6 million in the three months ended March 31, 2015. The primary factors that contributed to this decrease were decrease in compensation of benefit costs, resulting from fewer employees and decreases in campus operating and occupancy cost as a result of fewer physical locations and reduced square footage. Student services and administrative expenses decreased $12.4 million or 13.7% to $77.9 million in the three months ended March 31, 2016, compared to $90.3 million in the three months ended March 31, 2015. The principal causes of this decrease were decreases in debt expense, compensation of benefits cost, and media advertising expenses. Bad debt expense as a percentage of revenue decreased to 3.8% in the three months ended March 31, 2016 compared to 5.3% in the three months ended March 31, 2015, primarily as a result of…

Thanks, Rocco. Before we conclude our comments on today’s call, I’d like to provide a brief update on few legal and regulatory matters, and a few thoughts regarding ongoing and unsubstantiated media and political attacks that have become somewhat of a routine for the tax paying postsecondary education sectors. First a quick review of few of the pending regulatory and legal matters. While there no material updates to report on the multi-state AG or CFPB matters at this time, we should note that we are engaged in fairly regular discussions with both the AG group and the CFPB with regard to the prospects or mutual acceptable resolution to these matters. That said, we are in no position to provide any assurances that our discussions will result in a favorable or otherwise resolution of these matters any time soon or at all. We should point out that it is not unusual for these types of conversations to occur at this stage of the process. Again, we should emphasize as the conversations are ongoing, we do not and cannot suggest I believe a favorable resolution as eminent or even attainable. As regard to the SEC matter than company vehemently disagrees with the SECs position and continues to diligently prepare for the next stops in the litigation process. As we have said before we are confident that the evidence does not support the SEC's claims, and we are eager to have the court clear our reputation. At this point, I’d like to shift gears and take this opportunity to provide a few thoughts and comments regarding the ongoing media and political environment, and we believe continues to impact our ability to execute on our mission of helping students, improve their lives to the pursuit of high quality career based education. Over the past…

Thank you. The conference is now concluded. Thank you for attending today’s presentation. You may now disconnect.