Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Q4 2022 Lincoln Educational Services Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speakers' presentation, there'll be a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] Please be advised that today's conference call is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Michael Polyviou. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Lisa, and good morning, everyone. Before the market opened today, Lincoln Educational Services issued its news release reporting financial results for the fourth quarter and full year ended December 31, 2022. The release is available on the Investor Relations portion of the company's corporate website at www.lincolntech.edu. Joining us today on the call are Scott Shaw, President and CEO; and Brian Meyers, Chief Financial Officer. Today's call is being broadcast live on the company's website, and a replay of the call will be archived on the company's website. Statements made by Lincoln's management on today's call regarding the company's business that are not historical facts may be forward-looking statements as the term is identified in federal securities laws. The words may, will, expect, believe, anticipate, project, plan, intend, estimate and continue as well as similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements should not be read as a guarantee of future performance or results. The company cautions you that these statements reflect current expectations about the company's future performance or events and are subject to a number of uncertainties, risks and other influences, many of which are beyond the company's control that may influence the accuracy of the statements and the projections upon which the segment and statements are based. Factors that may affect the company's results include, but are not limited to, the risks and uncertainties discussed in the Risk Factors section of the annual report on Form 10-K and the quarterly report on Form 10-Q filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Forward-looking statements are based on the information available at the time those statements are made in management's good faith belief as of the time with respect to the future events. All forward-looking statements are qualified in their entirety by this cautionary statement, and Lincoln undertakes no obligation to publicly revise or update any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise after the date thereof. Now, I'll hand the call over to Scott Shaw, President and CEO, Lincoln Educational Services. Scott, please go ahead.

Thank you, Michael, and welcome, everyone. Despite continued historically low unemployment and persistent economic growth, Lincoln established several positive trends throughout 2022 and generated 4.7% same-campus student start growth during the fourth quarter. We achieved strong financial results in the fourth quarter with both revenues and adjusted EBITDA growing in comparison to last year. For the full year 2022, we achieved all guidance targets, as the team continued to implement the new hybrid teaching model, the centralized financial aid process and our two major growth initiatives. We achieved a 500-basis point improvement in our graduation rate to 68.8% of students and increased the graduate placement rate to 81.6%. We enrolled the first class under our new partnership with Tesla, launched a new career pathways program with Johnson Controls, signed two new corporate partnerships and are engaged in negotiations with two existing corporate partners to expand our programs with them. Despite the operating environment of high employment economy and rising interest rates, we grew revenues 4.5% and adjusted EBITDA by 7.4%. And we finished the year with significant debt-free non-dilutive resources that are poised to grow in 2023 when we closed the sale of our Nashville campus. These resources are enabling the implementation of our two major growth initiatives as well as extending and expanding the size of our share repurchasing program to a total of $40 million. Over the past three years, we have transformed Lincoln's profitability and balance sheet. Now with the success achieved to date with our hybrid teaching model, centralized financial aid and program expansion, we have the opportunity to accelerate our investments to build a more scalable and higher-return business. Key to this strategy is our new hybrid teaching model, which we began to implement at our campuses in 2022. This model delivers our programs with…

Thanks, Scott. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. As Scott described, we ended 2022 on a positive note with growth across starts, revenue, adjusted EBITDA in the fourth quarter, meeting all our 2022 guidance metrics. I'll begin my remarks by discussing recent operational developments, followed by an overview of our financial results and finally conclude with our financial outlook for 2023. First, as Scott mentioned, the sale of our Nashville, Tennessee campus for $34.5 million is moving forward as planned. The local meetings and approvals have all taken place according to plan, and we continue to anticipate that this transaction will close in the second quarter. Through December 31, we received $500,000 of non-refundable deposits towards the purchase price, and we are scheduled to receive an additional $700,000 during the first quarter of 2023. We are pleased with the progress and look forward to the campus relocation. Second, in November, we were able to force the conversion of all of our outstanding preferred stock into 5.4 million shares of common stock. We executed this transaction as soon as the third anniversary of the preferred stock investment had occurred, since the price performance and volume of our common stock met all the applicable requirements. As a result, the associated quarterly dividend ceased, translating into a $1.2 million annual cash savings in 2023 and beyond. Beginning with the first quarter of 2023, our EPS will be calculated using the standard common treasury stock method as opposed to the two-class method, which we utilized for the past three years. We currently have 31.1 million outstanding common shares. Third, we continue to return capital to our shareholders through our stock repurchase plan. During the fourth quarter, we repurchased 489,000 shares for $2.7 million. And in total, during 2022, we repurchased 1.6…

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] Our first question coming from Steven Frankel of Rosenblatt. Your line is open.

Good morning. Thank you. So, your start growth looks very healthy, especially given the current environment. Maybe you could give us some insight into how you get to that number? Kind of what's the pipeline look like? And what makes you believe you can accelerate from the current rate to somewhere in the mid-single digits?

Sure. Well, thanks, Steve. Well, we had success last year in growing our enrollments. We grew them probably about 7%. And as we highlighted before, our challenge is more converting more of those enrollments into starts. We believe that part of the issue is simply in how we're processing students. And to the extent we're able to process more students through our system, we think that, that's how we can capture more growth. It certainly is how we captured some of the growth in the fourth quarter of last year. So, as we get past the centralization process completely, we think that we can get some marginal improvement there. And given that we continue to have strong pickup in our leads, that's what gives us the confidence, along with -- we rolled out some programs in the last quarter that will get more benefit in the year that we're in today. So those are the things that are going to help us drive to get that 5% to 10% growth rate.

And any insight in the different cohorts, young adult versus high school and military?

Sure. So, for us, our high school in 2022 was basically flat. It was up maybe a dozen students or so. And so, our adult market was down. Overall, we were down with 2.7%. So, our adult market was down maybe 2 or 3 percentage points, overall. And we kind of can see those -- same trends. We see steady enrollments happening with some growth in the high school market, and we anticipate getting growth this year, as I said, through execution on the adult side. And military for us is flat.

Okay. And then just some clarification on the guidance. I know there's some puts and takes that like the sale of Nashville, but startup costs around the new campus, could you clarify for us how much that is and that you're backing out of your adjusted EBITDA target?

Sure. As I mentioned in the remarks, startup cost in 2023 would be approximately $3 million. A lot of that is due to rent and we'll still have to hire the people even though slightly before year-end and starting in the third quarter, some departments a little bit earlier, even though we're not going to have to start until the first quarter of 2024.

Okay. Great. I'll jump back in the queue. Thank you.

Thanks, Steven.

Thanks, Steven.

Thank you [Operator Instructions] Our next question will be coming from Eric Martinuzzi from Lake Street. Your line is open.

Hey, congrats on the good Q4 results here. I wanted to ask specifically about the investments you're making in the hybrid education model. Could you take us a layer deeper? Where are we investing on the CapEx side? Where are we investing on the OpEx in support of the hybrid teaching model?

Sure. On the hybrid side, there's really no CapEx of any note going into that. It's really operationally where we've had to spend a lot of time going into each state and getting all the approvals that we need at the state and the crediting level to switch to this new program. And then as Brian highlighted, we've had to hire some additional faculty members as they launch the new program and existing faculty members teach out the existing program. So, we have about some overlap in operating expenses between say, $1 million to $2 million in the current year for the teach out.

Okay. And then back to CapEx, what was CapEx for 2022? I know you said $35 million to $40 million for '23, but what was the total for '22?

Right. For 2022, it was $9 million.

Okay. And that step up to $35 million to $40 million, can you help parse that...

Correct.

What -- is that all Atlanta?

No, no. Go ahead, Brian.

No. So, it's about, as I mentioned, $29 million for growth initiatives, that's new programs as well as some program expansions. Atlanta is included in there. I think it's approximately $13 million of that is for Atlanta. The rest is really just for new programs and program expansions of the $30 million. So, about half is Atlanta half is new programs and expansions, right? And that number does not include the natural relocation expense -- well, not expense, build out once it closes in June -- not in June, in the second quarter.

All right. And then, given your guidance for 2023 coming up with the midpoint, it's about a 1.2% growth for the total revenue. You had roughly equivalent growth rates between the two segments, transportation and skilled at 3.9% and health care and other at 4.0%. What are you assuming as far as the segment's growth rate for '23?

That's a good question. I don't have -- give me one second. Let me see -- I have it in total. Let me see if I have it by segment. If not, I can definitely call you after this if it's anything significant by segment.

I would think it wouldn't be too different this year. It will be more different next year simply because a lot of the program expansions are all in what would be considered today the transportation segment. [Multiple Speakers] Yes. We'll have to get back to you on that, Eric.

Okay. That's fine. And last question for me. You talked about the regulatory approval timeline having changed on the Atlanta campus pushing you into Q1 of '24. Can you enlighten me there what specifically with the timeline issue?

Sure. Well, I guess we're kind of seeing across the board no matter what state we're in, whether it's trying to get building permits or whether it's trying to get approvals at the state level or even sometimes through our accreditor, everyone seems to be "understaffed" and so everything takes a little bit longer. So, we're factoring in basically another quarter into all of our decision-making processes because of that. So, it's nothing. It seems to be nothing more than that. People just don't seem to have enough people to do all the work that needs to get done.

Okay.

And Eric, I'll add back to your other question about the two different segments. A lot of reports that we're looking at now takes my last remarks about the segments that we are considering moving to one because we're co-mingling a lot of them. So that's why it's one reason why I don't have the segments in front of me, I'll get you that information. But going forward, it might move to that one segment. We might disclose some of the information for the different automotive and others, but it won't be -- it might not be as what we do today, that's for sure.

Got it. Thanks for taking my questions.

No problem. Thank you.

Thank you. [Operator Instruction] Our next question is coming from Alex Paris of Barrington Research. Your line is open.

Hi, guys. I just have a couple of cats and dogs here. In the guidance, Brian, you said that the tax rate would be 28.5%. That was higher than I was modeling. What is to account for the higher tax rate than it has been recently and versus expectations?

Right. So, some of that is due to a little bit of lower income, but a lot of that's a discrete item that helps in the first quarter, and a lot of that is due to what our stock price is at. So, we really weren't taking that into account. So, the first quarter could be slightly low due to the discrete items when things vest versus the price that they were granted at. That accounts for most of the higher rates.

Okay. Thank you. And then, early in the call, Scott, I think you mentioned the grad rate -- graduation rate and grad placement. Can you just go over that again? I missed it.

Sure. We improved our graduation rate up to north of 68%, about a 500-basis point improvement, I think it's 68.8%. And our placement rate increased about 2 percentage points to 81.6%.

That's great. Okay. Thank you. I'll take the rest of my questions offline.

Okay. Great. Thanks, Alex.

Thank you, Alex.

Thank you.

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] Our next question is coming from Raj Sharma of B. Riley. Your line is open.

Yes, thank you. Again, congratulations on good results in Q4. I have a couple of questions. First on the new programs, the 10 new programs. With Atlanta and Nashville already in progress, what are -- so I just wanted to clarify the additional expenses that are budgeted for the new programs. I know you said $29 million of CapEx. What is the operating expense increase for the new programs? And also, can you talk about the potential revenue and profitability we can assume on these new programs? Just more color.

I'll talk about [Multiple Speakers] the probability for 2023, depending on the timing of the rolling out of these programs and a lot of them, as Scott mentioned, is going to be going into 2024. So, I'll say the EBITDA is, I would say, under $100,000 loss for the rollout of the new program. So, it won't really be contributing this year, but it will be contributing in the future. And as far as, I would say, when the new programs reach capacity, we're hoping to add our EBITDA of about $1 million for each new program should be adding by 2025 $1 million.

And what does that translate into revenues?

I would say it'd be somewhere around, let's say, a $4 million level.

Got it. And the additional expenses entirely account for -- what are the additional expenses? Is that the operating increase from this year is about the increase you're seeing in the third quarter of about $10 million to $15 million?

For 2022, you're talking about...

You're saying, Raj, looking at expenses for 2023, what's driving the increases there?

Yes. Just -- yes, the delta between '23 and '22, is that entirely driven by the new programs? And is that mostly to...

Right. So, most of them for the new programs is later in the year, but what's driving that, as we said, is we continue to roll out the hybrid teaching model. So, we do have a lot of, I'll call it, double expenses as we teach the old program, and we're teaching the new program. So, a lot of those expenses are occurring this year as well as we do have additional expenses for -- should be done by the end of the year in our financial aid, because that is our financial centralization that's going through 2023 as well. A lot of increase is mostly due to the instructional plus translating -- transitioning to the hybrid model as well as we are making greater investment in marketing as well for 2024 -- 2023, rather.

Got it. And then, just moving on to the starts. The starts, you're projecting 5% to 10%. That's -- is that same-store starts? Or does that include the contribution from new programs and new campuses?

It doesn't include any new campuses. It does include whatever new programs we launched last year, which we launched up two or three in the fourth quarter. And then, the rest of the growth is what we believe we can achieve through greater efficiencies of converting all the leads and enrollments that we're getting today.

Right. So, I just wanted to understand the composition of that. Do you think that young adults are probably going to be down the same day more in '22? Is that -- did I hear that correctly? And high school [indiscernible] growth -- I just want to understand [Multiple Speakers]

Yes, good question. So again, our enrollments were up 7% last year. Our challenge was we couldn't convert enough of those into starts. Obviously, we were down overall about 2.8% with all that really being in the adult sector since the high school sector was flat. Going into 2023, we think the high school market is going to perform at a similar level that it did slightly up from 2022, but we're anticipating being more efficient and effective in converting our enrollments into starts, which will enable us to achieve that 5 to 10 percentage growth rate that we're anticipated. Part of that increase is due to two or three programs that did launch in the fourth quarter of 2022, but a lot of it is just due to improved conversions of enrollments into starts.

Got it. And then just lastly on the sales the Nashville, Tennessee campus. So, you're still confident that closes in Q2? Any developments on that front? Any new demand? Any changes? Or is that business as usual?

Yes. So, they have -- their last major, I guess, town hearing is on March 7, I believe. And so, based off of everything that they've heard to date, that should go well. So basically, in about a week's time, that should hopefully give us the final go-ahead to start moving to a close of that sale.

As well as Raj, I'll add, we get a very large non-refundable deposit in the month of March as well.

Got it. Okay. Thank you for answering my questions. I'll take it offline. Thank you, again. Congratulations.

Thanks, Raj.

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] There are no more questions in the queue. I would like to turn the call back over to Scott Shaw for final remarks.

Thank you, operator, and thank you all for joining us today. We are all very excited and encouraged by our progress and opportunities. I want to thank our great instructors and campus staff along with the corporate team for their dedication to our students. Everyone at Lincoln Tech is working to be the leading career of technical school in the country, offering high ROI careers. Our strong improvement in graduation and placement rates, along with complementary feedback from recent accreditation visits assures me that we are on the right track to achieve this objective. Employers continue to express frustration with finding talent and continue to see growing needs for technicians of all kinds as baby boomers retire. At Lincoln, we believe more families and career seekers are looking for shorter, faster, cheaper and more assured path to employment as compared to college, and a Lincoln Tech education is increasingly becoming a preferred choice. Our balance sheet is strong and should strengthen with the sale of Nashville and we have identified numerous programs and campus expansion opportunities. And when the employment market does soften, we will be there to retrain the workforce with efficient campuses and engaging curriculum. Thank you again, and I look forward to updating you in May. Bye-bye.

This concludes today's conference call. Thank you all for joining, and enjoy the rest of your day.