Brian E. Mueller
Analyst · Piper Jaffray
Good afternoon, and thank you for joining Grand Canyon University's Third Quarter Fiscal Year 2014 Conference Call. I want to begin by reviewing the results of operations for the quarter. In third quarter of 2014, enrollments grew by 13.7% and net revenues grew by 14.9%. New enrollments grew in the mid-single digits and operating margins are at 26.3% for Q3 2014. Enrollment on our traditional ground campus grew by 31% to just another 11,000 students. New students grew to approximately 5,500. The average income in GPA of new students is approximately 3.5, and 50% of the students are studying in natural sciences. We successfully opened Computer Science and Information Technology degrees this fall, bringing our total program count to over 160 spread across our now 8 colleges. We are on track to open mechanical, electrical and biomedical engineering degrees in the fall of 2015. Approximately 60% of our traditional students live on campus in very new and modern residence halls. Campus life is becoming incredibly vibrant, and a strong GCU year committee is evolving. We have already had 2 major theater productions, 4 sold-out concerts, numerous smaller concerts put on by students to our growing music programs, fall athletic events, chapels averaging 5,000 students and our much-anticipated basketball season is less than 2 weeks away. Next year's ground enrollment is expected to be 14,500, including 7,500 new students, with approximately 70% living on campus. This will be our largest building year with 4 new 6-door residence halls, the first 80,000 square feet of 160,000-square-foot engineering building, a 50,000-square-foot general-use classroom building, a new parking garage and a new stadium for soccer, lacrosse and rugby. The online campus has grown 11.4% to 55,218 students. The student mix continues to move in a strong direction. Our stronger students by virtue of high graduation rates, low acquisition costs, low bad debt expense and low student loan default rates are our doctoral students. All master students and RN to BSN students. If you add traditionally ground students to those categories, they comprise 62% of the total student body in third quarter of 2013, and are now 66% of our total student body. The strength of the student body increased academic effectiveness across many objective measures, continued commitment to student academic support services, and continued operational excellence has caused the revenue and expense areas to improve as well. Net revenues were $175.1 million in the third quarter of 2014, an increase of $22.7 million or 14.9%, from $152.4 million in the prior year period. Operating margin for Q3 2014 was 26.3% compared to 24.5% for the same period in 2013. It's important to note that tuition room and board has been frozen for 6 years on the ground traditional campus, and there was no increase in tuition for the online campus for the past 2 years. Net income was $29 million for the third quarter of 2014 compared to $22.5 million in the prior year period. After-tax margin was 16.6% to compared to 14.8% for the same period in 2013. Instructional cost and services grew from $64.7 million in the third quarter of 2013 to $71.7 million in the third quarter of 2014, an increase of $7 million or 10.8%. This increase is primarily due to the increase in a number of faculty and staff to support the increasing number of students attending the University. As a percent of revenue, IC&S decreased 1.5% to 41%, primarily due to the decrease in our bad debt expense as a percentage of revenue, from 3.5% of revenue in the third quarter of 2013 to 2.2% up revenue in the third quarter of 2014. Admissions advisory and related expenses decreased 0.5% to 15.6%, primarily due to our ability to leverage our admissions advisory personnel across an increasing revenue base. Advertising expense, as a percent of revenue, decreased 80 basis points, from 10.2% in Q3 2013 to 9.4% in Q3 of 2014. We spend less on advertising to attract traditional students than for online students, and our ground traditional campus is growing faster than our online student enrollment. Marketing and promotional expense, as a percent of net revenue, increased 20 basis points, from 0.9% in Q3 of 2013 to 1.1% in Q3 of 2014. General and administrative costs, as a percentage of revenue, increased from 5.9% in Q2 2013 to 6.6% in Q3 of 2014, primarily due to our decision to make contributions to school sponsoring organizations in lieu of state income taxes of $2.75 million in the third quarter of 2014. As in prior years, we have made this contributions in the fourth quarter. Interest expense stayed flat, as a percentage of revenue, at 0.3% for both of the third quarters in 2014 and 2013. I'm very pleased to report that our 3-year cohort default rate for 2012 cohort has dropped to 11%. Our 2-year default rate for 2013 cohort, which is no longer officially reported, but we can calculate it based on information we received from our lenders, is now 6.5%. This reflects the quality of our student body, the rise in graduation rates across all sectors of our student body, the state-of-the-art operational processes and technology in all around aspects of the University. This is a major reason we were able to close the Department of Education program review in 27 days with no major findings. As a result of the above, net income increased from $22.5 million in the third quarter of 2013 to $29 million in the third quarter of 2014. We have now been a publicly traded education company for almost 6 years. When University went public in November of 2008, it had a traditional campus of less than 1,000 students and an online campus that needed huge investments in personnel, process improvement and technology in order to first survive, then eventually prosper. The other 4 private education companies were at an all-time high in terms of enrollment and valuation in 2008. The traditional academic institutions, whether state or private, were at peak state subsidy and endowment levels, and we're not interested in online market. The 2008 recession completely changed the higher education landscape. Today, traditional institutions are making huge investments in the adult market, and we're seeing the for-profit publicly traded institutions rapidly decline in enrollments and valuations as a result. Grand Canyon has built a highly successful traditional brand. We're succeeding because of our brand's strength and an operational model that has allowed us to keep tuition room and board very low, while still investing $400 million over the last 4 years to build state-of-the-art classrooms, laboratories, residence halls, new STEM-related academic programs and technology. From a Wall Street perspective, we have beat consensus and raised expectations 15 consecutive quarters. Many of you have expressed disappointment in the stock's performance. I believe the disappointing performance of the stock is the result of the hue change in the higher education landscape over the last 6 years, and uncertainty about the future of the for-profit publicly traded education space. As a result, the management team has received approval from the board to explore an avenue to become a private, not-for-profit University. We're doing this for 4 reasons: First, we think this is the best option for our investors. We continue to perform at a very high level without the stock price really reflecting the performance. Many analysts have commented that it is difficult to be category of one [ph]. Second, we want to do the best thing for our students, which is to provide high-quality education at the lowest possible cost. Our competition is now to traditional state and private universities, most specifically, the state universities inside Arizona. Universities get almost $1 billion in direct subsidy on an annual basis. They get additional funding to build buildings, don't pay taxes and receive tax deductible donations. If we were not for-profit institution, we would not get direct tax subsidies. We would continue to build using our own cash reserves, but a huge and growing tax burden would be lifted. This would allow us to continue to invest in the growth of the University, while holding the line until we see increases, making private education available to all social classes of Americans with no direct taxpayer cost. Our students do access to Title IV funding like all accredited universities. But because of our low default rates and a high percentage of students paying back their loans with interest, we're in net positive in this area to taxpayers. Third, currently we do not have an active grant rate in fundraising operation because we cannot receive tax-deductible donations. This move would eliminate that obstacle and make it possible for philanthropists around the world to invest in GCU, making it even more likely that we can continue to avoid raising tuition. The fourth reason is a negative stigma that still accompanies for-profit universities. We have overcome the obstacles of this stigma at this point, but removing the burden would be advantageous to the future of the University. Unfortunately, there are many private universities in the country struggling to keep tuition affordable and keep their enrollments up. Well, GCU was placed with $20 million in debt and about to close its doors, the decision was made to fill the business plan and seek investment. Fortunately, the strategy has paid off extremely well, and we now have a thriving University not dependent on state tax dollars, but one in which high-quality education is being provided at a very low cost. We don't have any philosophical issues with having for-profit status and having investors. However, the academic community has been very solid to accept the change. There are some in the higher education community, who have been impacted by our success and have questioned our motives. Fortunately, this has had a little impact on our growth or positive perception of the university to this point. Whether or not this process is successful and there was a great deal of legal and financial due diligence that must be conducted to determine if it is possible. The growth in upward trajectory of the University will continue. If the plan is successful, it ensures greater acceptability within the higher education community, and therefore, further solidifies the university's long-term legacy. With that, I would like to turn it over to Dan Bachus, our CFO, to give a little more color on our 2014 third quarter, talk about changes in the income statement, balance sheet and other items.