Hello, everyone. Thank you for attending today's Perdoceo Education Corporation First Quarter 2023 Earnings Conference Call. My name is Sierra, and I will be your moderator today. All lines are in a listen-only-mode. And I would now like to pass the conference over to our host, Davis Snyder with Perdoceo Education. Please proceed.

Thank you, Sierra. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us for our first quarter 2023 earnings call. With me on the call today are Todd Nelson, Executive Chairman; Andrew Hurst, President and Chief Executive Officer; and Ashish Ghia, Chief Financial Officer. This conference call is being webcast live within the Investor Relations section at perdoceoed.com. A webcast replay will also be available on our site, and you can always contact the Alpha IR Group for Investor Relations support. Let me remind you that this afternoon's earnings release and the remarks made today include forward-looking statements as defined in Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. These statements are based on assumptions made by, and information currently available to, Perdoceo Education and involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual future results, performance, business prospects and opportunities to differ materially from those expressed in or implied by these statements. These risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, those factors identified in Perdoceo's annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2022, and subsequent filings within the Securities and Exchange Commission. Except as expressly required by the securities laws, the company undertakes no obligation to update those factors or any forward-looking statements to reflect future events, developments or changed circumstances or for any other reason. In addition, today's remarks are for the non-GAAP financial measures, which are intended to supplement but not substitute for the most directly comparable GAAP measures. The earnings release that accompanies today's call contains financial and other quantitative information to be discussed today as well as a reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP measures and is available within the Investor Relations page of the company's website. With that, I'd like to turn the call over to CEO, Andrew Hurst. Andrew?

Thank you, Davis, and good afternoon to everyone joining us on this call. I would like to begin by saying thank you to our faculty, student support staff and all our other employees for their continued dedication in educating and serving our students. Our first quarter operating results came in at the high end of the outlook provided, and we continue to focus on improving student experiences and academic outcomes. Let me now touch upon some of the key operational highlights and updates from the quarter. First, we continued to see improvements in student retention at both CTU and AIUS, as our academic and student support teams remain focused on serving and educating our students. This improvement, in part, has also been supported by various prospective student enrollment and student outreach changes implemented in the last 2 years that focused on enrolling learners that we believe will be more successful at one of our academic institutions. Second, during the quarter, we continued to experience growth in our corporate partnership programs as our teams support corporations around the country in educating and training their employees. The benefits and success of these programs, particularly at CTU, is something we are working to replicate and extend to our recent acquisitions. And we will continue to invest in these programs, including technology upgrades aimed to further streamline the overall processes related to these corporate partnership programs. Third, our recent acquisitions have continued to integrate into their respective academic institutions. Supported by these acquisitions, we are now able to offer our students a broader spectrum of academic courses to choose from as they plan their education at one of our academic institutions. Now let me provide further details regarding our operating results for the quarter. We reported first quarter net income of $34.5 million or $0.50 per diluted share, while adjusted earnings per diluted share, which excludes certain significant and noncash items, was $0.58. Total student enrollments as of March 31, 2023, increased by 0.8%, primarily driven by a 2.1% increase at AIUS while total student enrollments at CTU remain flat. Ashish will provide more color on these results in his prepared remarks. Finally, on the technology front, we remain committed to investing in and upgrading our technology to further enhance academic experiences for our students. We believe technology is an enabler and a differentiator for us, and we'll continue to leverage data analytics and machine learning to provide our students with a more relevant and meaningful experience. Over the past 2 years, we have committed various investments in this area, and we will continue to execute against those commitments throughout 2023. With that said, I will now turn the call over to Ashish for a deeper review of our operating performance for the quarter. Ashish?

Thank you, Andrew. I will now review our first quarter results and then discuss our balance sheet and 2023 outlook before handing the call back to Andrew for his closing remarks. Please note that all comparisons I discuss are versus the comparative prior year period, unless otherwise stated. Before I begin, a quick reminder about year-over-year comparability. Financial results for the AIU system and CTU reflect the 2 acquisitions that were completed by the academic institutions in July and December of 2022, respectively. Also, total enrollment numbers that I discussed, or any enrollment trends that I refer to, exclude learners participating in non-degree-seeking professional development programs and in degree-seeking, non-Title IV, self-paced programs at our universities. With that said, let us begin with an overview of our operating results. For the first quarter of 2023, total company operating income decreased by 0.8% to $43.3 million as compared to operating income of $43.7 million. Adjusted operating income, which excludes certain significant and noncash items, and which we believe is more indicative of our underlying operating performance, was $53.1 million, reflecting an increase of 4.3% when compared to the prior year quarter. This result came in above the high end of our outlook range for the quarter, primarily due to better-than-expected student retention. Net income for the quarter was $34.5 million compared with $32.1 million in the prior year quarter, equating to $0.50 per diluted share, while adjusted earnings per diluted share was $0.58 as compared to $0.50. Moving on to some more details around the first quarter 2023 results. Total company revenue of $195.6 million was 6.9% higher as compared to the prior year quarter, primarily due to the 2022 acquisitions not being part of the comparative prior year period. Excluding these acquisitions, total company revenue would have been relatively flat.…

Thanks, Ashish. We are pleased with our first quarter operating results and look forward to executing on our various initiatives discussed earlier that focus on further enhancing academic outcomes and student experiences. Thank you again for joining us today. End of Q&A: That concludes today's conference call. Thank you all for your participation. You may now disconnect your lines.