Kimberly McWaters
Analyst · Piper Jaffray. Please go ahead with your question
Thank you, Jody. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us. In 2017, we successfully executed against our key strategic objectives, creating the foundation and momentum for investments in 2018 that we believe will support growth and profitability for UTI. In 2017, our main objectives were to, one, restructure our cost model through successful implementation of our financial improvement plan. Two, optimize our marketing mix and address affordability concerns to drive new student start growth in the second half of the year. Three, to improve our business model to better match our students' needs through smaller, commuter-friendly campuses and expand course offerings that better utilize our existing capacity; and last, to strengthen our relationships with employers and industry partners. I'll run through the accomplishments and future plans specific to each objective, then turn the call over to Bryce for review of fiscal fourth quarter and full year 2017 financials along with our fiscal 2018 outlook. First, our financial improvement plan. In 2017, we restructured our cost model with the intent to create a more efficient operating structure and to cut between $25 million and $30 million of operating expense. As a credit to our great people, we identified and successfully implemented additional initiatives to achieve $39.7 million or approximately 11% in cost savings as compared to fiscal 2016. Because of our efforts in 2017, we are a much leaner organization. Approximately 70% of the compensation expense reductions will carry forward as our campuses are operating more efficiently. However, we are making additional investments in our operations to fund future growth. As such, we expect to increase our future annual compensation expense by about 5% as compared to 2017. Looking at the big picture, our 2017 successes enable us to make strategic investments in 2018 that are necessary for the long-term success of UTI and will best position us to answer the annual nationwide demand through 2026 for nearly 186,000 transportation technicians, welders and CNC machinists. As Bryce will discuss in a moment, these investments will have a short-term financial impact, but we're confident the investments will put UTI on the right path for long-term growth and profitability. Turning to new student start growth. In fiscal 2017, we implemented several initiatives, which drove student start growth during the second half of the year. Third quarter starts were up 12.5% and fourth quarter student starts were flat year-over-year despite the impact of hurricanes in Texas, Florida and Puerto Rico. Key efforts contributing to this start growth included the Long Beach campus, which opened in August of 2015, our new welding and CNC machining programs, and our need-based institutional grant program, which we introduced in the third quarter of 2017. We invested just over $1 million in that program last year, which helped an incremental 225 student start school. Excluding taxes and interest, the net return on this program is approximately 38%. For fiscal 2018, we have engaged a top-tier consulting firm to build on our successful 2017 student start initiatives. Through further optimization of our marketing and admissions processes, our new campus and our new programs, we expect growth in student starts for the back half of 2018, which will result in positive start growth for the full fiscal year. The key operational objectives which will drive our projected start growth are as follows, continued optimization of our media mix, and that is to generate high-quality increase and to create greater brand awareness and sustainable student interest; the launch of a new website to enhance our users' experience with relevant and targeted content that also significantly improves our ranking on search engines, therefore generating more valuable organic traffic to our website; conducting career workshops at high schools to help students discover their career and educational pathways, especially as it relates to the skilled trades; to work with industry partners, regulators and policymakers to improve our access to high schools in military bases.’ And then substantial completion of the conversion of our admissions representatives to a graduate-based variable compensation plan, which we believe will ultimately improve overall student and financial outcomes but will have some P&L and cash flow implications in fiscal 2018 as we continue to accrue for and begin to payout graduate bonuses ahead of fully adjusting fixed salaries. And last, continued deployment of institutional grants, need-based and merit-based scholarships as well as the expansion of our employer-based tuition reimbursement incentive program to help students overcome affordability challenges. Another key strategic objective is evolving our business model to better match our students' needs, and we are doing this through two main initiatives, the first of which is to open new, smaller commuter-friendly campuses in high-demand locations. We find this approach is more in line with today's students, who want to be able to work and live at home without incurring the cost and uncertainty of relocating to school. To that end, we recently announced the site for our next campus in Bloomfield, New Jersey. This campus will be similar to the campuses in Dallas, Texas and Long Beach, California, so we expect it to be accretive to earnings in the first 18 months and cash flow breakeven by year 4. We anticipate that our capital investment in the Bloomfield campus will be approximately $11 million in fiscal 2018, to retrofit existing buildings, build out the space and fully equip our popular automotive and diesel programs. This new campus will accommodate approximately 800 students at full capacity. We are excited to enter the very competitive New Jersey and New York metro markets for the first time. While new to the market, we have a very successful history of entering new markets where we faced existing competition. We entered the Philadelphia, Sacramento and Dallas/Fort Worth markets and very rapidly gained market share from our closest competitor, outpacing the number of student completions within just the first few years. We are committed to achieving the same success in the New Jersey, New York markets after opening our Bloomfield campus next year -- next fall, excuse me. The next long-term strategic initiative is to rationalize our footprint and optimize the space at our big box destination campuses, effectively transforming them to smaller commuter-friendly campuses and/or offering new expanded programs to better utilize existing capacity. This plays an important part in the profitable growth of our business as it reduces underutilized space and associated rent costs and drives improvements in student starts. In 2017, we introduced 2 new programs: welding and CNC machining, which enabled us to attract new students and to optimize our excess capacity at 2 campus locations. Welding complements our core competencies in technical training and address the strong market demand. This standalone program is expected to be accretive to earnings in the first year and cash flow breakeven in year 2. We opened our first location in July of 2017 and we'll open our second location in January of 2018 at our Avondale campus. We also expect to open welding at a third campus location in 2018 and will announce that location next quarter. In August of 2017, in partnership with Roush Yates Engines, we launched our first CNC machining program at our NASCAR Tech campus in Mooresville, North Carolina. This program gives students the opportunity to train in our state-of-the-industry CNC machining lab and it teaches students the skills necessary to start careers in this high-demand industry. There are approximately 146,000 CNC technicians employed today, with more than 14,000 new entrants required each year. We are currently vacating two smaller leased properties in Arizona and Texas, which will eliminate the associated rent expenses in 2018 and beyond after those leases expire. We're also consolidating operations at our Rancho Cucamonga campus, so that we can reduce the overall size of that campus in 2019 and beyond. In addition to subleasing a portion of our corporate offices earlier this year, we executed subleases at our MMI Phoenix, Arizona; Lisle, Illinois; and Norwood, Massachusetts campuses in September and October of 2017. All told, we have optimized approximately 54,000 square feet for an annual cost savings of more than 700,000 today and we expect to optimize another 156,000 square feet in fiscal '18, ramping up our annual cost savings to between $3 million and $4 million beginning in fiscal '19. We are continuing to evaluate or negotiate additional optimization opportunities at multiple locations and will share those details with you when the negotiations are finalized. The final strategic objective is strengthening our industry partnerships as they deliver significant value to our students. For decades, UTI and the transportation industry have been national leaders, directly connecting workforce needs with curriculum development programs and training, well before this became the mandate in higher education in recent years. The Manufacturer Specific Advanced Training programs we offer provide them with some of the industry's most comprehensive training and certification. For UTI, these partnerships provide important brand recognition in our recruiting and marketing efforts and help further differentiate us from our peers. For our graduates, these manufacturer-specific credentials and certifications help get them hired faster at higher earning levels and best position them for career success. We are very proud of the relationships that we built over time with industry leaders. Throughout 2017, we expanded industry relationships and program offerings with several industry leaders, including Infiniti, Mercedes-Benz and Porsche. We also added Detroit Diesel engines into our OEM-sponsored Freightliner First Program. Turning to fiscal 2018, in partnership with BMW, we are launching a new military service technician education program at Camp Pendleton in California, which will expand our exposure to perspective students in the process of transitioning out of the military and give veterans the opportunity to train to work on the this exciting brand. Their training will be fully funded by BMW of North America. Similar to the existing BMW step programs at our Avondale and Orlando campuses, this program allows qualified candidates to earn credentials leading to a BMW member-level technician. We are also exploring industry partner programs from our new Bloomfield, New Jersey campus and we'll share that update with you when a final decision has been made. We continue to explore and expand dealer-sponsored workforce training offerings for our key OEM partners, which are especially valuable opportunities to generate non-title IV revenue. We are confident that now is the time to invest in these initiatives and that will continue to drive our transformation. And while this will have a short-term impact on our bottom line this year, we believe we are setting the stage for profitable growth. Consistent with that confidence, we announced yesterday the hiring of Jerome Grant, our new Chief Operating Officer. Jerome is a strong leader and operator with a long record of implementing transformational change. As we innovate and invest in the future and focus on driving revenue growth, he is a great addition to the UTI bench. And with that, I'll turn the call over to Bryce for a review of our financials.