Strategic Education, Inc.

Welcome to Strategic Education's fourth quarter 2023 results conference call. After the speaker presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star 1-1 on your telephone. To remove yourself from the queue, you may press star 1-1 again. I will now turn the call over to Therese Wilkie, Director of Investor Relations for Strategic Education. Mrs. Wilkie, please go ahead.

Thank you. Hello, everyone, and welcome to Strategic Education's conference call in which we will discuss fourth quarter 2023 results. With us today are Robert Silberman, Chairman, Carl McDonald, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Daniel Jackson, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Following today's remarks, we will open the call for questions. Please note that this call may include forward-looking statements made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. The statements are based on current expectations and are subject to a number of assumptions, uncertainties, and risks that strategic education has identified in today's press release that could cause actual results to differ materially. Further information about these and other relevant uncertainties may be found in Strategic Education's most recent annual report on Form 10-K to be filed, the most recent 10-Q, and other filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, as well as Strategic Education's future 8-Ks, 10-Qs, and 10-Ks. Copies of these filings and the full press release are available for viewing on the website at strategiceducation.com. And now, I'd like to turn the call over to Rob. Rob, please go ahead.

Thank you, Therese, and good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Before I turn the call over to Carl to report our fourth quarter and full year results, I wanted to make just a couple of high-level comments on our 2023 capital allocation. SEI started the year with $236 million of cash and marketable securities and roughly $100 million of outstanding debt drawn on our bank revolvers. During 2023, we generated $159 million in pre-tax cash from operations. We also sold one of our campus properties during the year for roughly $6 million. Out of that $165 million in generated cash, we paid $42 million in taxes and we invested $37 million in various capital expenditures and growth expenditures. That left us with $86 million in what we refer to as owner's distributable cash, from which we returned $74 million to our owners, comprised of our $2.40 per share annual common dividend, as well as the repurchase of roughly $15 million of our common stock at an average price of around $77 per share. Finally, during the year, we paid down $40 million of our outstanding debt. That left SEI at year end 2023 with $208 million of cash and marketable securities, $60 million of debt, and 24 million shares outstanding. We are confident as we enter 2024 that our balance sheet is well positioned to support all of our academic institutions, to fund any upcoming opportunities, as well as to continue to return capital to our shareholders. And with that, Carl, can you walk them through the operating and financial results?