Adtalem Global Education Inc.

Greetings and welcome to the Ad Telum Global Education First Quarter Fiscal Year 2024 Earnings Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A brief question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Jonathan Spitzer, VP of IR. Thank you, Jonathan. You may begin.

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to our earnings call for the first quarter 2024 results. On the call with me today are Steve Beard, President and Chief Executive Officer of AdSum Global Education, and Bob Phelan, Chief Financial Officer. Before I hand you over to Steve, I will, as usual, take you through the legal safe harbor and cautionary declarations. Certain statements and projections of future results made in this presentation constitute as forward-looking statements that are based on current market, competitive, and regulatory expectations and are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to vary materially. We undertake no obligation to update publicly any forward-looking statement after this presentation, whether a result of new information, future events, changes in assumptions, or otherwise. Please see our latest Form 10-K and Form 10-Q for discussion of risk factors as it relates to forward-looking statements. In today's presentation, we'll use certain non-GAAP financial measures. We refer you to the appendix and presentation materials available on our Investor Relations website for reconciliations to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures and related information. You will find a link to the webcast on our Investor Relations website at investors.adtom.com. After this call, the presentation webcast will be archived on the website for 30 days. I will now hand you over to Steve.

Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for taking the time to join our first quarter fiscal year 2024 earnings call. We delivered a strong quarter as our growth with purpose strategy, a three-year initiative focused on driving organic revenue growth, has delivered top and bottom-line results ahead of our expectations. It has also returned us to total enrollment growth while continuing to deliver outstanding student outcomes. In the first quarter of fiscal 2024, revenue was $369 million, up 4% versus prior year, and adjusted earnings per share was 93 cents, up 3% versus prior year. Accelerating performance across our five operational pillars, marketing, enrollment, retention, pricing, and programs affords us the opportunity to capitalize on our market-leading scale and our market-responsive healthcare focus. Our emphasis on enhancing the student experience and investing in innovative and differentiated capabilities is showing up in our quality measures, our academic outcomes, and improved persistence rates. As a result, our talent graduates are highly employable and attractive in demand professions and far less likely to default on their student loans compared to their counterparts at post-secondary institutions, private, public, and for-profit alike. Our brand campaigns that launched last fiscal year are delivering incremental spend efficiencies and organic increases quarter as we optimize our use of data-driven tools and methods. Our successful execution has resulted in double-digit increase growth year over year at all of our institutions. In addition to optimizing our marketing capabilities, we are simplifying and streamlining student application experience to make admissions as user-friendly as possible. These efforts have driven encouraging results with increased year-over-year application conversion rates. Moving on to results by segment. Across our five institutions, we're striking an optimal balance between investing to accelerate near-term performance and expanding profitability over the long term. Chamberlain and Walden were the primary drivers of our strong performance in the first quarter, and we remain confident that the financial performance of those institutions will continue to accelerate over the balance of the fiscal year. In the MedVet segment, Ross University School of Veterinary Medicine continues to operate near capacity. As for our medical schools, we've diagnosed the conversion challenges and are executing remediation efforts to return those institutions to growth. Based on early indications, we expect total enrollment trends to improve over the remainder of the fiscal year. Ambulance brand recognition, combined with its ability to scale in-demand programs and innovative specialized nursing curriculum, continues to position it as the leading school of nursing in the U.S. Our campus-based, pre-licensure Bachelor of Science in Nursing degree program continues to resonate with over 12,500 students enrolled. The recently launched BSN online option achieved year-over-year triple-digit growth and is swiftly approaching 1,000 students. The next generation NCLEX exam is now being administered to pre-licensure students, and we are leveraging proprietary adaptive learning technology to prepare our BSN students for the exam. Additionally, our practice-ready, specialty-focused model, coupled with our social determinants of learning framework, is creating an unparalleled offering in nursing education. Practice Ready Specialty Focus has provided specialized training to more than 1,000 BSN students through a proprietary learning model that better prepares students for the specialty work they will take on within U.S. healthcare. We've expanded this program to all 23 Chamberlain campuses, broadening access for our students while addressing areas of acute nursing shortages. At Walden, we've made significant progress toward regaining our leadership position in online education. Our brand investments and shifts in marketing mix continue to show momentum in new student growth, which is up double digits year over year for the second straight quarter. This successful execution has resulted in elevated demand at Walden, led by our healthcare programs, specifically social and behavioral sciences and nursing. We continue to invest in expanding these programs, which we believe positions us for long-term growth. Thanks in part to enhanced data-driven marketing capabilities, Walden's competency-based tempo program grew new enrollments by 50% year-over-year. Also of note, Walden's 69th commencement conferred more than 6,500 doctoral, master's, and bachelor's degrees to students from all 50 states and from more than 40 countries. Nearly 35% of those degrees were proposed licensure nursing programs. And we're especially proud to say that more than half of the graduates who reported their race identified as being from underrepresented minority groups. Ross Vet continues to operate near capacity, addressing the critical need for veterinarians in the U.S. And through our growth with purpose strategy, we're executing on new initiatives designed to further scale our program to meet the needs of the animal health community in the U.S. At our medical schools, we've identified opportunities for improving performance and are executing on remediation plans, including the restructuring of our enrollment and academic support teams to enhance the student journey. Starting in October, to meet the needs of our medical students, we commenced a 10-week capstone program designed to improve their preparedness for the Step 1 USMLE exam, which then allows them to progress on to core clinicals. We're confident that the actions we're taking at the medical schools will improve total enrollment trends over the course of this fiscal year. As I said at the outset, Our growth with purpose strategy is driving top and bottom line performance ahead of expectations. And we remain confident that these trends will accelerate over the course of the year. Accordingly, we are raising our fiscal 2024 guidance. We now expect revenue to be in the range of $1.47 to $1.53 billion and adjusted EPS to be in the range of $4.25 to $4.45. We remain optimistic about our future and the foundation we've built for the students we serve. At Tallam is well positioned for success as the leading healthcare educator and a systemically important component of US healthcare. The successful execution of our growth of purpose initiatives drive enrollment, enhance student outcomes, and propels our graduates towards rewarding careers. And this is what drives our talent's impact on our communities, and we remain enthusiastic about what lies ahead. Now, I'll turn the call over to Bob for further discussion of our financial results.