Adtalem Global Education Inc.

Greetings and welcome to the Ad Talem Global Education Third 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,

vice president of investor relations thank you you may begin good afternoon and welcome to our earnings call for the third quarter of fiscal year 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 the call over to steve i will as usual take you through the safe 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 statements after this presentation, whether as a result of new information, future events, changes in assumptions, or otherwise. Please see our latest Form 10-K, Form 10-Q, for discussion of risk factors that relate to forward-looking statements. In today's presentation, we use certain non-GAAP financial measures. We refer you to the appendix and the presentation materials available on our Investor Relations website for reconciliations to most directly comparable GAAP financial measures and related information. You will find a link to the webcast on our Investor Relations website at investors.adtalent.com. After this call, the presentation and webcast will be archived on the website for 30 days. I will now hand you over to Steve.

Thanks, Jay. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for taking the time to join our third quarter fiscal 2024 earnings call. We delivered another quarter of strong results with performance ahead of expectations. During the third quarter, total enrollment grew by 7.8%, yielding revenue of $413 million, up 11.8% versus the prior year. In the quarter, we also surpassed another performance milestone, We expanded our operating margin at the same time as we increased our year-over-year investments in the business. This performance generated $1.50 in adjusted earnings per share, up 32.7% versus last year. We're very proud of these results. And more importantly, we see them as another mile marker on our journey to establish ATALM as a national leader in post-secondary higher education and a systemically important partner to U.S. healthcare. We take this journey at a time when the value proposition of higher education is under increasing scrutiny. For some, cost has become a barrier to entry. For many, there's growing concern about whether a college degree is a reliable path to a good job upon graduation, leading them to question the return on investment. Finally, the increasing availability of alternative forms of education, including online courses, certificate programs, and vocational programs, many of which offer in greater flexibility and sometimes more attractive pricing, have also contributed to a reevaluation of the relevance and effectiveness of traditional higher ed. At the same time, the workforce shortages in U.S. healthcare are a significant and pressing issue. The demand for healthcare services continues to grow due to factors such as an aging population, increased access to healthcare coverage, and advancements in medical technology. However, the supply of healthcare professionals, including doctors, nurses, and other essential staff, has not kept pace with this increasing demand, threatening the sustainability of the existing patient care model. At AtTalent, we carefully monitor both of these dynamics, but as a backdrop, they serve only to strengthen our commitment to our mission, which is to expand access to high-quality and market-responsive academic programs, for a community of learners long overlooked by traditional higher education, and support those learners through an innovative, tech-enabled, and success-focused student experience through graduation and into their careers. And just importantly, to do it with a deliberate and sorely needed emphasis on those roles and professions where our nation experiences healthcare workforce shortages most acutely. This is our third consecutive quarter of total enrollment growth and our fifth consecutive quarter of revenue growth. And it's a testament to the success of our growth and purpose strategy, which seeks to accelerate the organic growth of our brands and businesses through transformational improvements and operational excellence. Our strategy calls for best-in-class execution across the five value-creating levers of our operating model, marketing, enrollment, persistence, pricing, and programs. And suffice it to say, we're encouraged by the progress today. Moreover, we're confident that these results will continue into the fourth quarter, and as a result, we're raising our fiscal year 2024 revenue guidance to be $1.56 billion to $1.58 billion, and our fiscal year 2024 adjusted EPS guidance to be $4.80 to $5. Now to results by segments. Chamberlain and Walden were the primary drivers of our strong performance in the third quarter, and we continue to see encouraging total enrollment trends in the medical and veterinary segment. Chamberlain is the largest school of nursing in the country, and its leadership position in nursing is expanding. During the quarter, we surpassed our highest-ever total enrollment and nearly 38,000 students. This growth in enrollment was broad-based and distributed across all of our programs and degree levels. Chamberlain continues to be a leading voice and leading choice for nursing students with its culture of care and its social determinants of learning framework that drives academic success across learners from all backgrounds. Chamberlain is a recognized innovator in nursing education, and it expanded its practice-ready specialty-focused offering through a partnership with the Emergency Nurse Association. Across the practice-ready specialty-focused tracks, we now have over 1,700 students, enabling them to gain familiarity with their chosen specialty area and be workforce ready on day one. BSN Online continues to offer flexibility to 1,700 students across 33 states, and we see a robust pipeline for growth in that program. By further expanding the online delivery capability of our pre-licensure programs, we're able to bring nursing education to thousands of students who could not otherwise pursue it, and through our expansive clinical affiliations across the country, enabled them to complete the practicum component of their education close to home. Turning to Walden, our total enrollment grew by 8.4%, as Walden experienced some of the strongest new enrollment growth in its history. Our continued investments in the Walden brand have grown market awareness, with demand up double digits year over year for the fourth straight quarter. New student growth when paired with the robust persistence gains we achieved in prior periods, has led to increased enrollment across programs and degree levels with particularly strong growth in advanced nursing degrees as well as social and behavioral sciences degrees. Walden continues to offer flexibility to working adults who value part-time, self-paced, and competency-based programs. And our Believe and Achieve scholarship sets Walden apart and rewards students for persisting through programs In some instances, reducing tuition costs by as much as 25% as they matriculate through to graduation. We now have over 23,000 students participating in Believe and Achieve. In our medical and veterinary segment, we welcome Scott Lyles back to Atalem to serve as president. Scott was most recently CEO of the Association of Certified Anti-Money Laundering Specialists, known as ACAMS, which he successfully returned to growth prior to its divestiture. Remediation efforts in MedVet continue to deliver encouraging results as total enrollment trends improve sequentially, down just 4.5% year-over-year in the quarter. We continue to strengthen our enrollment processes with early indications of success starting to show on the top of the funnel. Walsh University School of Veterinary Medicine continues to operate at near capacity, and we also continue to invest in innovations that drive a differentiated and superior student experience. One example is our clinical return home program at Ross Med, which leverages the extensive network of at-home clinical partnerships to provide students early clarity on where they'll complete their clinical rotations and enable them to do so at hospitals close to their homes. For the second straight year, AUC and RUSM achieved a combined 98% first-time residency match rate, placing more than 815 students and graduates into over 350 unique healthcare facilities spanning 44 states and territories. Of these students, over 500 will enter primary care residencies poised to serve the more than 83 million Americans living in areas lacking adequate access to primary care. Our medical students are a key component in addressing the nation's gaps in health equity. Of the 815 students and graduates who participated in Match Day, 189 identify as Black, African-American, or Hispanic, helping diversify the pipeline of physicians in the US health care system. As of 2021, Black Americans made up 13% of the population, but only 6% of physicians. And Hispanics represent 19% of the population, but only 7% of physicians. The quality, reach, and impact of our medical schools is undeniable. With this diverse and civic-minded community of students and graduates, making tangible contributions across some of the most prominent health systems in the US. To close, our growth of purpose strategy is delivering top and bottom line performance ahead of our expectations. And we expect that performance to continue through next quarter. As the country's largest health care educator, we're mindful of our critical role in addressing growing health care workforce shortages, and we're delighted to serve a student population poised to narrow health equity disparities across the country. Over the last three years, our five institutions have graduated over 81,000 students, nearly 55,000 in nursing alone, with another 2,300 in medicine and 3,300 in social work. They join an existing network of over 300,000 Ad Talem alumni working to bring positive change to the communities in which they live and work. What drives all of us at Ad Talem is the knowledge that as Our growth gains momentum. These positive outcomes multiply. And with that, I'll turn the call over to Bob for further discussion of our financial results.