Adtalem Global Education Inc.

Education, and Exporter 1026 Earnings. At this time, all participants are in a mobile mode. The question name of the person will follow on the presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keyboard. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Jay Spitzer, VP of Investor Relations. Thank you, Jay.

Good afternoon, and welcome to our earnings call for the first quarter fiscal year 2026 results. On the call with me today are Steve Beard, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of AdTalent Global Education, and Bob Phelan, Chief Financial Officer. Before I hand you over to Steve, I will as usual take you through 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 or the 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 have certain non-GAAP financial measures. We refer you to the appendix in the presentation material 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.adtalent.com. After this call, the presentation will be webcasted and archived on the website for 30 days. I will now hand you over to Steve.

Thanks, Jay. And good afternoon, everyone. Thanks for joining us today. We delivered an outstanding start to fiscal year 2026. This marks our ninth consecutive quarter of enrollment growth. Total enrollment is up 8% year over year to 97,000 students. Revenue grew nearly 11% to $462 million. And we expanded our adjusted EBITDA margins by 100 basis points while delivering adjusted earnings per share of $1.75. That's growth of nearly 36% year over year. This performance demonstrates the power of our growth with purpose strategy and the operational excellence we've embedded across the enterprise. Walden grew enrollment for the ninth straight quarter and achieved record total enrollment. Our medical and veterinary segment posted its third consecutive enrollment cycle of growth. Chamberlain grew enrollment for the 11th straight quarter and will continue to generate strong free cash flow while maintaining attractively low net leverage. Before I dive into the quarter, let me place our performance in the context of what's happening in healthcare. The healthcare workforce crisis continues to intensify. It's being driven by our aging population and accelerating retirements among practicing clinicians. This challenge is particularly acute in rural settings where nursing shortages alone are projected to triple by 2027, according to the National Center for Health Workforce Analysis. The shortage spans the entire healthcare workforce, from physicians to technicians, and represents a defining characteristic of healthcare for the foreseeable future. The industry is working to accelerate modernization through AI to augment practitioner efficiency, but these innovations don't solve the structural workforce challenge, and that's precisely where our opportunity lies. As the largest provider of healthcare-focused education in the country, we're well positioned to play a vital role as essential talent infrastructure. That opportunity has never been clearer or more compelling. Now let me address Chamberlain's performance in the quarter directly. Chamberlain grew total enrollment by just over 2% in the first quarter to nearly 40,000 students. But that growth fell short of our standards. The primary driver was execution failures within our marketing and enrollment operations. We've completed a rigorous diagnostic, so let me be specific about what we found. First, we underperformed in local marketing effectiveness during our critical September intake cycle. Our local market campaigns didn't resonate as effectively as they could have in key metropolitan areas. And we failed to optimize our marketing mix quickly enough when we saw early warning signs. Second, we failed to convert inquiry volume at historical rates. Our enrollment funnel conversion rates fell below our benchmarks, which means we generated strong interest but didn't close enrollments efficiently. That's an operational issue and it's fixable. To be clear, this quarter's variance is driven by execution. The fundamentals of our Chamberlain platform remain attractively robust. Nursing demand has never been stronger. Chamberlain has a powerful brand that resonates with students and employers. significant capacity, a full breadth of nursing programs across multiple modalities. We have everything we need to serve this market effectively. We simply need to execute better at converting that demand into enrollment. Put another way, we're execution constrained, but not capacity constrained. So we've taken decisive action to strengthen performance. First, we've made operational improvements to our marketing mix with enhanced local market focused. We're reallocating resources to the channels and geography that drive the highest quality enrollments, and we're moving faster to optimize underperforming campaigns. Second, we streamline our enrollment processes to reduce friction in the student journey. Every unnecessary step in our enrollment funnel is an opportunity to lose a student, so we're eliminating those barriers. Third, we've made key leadership changes at Chamberlain. Following the recently announced retirement of our current president, we're conducting a national search for Chamberlain's next leader. We've also restructured the senior leadership team to accelerate decision-making and sharpen accountability. These changes reflect our commitment to accountability. When we don't execute to our standards, we address it decisively. Looking ahead, we anticipate continued softness in post-licensure enrollment through the second and third quarters as we implement these changes. That's a realistic assessment based on enrollment cycle dynamics and the time required for our operational improvements to gain traction. However, we expect a return to stronger new enrollment in the back half of the year. We're already seeing early positive signals from our adjusted marketing approach and our restructured leadership team is moving with urgency and precision. To be clear, we believe this is fixable. We're leaning in to correct it with speed and discipline, and most importantly, This doesn't change our conviction in Chamberlain's long-term trajectory, its strength as a brand, or our full-year guidance as an enterprise. I also don't want to focus on this quarter's challenge to obscure Chamberlain's fundamental strengths and strategic progress. Our pre-licensure BSN programs continue robust enrollment. In just its fourth year, our online offering added nearly 750 students sequentially, now serving over 4,000 students in aggregate. Our second Atlanta campus in Stockbridge, which opened just two years ago, now has 600 students. And our 24th location in Kansas City is now enrolling its first cohort starting this January. Taken together, that's all a testament to how quickly we can meet the market's demand for flexible, high-quality nursing education. We recently expanded our practice-ready specialty focus model through a partnership with the American Association of Post-Acute Care Nursing. This addresses the critical shortage of post-acute care nurses. This new specialization joins existing tracks in critical care, emergency care, home healthcare, nephrology, oncology, and perioperative nursing. Taken together, it further positions Chamberlain to meet the evolving needs of the healthcare workforce. Again, our fundamentals are strong, the market opportunity is massive, and we're addressing the execution gaps with rigor and accountability. Turning to Walden University, we delivered our ninth consecutive quarter of enrollment growth at nearly 14%, achieving record total enrollment of over 52,000 students. Walden's digital learning platform and flexible offerings continue to demonstrate strength as we innovate and deliver an increasingly seamless experience for working adult learners. We're optimizing our marketing mix, curating content for large language model recognition, and building upon Walden's strong brand recognition. Our investments in program enhancements, the Believe and Achieve scholarship offering, and AI-enabled technology are translating directly into enrollment growth. We recently streamlined our professional doctoral programs, creating a more intuitive student experience with a simplified tuition structure, integrated scholarship support, and a redesigned capstone process that enables students to build toward degree completion throughout their studies. Technology is enabling our faculty and advisors to spend less time on administrative tasks and more time on student-facing support. Walden's value proposition is clear and is reflected in total enrollment growth across all degree levels and very, very strong persistence rates. In our medical and veterinary segment, we're showing consistent progress. Total enrollment grew 2.4% to approximately 5,300 students. And key leading indicators across our medical schools are pointing to sustainable long-term growth. Notably, Ross Med had its largest September new student start in the last five years. And Ross Vet continues to operate near capacity, maintaining its position as a leader in veterinary education with a one-of-a-kind experiential learning model. Our partnership philosophy extends across all of our institutions as we create innovative ways to enhance educational access and remove learning barriers. AUC's partnership with the University of Lancashire in the UK remains our international hub. And we've established a new direct admittance partnership with the University of Wolverhampton, creating an additional pipeline for prospective students. We're expanding our global reach through a partnership with SAGE in India, offering a pathway for Indian students to attend Ross Med upon completion of an advanced medical preparation program. And here in the States, we announced a partnership with Scribe America, creating the MedPath program designed specifically for existing frontline healthcare workers to advance into medical school. This is an excellent pathway for experienced U.S. healthcare professionals to step up and help fill the physician gap. These partnerships are opportunistic. They're strategic investments in expanding access to in-demand healthcare education while strengthening our long-term enrollment pipelines. I also want to highlight our continued leadership in preparing students for technology-enabled careers. We recently launched a strategic partnership with Google Cloud to prepare healthcare workers for an AI-enabled future. This is the first partnership of its scale designed specifically for healthcare students and practicing clinicians, and it's fully complementary to our partnership with Hippocratic AI. We'll co-develop customized AI credentials for our students, including a foundational AI fluency course for every Atalim student, plus specialized courses tailored for each career pathway, including nursing, physician's assistants, counseling, and other disciplines. This partnership directly addresses one of healthcare's most pressing challenges while differentiating our institutions for prospective students and practicing clinicians. It's exactly the kind of forward-thinking investment that positions us as the leader in healthcare education. Our financial position remains exceptionally strong, giving us significant flexibility to execute our strategy and return value to shareholders. We're generating trailing 12-month free cash flow of $319 million. We have cash in equivalent to $265 million as of September 30. We increased our revolving credit facility by $100 million to $500 million, and we extended the maturity to August 2030. In addition, we repaid over $50 million of outstanding term loan B balance on October 29th. We repurchased $8 million of shares in the first quarter, with $142 million remaining on our $150 million board authorized share repurchase program through May of 2028. We're executing our capital allocation philosophy with discipline, investing first in student growth, and then in strategic initiatives. We're maintaining financial strength and flexibility, We're returning excess cash to shareholders, and we're thoughtfully pursuing strategic M&A where we can find attractively valued assets that extend our capabilities or expand our presence in in-demand healthcare education markets. This brings me to our upcoming Investor Day on Tuesday, February 24th of 2026. We're going to use that forum to provide much deeper visibility into our strategic roadmap, our capacity expansion plans, our long-term value creation framework, and our capital allocation philosophy. You'll hear directly from our institutional leaders about how we're executing at the operational level. You'll see the operational discipline that allows us to invest in growth while expanding margins. And you'll gain a comprehensive understanding of how we're positioned to serve as the essential talent infrastructure for America's healthcare workforce. I encourage you all to join us either in person or virtually. Let me close with three clear statements. First, we're maintaining our full year fiscal 2026 guidance. That's revenue of $1.9 billion to $1.94 billion. And adjusted earnings per share of 760 to 790. Second, our strategic opportunity has never been greater. The structural healthcare workforce shortage isn't going away. It's actually intensifying. We have the scale, the brand strength, the program breadth, the technology leadership, and the financial resources to serve as the essential talent infrastructure for America's healthcare system. Third, we're going to continue to allocate capital with discipline, return value to shareholders, and hold ourselves accountable to the highest standards of execution. That's our commitment to you, and we'll deliver on it. As I've said before, my objective above all else is creating category leading long-term value for shareholders through operational excellence and strategic discipline. This quarter demonstrates that commitment. Our strong enterprise results show the power of operational discipline. We started the year with momentum. We're addressing challenges with clarity, speed, and accountability. We're positioned to deliver on our commitments and we're building a healthcare education platform that will create sustainable long-term shareholder value. I look forward to discussing all of this with you in greater detail at our investor day in February. And with that, I'll turn it over to Bob to walk through the financials in more detail.