Stride, Inc.

and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the STRIDE first quarter fiscal year 2026 earnings call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question during that time, simply press star, then the number one on your telephone keypad. I would now like to turn the call over to Timothy Casey, Vice President, Investor Relations. Sir, please go ahead.

Thank you, and good afternoon. Welcome to Stride's first quarter earnings call for fiscal year 2026. With me on today's call are James Rue, Chief Executive Officer, and Donna Blackman, Chief Financial Officer. As a reminder, today's conference call and webcast are accompanied by a presentation that can be found on the Stride Investor Relations website. Please be advised that today's discussion of our financial results may include certain non-GAAP financial measures. A reconciliation of these measures is provided in the earnings release issued this afternoon and can also be found on our investor relations website. In addition to historical information, this call will also involve forward-looking statements. The company's actual results could differ materially from any forward-looking statements due to several important factors as described in the company's earnings release and latest SEC filings. including our most recent annual report on Form 10-K and subsequent filings. These statements are made on the basis of our views and assumptions regarding future events and business performance at the time we make them, and the company assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements. Following our prepared remarks, we'll answer any questions you may have. Now, I'll turn the call over to James.

James? Thanks, Tim, and good afternoon, everyone. Demand for our products and services remains strong. In fact, we believe industry demand and trends around online education continue to grow. We indicated in August that we believe we would grow enrollment between 10 to 15%. And while we achieved enrollment growth in that range, we still fell short of our internal expectations. While demand is indicated by application volumes remains healthy, overall growth was tempered. But what happened? We made a couple of strategic decisions that we believe will pay dividends over the longer term but limited our growth in the shorter term. First, we invested in upgrading our learning and technology platforms with third-party industry-leading platforms. We continue to believe the investment is the right long-term decision to ensure we are deploying industry-leading technologies and systems. However, the implementations did not go as smoothly as we anticipated. We are actively engaged with our vendors to improve the situation. We heard from our customers that their engagement with these platforms detracted from their overall experience. This poor customer experience has resulted in some higher withdrawal rates and lower conversion rates than we expected. Secondly, we wanted to focus on running high quality programs. And in some instances, the best approach to achieve that is to limit enrollment growth while we improve our execution. We estimate that the combination of these factors resulted in approximately 10 to 15,000 fewer enrollments than we otherwise could have achieved. We also believe that these challenges will likely restrict our in-year enrollment growth. While demand continues to remain strong, we do not anticipate the same in-year enrollment increases that we've seen over the past few years. So our outlook for this year compared to last year is a bit muted. However, our outlook for this business over the longer term remains bullish, and these investments should help us achieve our longer term goals. Our mission and our path are clearer to me than ever. Families want and deserve educational choice. Meeting the demands of families in this country is an increasingly diverse task that is challenging to meet with a one size fits all model. So for many families, we are providing the only real affordable alternative in meeting their needs. And the trends just continue to move in that direction. Whether it be safety issues like bullying or neighborhood violence or health issues or special needs that cannot be met by local schools, we are providing a service that is both increasingly in demand and increasingly necessary. And we are investing in areas that will help enable us to meet the needs of the families we serve. One simple example is the rollout this year offering every second and third grader free ELA tutoring. We know that in order for kids to continue learning, they need to be able to read, write, and communicate. Therefore, we are investing to ensure the youngest students in our programs can do just that. We are tomorrow's education today. We meet the diverse needs of families that want flexible, personalized career forward and tech-enabled education at an affordable cost. This fall has proven challenging for us, and I want to thank our customer-facing employees, the teachers, administrators, and other staff who have worked tirelessly to help us overcome those challenges to serve the students. I also want to thank all our corporate employees who never forget who our customers are and how impactful what we do is in the lives of so many families. Thank you. With that, I'll turn the call over to Donna.