2U, Inc. (NASDAQ:TWOU) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

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Paul Lalljie: Josh, we had about $7.6 million in the first half of the year. The net revenue impact in 2023 is about $100 million. And the cash impact is a little higher because the cash includes the higher dollar amount than the actual revenue recognized within the period. So the $49 million represents the additional deals that are expected to be signed in the fourth quarter. But the revenue in the fourth quarter already has USC included. So, essentially, the cash that we expect, the $96 million from the deals already signed and the additional $49 million, it adds up to $145 million, which is higher than the revenue that’s recognized.

Josh Baer: I just wanted to check in on Alternative Credentials. I know – like, definitely hear that that there was some negative impacts from the coding in the quarter. Just kind of continuing to monitor each quarter the margins and sort of the expectation that that would flip positive, like, are we still on track? And, like, what really will take to have Alternative Credentials as a profitable business?

Paul Lalljie: Josh, a couple of things. The short answer is no. We are not on track for this year simply because we have seen the weakness on the revenue side of the equation here. But as Chip mentioned in his prepared remarks, we are committed to doing whatever it takes to make this business profitable. And as a segment, the Alternative Credential segment, with the growth that we expect to come from our enterprise business next year and the rightsizing of the cost structure, we expect to be to be positive as soon as possible. I would say the first half of the year, we can get there. Why do I say it that way? Because the flow through margins in the enterprise business is higher than the rest of the Alternative Credential segment. So that’s our objective. We recognize we made a commitment to do this. We hit some headwinds with the coding enrollments. And we are committed to rightsizing this and getting it profitable as quickly as possible.

Chip Paucek: The interesting thing about coding also is we brought in lead flow and we’re finding it not converting the way we were used to. So it was it was definitely the story of the quarter unfortunately.

Operator: [Operator Instructions]. Your next question is from the line of Jeff Meuler, Baird.

Jeffrey Meuler: Can you give us any sense of, call it, operating EBITDA and revenue excluding the make-whole fees in 2023 for the programs that are being exited, so we have a sense of what the grow over is as we start to think of layering on the pro forma growth?

Paul Lalljie: Jeff, from a revenue perspective, revenue is roughly around $100 million now because we’re considering the revenue that we’re recognizing as well as the revenue that we otherwise would have received from these programs. When we think of the EBITDA as we exit the year, we’re considering the cost that is associated with not operating those programs anymore, whether it’s from a marketing perspective, whether it’s from a university operations perspective, or whether it’s from an overhead perspective associated with that. The next thing we’re considering is that as we think of a jumping off point here as we get into next year is the cost take-out that we’ve done at the end of September. So I think just to give rough numbers, it is probably a reduction of probably the EBITDA less – maybe between $50 million and $70 million from the EBITDA we end up with at the end of this year.

And that creates your jumping off point in the next year based on the costs that we’ve taken out and based on the costs that we will not incur again going forward.

Stephen Virostek: Operator, are there any more questions in the queue?

Operator: At the current time, there are no further questions.

Stephen Virostek : Okay. Seeing there’s no other questions, we thank you for joining us today. And if you have follow-ups, please give us a call at investor relations. Thank you so much.

Operator: This concludes today’s call. Thank you for joining. You may now disconnect your lines.

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