2U, Inc. (NASDAQ:TWOU) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Chip Paucek: No problem.

Operator: And we will take our next question from Stephen Sheldon with William Blair. Your line is open.

Stephen Sheldon: Hi, thank you. Congrats on the and the UNC announcement. So it seems like a really nice additional wins with some of the largest institutions out there. So on that front I would love to get some detail on what trends you’re seeing between institutions, doing more to launch and support online programs themselves kind of in-house versus outsourcing the third-party providers like yourselves. Have you seen that change much looking back over the last couple of years? And does the trend look much different by type or, I guess, size of higher ed institutions?

Chip Paucek: Yes. Thanks, Stephen. So the most common trend is related to course build. When we started the company, universities didn’t have the capability of building online courses or launching online courses. And so that was 100% necessary to get a program online. And while we were very proud of our team that builds really high-quality content and it’s meaningful over time, more and more universities have developed capacity to do that. That’s part of the reason for the flexible model. We do think you’ll see a good number of the core bundle with clinical placement or the core bundle with marketing and clinical placement and other €“ often not the course build €“ from the standpoint of the financials that is a net positive because it does lower the CapEx. And we are focused on getting to positive EPS.

And as you know, the CapEx is part of that story. So from my standpoint, we see the flex innovation as simply opening new doors. And I’d say that’s the biggest trend. Steven, the only other thing I would say is this entire notion of sort of in-source and outsource is just way overplayed in various places. It’s not really this €“ it’s more complicated than that. Like many of our best relationships, we work directly with the folks that you would argue are the in-source. So very commonly, we’ve got great relationships with the universities, departments that are building a variety of capacity. So we had today an incredible day at headquarters where I’m at in €“ right outside of Washington, D.C. and Maryland, where we had our social enterprise of boot camp partners.

So our boot camp partners from ranging from University of Kansas to Colombia to all kinds of really great schools that are partnering with us and local workforce agencies to drive critical skills training for the country. And this kind of training can’t be done without private partnerships €“ private-public partnerships. It’s just not possible to do the scale. So we think we’re doing something really good for the world that we also think is a great business opportunity. And the reason I go there is, in many of these cases, that is working with the continuing ed component of the institution that very often also has some responsibility in this notion of in-source outsource. So I understand why folks ask about it. But overall, we feel like the interest in our revenue share-based model continues to increase.

So we like what it means for the future of that part of the business.

Stephen Sheldon: Got it. Very helpful. And then I wanted to ask about the enterprise detail you gave. It seems like growth there accelerated during the year, if I heard that correctly, that it grew 183% year-over-year in the fourth quarter. And I know it’s still somewhat small. But what’s driving that acceleration? How are end market macro dynamics playing into that? Just any detail you can provide on the trend?