Stride, Inc. (NYSE:LRN) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Jeff Silber: All right. Great. If I could speak just one more in. I think you said that you expect revenue per enrollment to be up 4% to 6% this year. Is there a difference between Gen Ed and Career Learning?

Donna Blackman: So we expect most to be within that range, just given sort of where we were in Q1. I would expect Career Learning to grow for the full year to be on the lower end of that versus Gen Ed. Just again, just based upon probably what we still do in Q1.

Jeff Silber: Okay. Great. Thanks so much.

Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Tom Singlehurst with Citi. Your line is now open.

Thomas Singlehurst: Yeah. Thanks very much. Good evening and congrats on the results. It’s quite something seeing a real enrollment break, which is very exciting. A couple of questions. First one, can you just talk about whether there’s any sort of volume component to go by, how many new schools have opened and are there any new states are coming on stream within — in particular General Ed? That was the first question. And then the second question is on the sort of guidance, you’ve set the 2024 guidance at a level which actually just slightly encroaches on the 2025, I suppose probably the answer is you’re going to say wait till we investigate on the 14th of November. But I’m just interested in whether we should infer anything from the midpoint of 2024 to the midpoint of 2025 in terms of — for the growth in margin progression. Thank you.

Donna Blackman: So I’m going to try my best to answer your question that we would — we had a really hard time hearing you. But I think your first question was around the number of states. And so we are in the same number of states in Q1 that we were in Q4 for both Gen Ed as well as for Career Learning. We’ve added some new programs, about five new programs for Gen Ed and four new programs for Career. With respect to our — I think it’s 2024, we’re sort of bumping up against our 2025. And so I think when we have our Investor Day in November, will be a good time for us to talk about where we think we will be from a long-term perspective. And we have said last year, every single every single quarter that we were confident in our 2025 revenue and AOI numbers, and so that should — we’d say the path to get there would be different, but felt really strongly that we would get there.

And I think this is just indicative of the strength of the business. And again, we had a really strong enrollment growth and revenue growth in Q1, and that’s impacting obviously our full year numbers.

Thomas Singlehurst: That’s great. Sorry, you managed to interpret my question, so I really appreciate that. One quick follow up, adult learning sequentially was down. Is there anything to read into that? Is that seasonal, or is there a little bit of sort of softness coming through from sort of end markets and tech?

James Rhyu: Yeah. So I think there is something to read into that meaning that we have — I think we have defied the overall market conditions around the tech sector, the tech education sector in that. We’ve had growing profitable businesses in that space, I think for a lot longer than — most of the market has been able to do so. But — and you can — you could sort of see I think probably across the landscape, but also you can look at sort of Google searches for this and things like that. But the specific technology focused bootcamp business as a whole in this country is down significantly. We believe we are down less, but there is definitely a macro headwind around that piece of our business, which just as a reminder represents less than — was it less than 2% of our overall business.