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Text: These statements are made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995.
In addition, this conference call contains time-sensitive information, that reflects management's best analysis only as of the day of this live call.
These reports include without limitation, cautionary statements made in Stride's 2020 annual report on Form 10-K.
These filings can be found on the Investor Relations section of our website at stridelearning.com.
In addition to disclosing financial results in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles in the U.S. or GAAP, we will discuss certain information that is considered non-GAAP financial information.
The call will be available for replay for 30 days.
Since I became CEO three months ago, I heard one consistent question.
What will happen with education after the pandemic is over?
Well, we're soon approaching that point it looks like, and I don't think any of us know.
But many credible thought leaders seem to believe the shift to online learning is not temporary.
In fact, a lot of the key trends we are seeing from recent research on education, careers and the economy, support side view.
A recent New York Times article carried the headline, online schools are here to stay even after the pandemic.
The premise to the article was that the ongoing pandemic has changed the landscape of education permanently.
One quote, "A subset of families who have come to prefer online learning are pushing to keep it going".
Additionally, a recent study by the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics found that one-third of high school students would choose a fully online or hybrid education even after things return to normal.
These and other research like them support my long held belief, that the momentum in digital transformation is difficult to reverse and that the trend toward online and hybrid education will continue.
And more students are recognizing that college is not the only effective or most affordable path to a career.
The ECMC Group released findings from a study it conducted that showed today's high school students are seeking lower cost, quicker paths to careers.
In the study, 25% of Gen Z teens said they were more likely to attend a career and technical education school due to their pandemic experience.
This trend is playing out in college as well.
Last fall there was a 7% drop in enrollments in higher education.
This means more students will seek out other educational paths.
In a recent article in New York magazine, they make the following case, I quote, "People under the age of 40 are fed up.
They have less than half of the economic security than their parents did at the same age" For the first time in our nation's history, a 30-year-old isn't doing as well as his or her parents at age 30.
So the paradigm of offering opportunities needs to shift.
In our adult learning business, we are seeing people moving toward non-traditional educational apps.
Strada Education Network surveys have shown that adult learners who are looking for educational training options are focused on gaining certification and licensure rather than traditional degrees, and they prefer to get this training through online programs or directly from their employer.
Importantly, companies are beginning to recognize that non-traditional educational paths can be success -- as successful as college graduates.
Large corporations like Facebook, Google and Amazon and others have begun programs to hire non-college graduates, and in many cases, students right out of high school into professional high-paying technology jobs.
And all the indications suggest these professionals are excelling.
As such, companies are expanding these programs.
These transport our strategy of providing career skills.
The pandemic has accelerated the shift in modality to a more digital approach.
As these markets are poised to grow at increasing rates, Stride is well-positioned to benefit for many years to come.
The immediate impact of these trends are evident in our results for this quarter and in our fiscal 2021 guidance.
We've raised our guidance for the full year in each of the past two quarters.
Year-to-date, our Stride career revenue enrollments are up over 120%.
The ECMC study I mentioned above, also found that 61% of Gen Z teens believe a skill-based education makes sense in today's world and our Stride career programs offer a clear solution for these students.
The programs provide access to career-ready skills and certifications.
This allows students develop skills they can -- that can lead directly to a career or better prepare them for post-secondary education.
Regardless of which path they choose, we want to provide them with an education that will prepare them for careers in high growth areas like healthcare, technology and business.
Our adult acquisitions are doing well and growing at double-digit rates even though some of them have traditionally focused on in-classroom teaching.
Their shift to online programs has gone smoothly and we feel good about our future growth prospects.
Specifically, our two most recent acquisitions, Tech Elevator and MedCerts are performing against our acquisition plans, but more important, these companies serve mainstream markets at large scale future opportunities in front of them.
As we begin to invest in our Stride brand, we believe we will be able to generate meaningful growth for these products, incremental to what they would have been able to do as stand-alone businesses.
As more employers start to take notice of these kinds of pathways, they are looking to partner with training providers, to ensure they are hiring the right skilled workers.
For instance, MedCerts recently announced a partnership with Equus Workforce Solutions to offer a registered apprenticeship opportunities to employers seeking employees in high-demand fields.
These types of programs demonstrate that Stride's offerings address both learner and employer needs.
Beyond that, we can have [Indecipherable] build recruitment pipelines with our Tallo partnership.
Tallo now boasts 1.5 million users on their platform.
This community of both users and employers will help ensure that we are developing the right training programs, while giving them and others a path to employment.
And as we said during our Investor Day in November, we expect this growth and the trends we are seeing in the market to lead to overall career learning revenues, a $650 million to $800 million by fiscal 2025.
And as excited as we are about the prospects in our career and adult learning businesses, we are also focused on our general education business.
Unfortunately for many students the pandemic has caused a decline in academic achievement.
A recent study by NWEA showed that number of students who regressed academically increased significantly nationwide during the last year.
Fortunately, for students have found that attending established virtual programs like ours, they have been able to attend school uninterrupted.
Our partners have provided seamless education in a completely disrupted world.
We owe our gratitude to them.
The impact translated into academic outcomes as well.
In a recent study we conducted, programs managed by Stride, handily outpace schools like the ones in the NWEA study.
Not all online programs are created equal.
We believe ours is a gold standard, the data backs that up.
How does all of this translate into future trends,?
Just a little over a year ago we conducted a survey that validate the trends we've seen for many years.
An approximately 2% to 3% of families were considering a fully online high school option.
I just today received results of our most recent study that indicated that, that 2% to 3% had jumped to over 10%.
Similarly consideration for online career programs jumped from 15% to 25%.
The shift online school from home means that more families are seeking out Stride's offering of digital solutions.
Although online school might not be for everyone, many more families now recognize it as an option.
In addition to the increase in awareness, the pandemic has brought about structural changes to other parts of our lives.
It wasn't just students who were impacted.
It was parents, families, teachers, and administrators.
Many of these individuals have come to appreciate the flexibility that comes from working and schooling from home.
This shift gives more parents and families the opportunity to support their children's learning at home while they're also working there.
Or for teachers, they can teach at home.
We hired and managed more teachers than ever this year.
The flexibility for teachers to work out of their homes is another clear trend that provides great opportunities.
Overall, this means that Stride's offerings are more accessible to more families.
Now I know many of you are focused on what will happen with our enrollments this coming fall as the rollout of the vaccine proceeds and most school districts announced plans to get back into the classroom.
First of all, let me be clear that we support the reopening of brick-and-mortar schools.
In fact, we penned an open letter supporting President Biden's bipartisan push to get schools reopened.
Additionally, it's far too early in our enrollment season to know how many new students will come to our programs in the fall.
In fact, less than 10% of our normal overall enrollment volume happens before the end of April.
However, we do have some early indications of the rate at which existing families are indicating their return for the fall.
As of right now, the percentage of existing families that are responding to our outreach for returning in the fall is at an all-time high and the percentage that have indicated they are returning is at an multi-year high.
So far, we are seeing the opposite of a mass exodus back to brick-and-mortar schools that some have predicted.
This is some very early encouraging news.
However, I want to stress this is still very early in our enrollment season.
Finally, I want to highlight some existing -- sorry, some exciting upcoming programs from Stride.
Recently a survey we conducted found that over 65% of parents agreed that their children need additional educational curriculum over the summer to make up for lost time due to the pandemic.
Given the significant need, this summer we are going to offer free summer career experiences for students in Grade 7 through 12.
These programs are an excellent opportunity for current and prospective students to gain exposure to career skills, while engaging in exciting activities.
We plan to offer programs in nursing, theatre, Esports and even a JAM Camp for musicians.
We will also offer programs for recent Stride career graduates to further hone their career rating skills they learned in high school.
All these programs will help make Stride more accessible to more students, while teaching them valuable career skills.
So I believe the trends in our business as well as the overall macro conditions and our addressable market continue to work in our favor and grow as time passes.
Revenue for the quarter was $392.1 million, an increase of 52% from last year.
Adjusted operating income was $54.9 million, an increase of 146% and capital expenditures were $11.3 million, an increase of $1.9 million versus Q3 last year.
In each case, these results met or beat the expectations we provided in our guidance last quarter.
As James mentioned, our General Education business continues to perform very well, and Career Learning remains on a strong growth trajectory as it has been for this past several years.
Given the strength in these businesses, we have raised our guidance again for the full fiscal year.
Returning to our results for the quarter.
Revenue from our General Education business increased $89.2 million or 38% to $322.3 million.
This was due primarily to higher enrollments, partially offset by lower revenue per enrollment.
General Ed enrollments rose 43% year-over-year, while revenue per enrollment declined 4%.
For the full year, we expect revenue per enrollment to be down compared to last year due to state budgetary pressures resulting from COVID-19 and a higher mix of lower-funded states.
We do not however expect this decline to become a trend into next year.
In fact, we are confident, given what we know today about state policy, that enrollment funding should improve next year.
Career Learning revenue rose to $69.8 million, an increase of 191%.
This was largely driven by significantly higher volumes in our Stride Career Prep programs, formerly known as Destinations Career Academies as well as growth in our Adult Learning businesses, including the effect of MedCerts and Tech Elevator acquired in November 2020, and Galvanize acquired in late January 2020.
Gross margins were 35.5% in the quarter, up approximately 500 basis points from the same period last year.
For the full fiscal year, we expect gross margins to be approximately 34% plus or minus 50 basis points.
We believe this improvement will continue into next year.
Last November, at Investor Day, I laid out a 2025 goal for gross margin percent of 36% to 39%, and I expect us to get there much faster.
Selling, general and administrative expenses in the quarter were $100.5 million, up 58% in the year-ago period.
The increase in SG&A was driven primarily by higher costs associated with the growth in enrollments and higher stock-based compensation expense as well as the expenses for our adult learning businesses.
We expect SG&A for the full fiscal year 2021 to be in the range of $420 million to $425 million.
Up from fiscal 2020 due to higher costs associated with the growth in enrollments, higher stock-based comp expense as well as the inclusion of the SG&A associated with Galvanize, MedCerts and Tech Elevator.
Our expectation for fiscal year '21 interest expense is that it will be between $17 million and $18 million including approximately $4 million in cash interest and $12 million in non-cash amortization of the discount on our convertible senior notes, and another $1 million of non-cash amortization of debt issuance costs.
Our convertible notes are subject to new accounting guidance, which can be adopted in FY '22 and no later than FY '23.
Once the guidance is adopted, the debt discount will be eliminated from the balance sheet and the associated non-cash amortization expenses are eliminated from the P&L on a going forwards basis.
EBITDA for the third quarter was $62.2 million, up 89% from the third quarter of fiscal 2020.
Adjusted EBITDA was $75 million, up 92% from the same period a year ago.
Operating income was $38.6 million, adjusted operating income was $54.9 million, an increase of 146%.
Additionally, we are raising our guidance for adjusted operating income to $156 million to $159 million for the full fiscal year 2021, and that's up from our previous guidance of $145 million to $155 million.
We ended the quarter with cash and cash equivalent at $329 million, an increase of $70.9 million compared to the second quarter.
We expect working capital to be a significant source of cash in the fourth quarter, primarily due to accounts receivable.
So we expect our cash balance at the end of fiscal 2021 to increase significantly.
We believe that our strong free cash flow generation and liquidity will continue to provide the financial flexibility to fund our existing operations and to pursue strategic acquisitions.
Capital expenditures for the quarter totaled $11.3 million below the range of $12 million to $15 million we guided to last quarter.
We expect full year capex to be in the range of $50 million to $55 million.
Our effective tax rate for the quarter was 30.2% and we expect our full year tax rate to be in the 27% to 29% range.
We expect that free cash flow defined as cash from operations less capex will trail our adjusted operating income.
This timing difference is primarily due to working capital changes related to the timing of payments from certain states, some of which are associated with our growth in states that regularly pay in the following year.
And some of which is related to delayed payments due to COVID.
Now returning to our updated guidance.
To summarize, we expect the following for the full year fiscal 2021.
Revenue in the range of $1.525 billion to $1.530 billion.
Adjusted operating income between $156 million and $159 million.
Capital expenditures of $50 million to $55 million and a tax rate of 27% to 29%.
In Q3, we saw another successful quarter owing to the tremendous demand for our products and services, both in General Education and Career Learning.
We delivered double-digit or better growth in revenue adjusted operating income and adjusted EBITDA, while significantly improving our gross margins and our robust cash and liquidity position.
We remain very excited about the prospects for our business as a whole and will continue to execute on our high growth Career Learning strategy.

user
compname posts revenue of $392.1 million – career learning revenue grows 191% year-over-year.
compname posts revenue of $392.1 million – career learning revenue grows 191% year-over-year.
q3 revenue $392.1 million versus $257.2 million.
sees full fiscal year 2021 revenue in range of $1.525 billion to $1.530 billion.
sees fiscal year 2021 capital expenditures in range of $50 million to $55 million.
sees fiscal year 2021 adjusted operating income in range of $156 million to $159 million.

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