Lincoln Educational Services Corporation (NASDAQ:LINC) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Lincoln Educational Services Corporation (NASDAQ:LINC) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript November 6, 2023

Lincoln Educational Services Corporation beats earnings expectations. Reported EPS is $0.07, expectations were $0.06.

Operator: Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Lincoln Educational Services Third Quarter 2023 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker’s presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] Please be advised that today’s conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Mr. Michael Polyviou. Please go ahead.

Michael Polyviou: Thank you, Crystal. Good morning, everyone. Before the market opened today, Lincoln Educational Services issued its news release reporting financial results for the third quarter ended September 30, 2023. The release is available on the Investor Relations portion of the company’s corporate website at www.lincolntech.edu. Joining us today on the call are Scott Shaw, President and CEO; and Brian Meyers, Chief Financial Officer. Today’s call is being recorded and is being broadcast live on the company’s website and a replay of the call will be archived also on the company’s website. Statements made by Lincoln’s management on today’s call regarding the company’s business that are not historical facts may be forward-looking statements as the term is identified in Federal Securities laws.

The words may, will, expect, believe, anticipate, project, plan, intend, estimate and continue, as well as similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements should not be read as a guarantee of future performance or results. The company cautions you that these statements reflect current expectations about the company’s future performance or events and are subject to a number of uncertainties, risks and other influences, many of which are beyond the company’s control that may influence the accuracy of the statement and the projections upon which the segment and statements are based. Factors that may affect the company’s results include, but are not limited to the risks and uncertainties discussed in the Risk Factors section of the annual report on Form 10-K and the quarterly report on Form 10-Q filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Forward-looking statements are based on the information available at the time those statements are made and management’s good faith belief as of the time with respect to future events. All forward-looking statements are qualified in their entirety by this cautionary statement and Lincoln undertakes no obligation to publicly revise or update any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise after the date thereof. Now, I would like to hand the call over to Scott Shaw, President and CEO of Lincoln Educational Services. Scott, please go ahead.

Scott Shaw: Thanks, Michael, and good morning, everyone. Our transformative growth strategy continued to generate exceptional results during the third quarter as revenue increased 10.5%. After realizing 18% student start growth during our second quarter, students start growth during the third quarter surpassed 7%. These top line results exceeded our expectations and as Brian will review during his prepared remarks, we are increasing our guidance for the full-year. Our top line growth was achieved through student growth, a 3 percentage point increase in average student population, and a 6.8% increase in average revenue per student. The continued rollout of our hybrid instructional platform, which we call Lincoln 10.0, also contributed to increasing our average revenue per student growth.

As we’ve discussed with you in the past, the hybrid model combines hands-on learning at campus facilities, while delivering a greater component of classroom work through online instruction. It enables our students to work part-time or manage other commitments, while they pursue their Lincoln Education, and it’s specifically designed to help a higher percentage of students to graduate. The hybrid model also standardizes our programs across campuses with on-campus time slots of morning, afternoon, and evening courses and with consistent start dates that provide greater flexibility, efficiency, and overall capacity at our existing campuses. The rollout of our hybrid model at most campuses coupled with adding existing proven programs at select campuses positions us to drive higher campus and company’s profitability in the long-term once we complete our transition in the model — transition to the model in 2025.

During the third quarter, our exceptional students’ start growth was driven by the increased number of leads generated by our marketing programs. This lead generation is occurring across the board, both geographically as well as from a curriculum perspective, and is accompanied by a healthy conversion rate of those leads. What we find particularly encouraging is that this lead generation student start growth is nearly all organic. There is little if any contribution from recently started programs since their launch dates were delayed due to later than expected regulatory approval. Once our recent initiatives start to contribute to student starts, we are very well positioned to continue student start growth. During the third quarter, we saw a shift in the marketplace beginning to take hold.

From both a geographic and curriculum perspective, we are experiencing increased demand for Lincoln’s programs, and this increased demand is occurring despite a continued very low unemployment rate and exceptional GDP growth. It appears that more and more people are interested in acquiring real hands-on skills that lead to solid careers. There are a number of factors driving this increased interest. First, many people are questioning the value of a four-year degree and the accompanying debt. Many students that eventually do graduate with a four-year degree don’t have the marketable or applicable skills that today’s employers demand. At Lincoln, we strive to provide strong ROI programs that lead to solid, in-demand careers, and we deliver these programs in a supportive environment that focuses on graduating and placing students.

Also, the careers we offer will most likely not be replaced by artificial intelligence or be offshore, adding security to a student’s career decision. With our country’s growing need for middle skills tradespeople, we feel good about our positioning and long-term growth opportunities. We also believe that being aligned with industry also drives interest in our programs. For example, in the past year, we have launched two Tesla programs, one in Denver and the second in Columbia, Maryland, and in Nashville, we launched our first specialized training program for Truck OEM Peterbilt. Both companies approach Lincoln since we are known for quality graduates and our ability to be a strong partner focused on helping our students, while supporting each company’s specific needs.

During the second quarter of 2024, we will start to layer on starts at our new Atlanta campus, as well as the first programs developed under our replication strategy. Further out, our new lease in Nashville gives us twice the space that we have at the new Atlanta facility, and when we open the new Nashville facility in the first-half of 2025, it will include two new programs in addition to the current Nashville market offerings. During this quarter, we purchased a new facility in Levittown, Pennsylvania, which when opened during the first-half of 2025, will house our programs serving the Philadelphia market. This new facility gives us the space to expand our offerings in Philadelphia beyond automotive to include HVAC, welding, and electrical.

And the facility has space to add additional programs or partnerships. Brian will review our strategy regarding the purchase of this facility and our near-term plans during his comments. We remain on track to achieve our objective to develop 10 new programs under the replication strategy. Many of these programs are already in some stage of development and will begin enrolling during 2024. The remainder are planned to be open during the first-half of 2025. They all deploy the Lincoln 10.0 platform and we remain on target to realize our three-year profitability goals for each of these 10 programs. At the same time, we continue to pursue our strategy of opening one new campus per year. Atlanta will welcome our first classes during the second quarter of next year, and last Friday we announced our plans to expand into the Houston, Texas market.

Our first campus in Houston will be located in the heart of one of Houston’s busiest commercial corridors and strategically located for both student convenience and maximum graduate exposure to area hiring managers. The new Houston campus will represent our second campus in Texas, and it’ll allow us to take advantage of the country’s fourth largest employment market. The new campus will feature an approximately 100,000 square foot training center offering career opportunities in the auto, diesel, welding, HVAC, and electrical fields. Of the 2.4 million jobs that are expected to become available nationwide in these industries by 2032, over 290,000 of those jobs are projected to be in Texas. Over the next two years, as we layer on new campus openings and the program replication strategy, we consistently expand our opportunities to increase overall student starts, while we remain focused on continuing the impressive organic start growth at existing programs.

Our strategy in a successful execution fuels our long-term optimism for Lincoln to prepare increasing number of students for good paying, rewarding, and essential careers, while helping American Corporations close their skills gap. Our new campus’ program replication strategy, the Lincoln 10.0 platform, and improving the efficiencies and effectiveness of our financial aid programs are requiring, as we have said in the past, increased investments during 2023. Some of these initiatives require us temporarily to double up on processes so that we maintain our high level of service. During the third quarter, these investments were primarily recognized in SG&A expenses and supported our strong student start growth and higher lead generation. Brian will provide more details, as well as the progress we have made on bringing these increases down during his remarks.

Recently, the Department of Ed issued its long-awaited updated rule on gainful employment. The rule establishes specific debt-to-income percentages that educational programs must achieve. The data used to establish the percentages won’t be available until July 1st of next year. We have some small programs that might be impacted by the rules implementation which wouldn’t come until two years after the July 1st 2024 data setting date. We expect that others with a larger presence in the curriculums most likely to be impacted by the rule setting will challenge the rule, which has been successfully done in the past. The bottom line is that we are required to take, sorry, the bottom line is that if we are required to take some action, we don’t expect the action to have much impact on our EBITDA growth and that programs potentially impacted aren’t part of our replication strategy or new campus development plans.

2023 is shaping up to be a very strong year for Lincoln and we are positioned to continue our growth in 2024 and beyond. We should start to see improvement in our operating efficiency by the second-half of next year, but we expect to continue to make investments in replicating programs and opening up new campuses for the foreseeable future. The interest in our programs and the new hybrid teaching model is quite strong and employers continue to face increasing challenges when it comes to finding trained employees. At the same time, I noted earlier in my remarks how we are seeing an increased number of prospective students looking for alternatives to four-year college. Our strong graduation and placement rates provide excellent reference points.

And our balance sheet, which has never been stronger, is enabling Lincoln to expand our programs and locations, which will create long lasting benefits to our students, our graduates, our instructors, our corporate partners, and increasing returns to our shareholders. I also want to announce that we will be hosting a virtual Investor Day from our new Atlanta campus sometime in the first-half of next year. More information on this event will be made available at the beginning of the new year. Now I’d like to turn the call over to Brian, so he can review some of our financial highlights during the quarter as well as our increased guidance. Brian?

Brian Meyers: Thanks, Scott. Good morning and thank you for joining our third quarter earnings call. Before I begin my prepared remarks with Veterans Day being celebrated in a few days, I would like to take a moment to thank our veterans, our students, alumni, and instructors who have sacrificed and served to protect our great nation. As Scott highlighted, we are very pleased with our significant progress made towards our long-term strategic growth plan. With the addition of the Houston and Atlanta campuses, we’ll be expanding our footprint to 23 campuses in 2025. Moreover, the relocation of our existing Philadelphia and Nashville campuses will enable us to expand our program offerings, growing our student population and adding to our earnings.

In terms of the Philadelphia campus relocation, as previously mentioned, we purchased a facility in Levittown, Pennsylvania to serve as the future campus location. We are now pursuing a sale lease back agreement, which should enable us to recover our initial investment of $10 million and reinvest the proceeds in the facility build out. Accordingly, as of quarter-end, the purchase price of this facility is presented on the balance sheet as assets held for sale. Turning to the P&L results, which excludes the transitional segment, the pre-opening costs of our new Atlanta, Georgia campus, and non-recurring items. As a reminder, the transitional segment includes the Somerville, Massachusetts campus for which we have completed the successful teach-out of the final students as of the end of October.

We’ll continue to incur some limited expenses through the end of the year. Revenue during the quarter increased 10.5% or $9.4 million to $99.5 million. The increase in revenue was mainly driven by student stock growth of 7.1% and average revenue per student growth of 7.3%. To expand on those drivers, the student stock growth was mainly derived from organic programs, and the increase in average revenue per student was mainly attributed to tuition increases, combined with the acceleration revenue recognition, particularly for students enrolled in our evening programs under our new hybrid teaching model. Operating expenses were $96 million in line with our expectations after adjustments for non-recurring items detailed in our adjusted EBITDA calculation reflected in our Q3 earnings release.

The main expense increases over the prior year were instructional expenses, largely due to our population growth and merit increases, planned increases in marketing investments, which are generating greater returns as evidenced by our flat cost per start during the quarter and our higher bad debt expense due to higher student accounts receivable. We ended the quarter with higher levels of receivables due in part to our initiative to transition our financial aid process, which continues. Adjusted EBITDA was $6.1 million, compared to $7.4 million, after excluding non-recurring items detailed in our Q3 earnings release. Although 2023 is slightly behind last year, we are pleased with this result as our growth has delivered performance that was slightly above our internal plan given our high-level investments this year.

Diluted EPS was $0.07 based on $30.7 million weighted average shares outstanding. Now turning to the balance sheet and cash flow. We ended the quarter with a strong balance sheet with approximately $70 million of total cash and no debt outstanding. During the quarter, we earned approximately 900,000 of interest income and $1.9 million for the nine months. Cash used in operating activities was approximately $6.7 million. This quarter, we experienced some delays in our cash collections, leading to a higher accounts receivable balance and the previously mentioned increase in bad debt expense. In addition, our income tax payments materially increased in the third quarter, compared to prior year. We paid nearly $4 billion more of income taxes this year, since we have fully utilized our federal NOLs to offset our taxable income.

In terms of state NOLs, we have approximately $30 million of gross NOLs to utilize in 2023 and beyond, which will reduce our future state tax liability. Capital expenditures during the quarter were $17.8 million, which includes $10 million for the purchase of our Levittown, Pennsylvania facility. It also includes the buildout of our new Atlanta campus. Lastly, we are updating our guidance to reflect our continued strong performance in Q4 business momentum. We’re raising revenue outlook to be between $370 million and $375 million. We’re raising the lower end of the range of adjusted EBITDA. We now expect to range between $24 million to $26 million. We’re raising our adjusted income outlook to range between $12 million and $14 million. In terms of student starts, we’re increasing our projections to range between 8% to 11%.

And lastly, we’re refining our capital expenditures outlook to range between $30 million and $33 million. Capital expenditures guidance includes the new Atlanta build out, but excludes recently purchased facility in Levittown, Pennsylvania. In terms of stock-based compensation, we expect it to be approximately $5 million for the year, and Q4 stock expense to be around $800,000. In conclusion, throughout the first nine months of 2023, we have consistently achieved better-than-anticipated results across our key performance metrics. We remain focused on our key growth initiatives. And I want to acknowledge the entire team’s efforts and contributions in delivering another strong performance this past quarter. I’ll turn the call back over to the operator, so we can take your questions.

Operator?

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Q&A Session

Operator: Thank you. [Operator Instructions] And our first question will come from Alex Paris from Barrington Research. Your line is open. Please check that your line is not on mute. And Mr. Paris, if you’d like, you can please try rejoining by using the call me option and we’re going to move on to the next caller. And our next question will come from Steven Frankel from Rosenblatt Securities. Your line is open.

Steven Frankel: Good morning. I wonder, Scott, if you could give us a little more color on the nice momentum here in start? Do you think this is reflecting the fact that students no longer feel some of those inflationary pressures that was keeping people on the sidelines or is there something else going on that you think is driving the changes?

Scott Shaw: Thanks, Steven, and good morning. I think it’s a number of things. You are right, last year during the summertime, gas prices were quite high, which really impacts our students on a day-to-day basis. And while gas prices aren’t as low as they’ve been maybe historically, it doesn’t seem to be impacting students as much. There is still continued lots of talk about inflation, but I guess what I have to attribute it to is there just seems to be this stronger interest overall, as I mentioned, in our types of programs. And I think based off of what I hear, somewhat anecdotally as well as what I read out there, certainly the current generation is thinking much more speculatively, I guess, about college. And so I think there are more people interested in doing what we do, and I think more people are seeing value in working with their hands.

And so I think there are a number of things that are frankly working in our favor. And I anticipate that, that should continue for quite some time just because there is strong demand out there and you constantly are seeing articles about the need and demand for people that work with their hands. So a lot of things are certainly working in our favor. That’s for sure.

Steven Frankel: And then on the cost side, how are you doing in attracting and retaining staff?

Scott Shaw: Yes, good question. The good news is we’re doing better. Our turnover in staff is down year-over-year. We are seeing frankly more applicants per person that we’re looking for. So we think that bodes well. That means maybe the employment market is softening for some as we’re seeing stronger demand and more interest, and things have definitely stabilized from where they were.

Steven Frankel: Okay, That’s great for me. Thank you. I’ll jump back in the queue.

Scott Shaw: Thanks, Steven.

Operator: Thank you. And our next question will come from Alex Paris from Barrington Research. Your line is open. And again, please check your mute button to make sure that you’re not muted. And Mr. Parris, we’re unable to hear you. If you’re able to disconnect and try dialing back in using the call me feature. We’ll go to your question next. And speakers, please stand by. We’ll move to our next question. And our next question is going to come from Eric Martinuzzi from Lake Street Capital Markets. Your line is open.

Eric Martinuzzi: Hey, congrats on the good numbers and the strong outlook. I wanted to drill down on the new student starts. You talked about kind of just an overall appetite for you know folks questioning maybe the value of a four-year degree just within your program, so I’m wondering if you could stratify into kind of the transportation and skilled trades versus healthcare and other? Are you seeing it equally across those two different categories?

Scott Shaw: Yes, we are actually seeing it across kind of all of our programs. Obviously, some are stronger than others, but you don’t see a difference between whether it’s a healthcare program or a skilled trades program or an automotive program. They’re all up from last year, which is a really promising sign, as well as geographically we don’t see any softening in any particular markets as well.

Eric Martinuzzi: And then as far as the centralized financial aid just that conversion of enrollment to start is that having some impact or not really?