Strategic Education, Inc. (NASDAQ:STRA) Q1 2022 Earnings Conference Call April 28, 2022 10:00 AM ET

Company Participants

Terese Wilke - Director, Investor Relations

Robert Silberman - Executive Chairman

Karl McDonnell - President and Chief Executive Officer

Daniel Jackson - Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Conference Call Participants

Jeff Silber - BMO Capital Markets

Tobey Sommer - Truist Securities

Operator

Welcome to Strategic Education’s First Quarter 2022 Results Conference Call. I will now turn the call over to Terese Wilke, Director of Investor Relations for Strategic Education. Mrs. Wilke, please go ahead.

Terese Wilke

Thank you. Good morning, everyone and welcome to Strategic Education’s conference call in which we will discuss first quarter 2022 results. With us today are Robert Silberman, Executive Chairman; Karl McDonnell, President and Chief Executive Officer; and Daniel Jackson, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Following today’s remarks, we will open the call for questions.

Please note that this call may include forward-looking statements made pursuant to the Safe Harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. The statements are based on current expectations and are subject to a number of assumptions, uncertainties and risks that Strategic Education has identified in today’s press release that could cause actual results to differ materially.

Further information about these and other relevant uncertainties maybe found in Strategic Education’s most recent annual report on Form 10-K, the 10-Q to be filed and other filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission as well as Strategic Education’s future 8-Ks, 10-Qs and 10-Ks. Copies of these filings and the full press release are available for viewing on the website at strategiceducation.com.

And now, I’d like to turn the call over to Karl. Karl, please go ahead.

Karl McDonnell

Thank you, Teresa and good morning everyone. Our first quarter results, which we reported this morning included year-over-year declines in revenue, operating income and earnings per share, reflecting the impact of nearly 2 years of declining enrollment at Strayer University.

Improving Strayer’s performance has been and remains the company’s highest priority, and this morning, I can share that substantial progress has been made in this respect and that Strayer’s current performance is ahead of where we expected them to be at this point in the year. The vast majority of Strayer campuses have reopened. We’ve implemented dozens of enhancements to our systems to enable us to more effectively interact with both prospective and current students. Academic achievement has been consistently improving throughout the past year. Our employer-affiliated accounts are performing much better and amongst our largest agreements showing strong growth versus prior quarters and the prior year. We’ve seen significant stabilization in new student enrollment at Strayer, including within our employer-affiliated accounts as well as improvements in student retention.