Strategic Education, Inc. (NASDAQ:STRA) Q4 2023 Earnings Conference Call February 29, 2024 10:00 AM ET

Company Participants

Terese Wilke - Director of Investor Relations, Strategic Education

Robert Silberman - Chairman

Karl McDonnell - President and Chief Executive Officer

Daniel Jackson - Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Conference Call Participants

Jeff Silber - BMO

Jasper Bibb - Truist

Heather Balsky - BofA

Alex Paris - Barrington Research

Operator

Welcome to Strategic Education's Fourth Quarter, 2023 Results Conference Call. After the speaker presentation, there will be a question and answer session. [Operator Instructions]

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. Hello, everyone. And welcome to Strategic Education's conference call, in which we will discuss fourth quarter 2023 results. With us today are Robert Silberman, Chairman, Karl McDonald, 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 may be found in Strategic Education's most recent Annual Report on form 10-K to be filed, the most recent 10-Q 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 Rob. Rob, please go ahead.

Robert Silberman

Thank you, Terese, and good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Before I turn the call over to Karl to report our fourth quarter and full year results, I wanted to make just a couple of high level comments on our 2023 capital allocation. SEI started the year with $236 million of cash and marketable securities and roughly $100 million of outstanding debt drawn on our bank revolver.

During 2023, we generated $159 million in pretax cash from operations. We also sold one of our campus properties during the year for roughly $6 million. Out of that $165 million in generated cash, we paid $42 million in taxes and we invested $37 million in various capital expenditures and growth expenditures.