Cengage Learning Holdings II Inc

OTC:CNGO

Earnings Call Transcript 2025-Q1

[Operator]

Greetings, and welcome to the Cengage Group's First Quarter Fiscal Year 2025 Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen only mode. A question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. [Operator Instructions]. Please note, this conference is being recorded. I will now turn the conference over to your host, Richard Veith, Treasurer at Cengage. You may begin.

[Richard Veith, executive]

Good morning, and welcome to Cengage Group's Fiscal 2025 First Quarter Investor Update. Joining me on the call are Michael Hansen, Chief Executive Officer; and Bob Munro, Chief Financial Officer. A copy of the slide presentation for today's call has been posted to the company's website at cengagegroup.com/investors. The following discussion contains forward-looking statements within the safe harbor provisions of the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Such forward-looking statements can be identified by words such as believe, expect, may, will, estimate, likely and similar words and are neither historical facts nor assurances of future performance and relate to future results and events, and they are based on Cengage Group's current expectations and assumptions. Because forward-looking statements relate to the future, they are subject to inherent uncertainties, risks and changes in circumstances that are difficult to predict and many of which are outside of our control. Many factors could cause our actual results and financial conditions to differ materially from those indicated in the forward-looking statements. You should consider such factors, many of which are subject to the risks and uncertainties discussed in the slide presentation, which accompanies this call and in the Risk Factors section of our fiscal 2024 annual report for the year ended March 31, 2024, as may be updated by our quarterly reports for fiscal year 2025. Any forward-looking statement made in this presentation is based on currently available information. The company disclaims any obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements, except as required by law. On today's call and in our slide presentation, we will refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures. Definitions and the rationale for using these measures and reconciliations of each to its most directly comparable GAAP financial measure are provided in the appendix to the slide presentation. I will now turn the call over to Michael for an update on the business, followed by Bob, who will take you through the first quarter details before we open the call to questions. Michael?

[Michael Hansen, executive]

Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us for our fiscal 2025 first quarter update. I am pleased to share that our businesses are performing well. We are executing our strategy and delivering on our financial guidance. In the first quarter, we achieved 2% growth in cash revenue compared to the prior year, reaching $277 million. On a trailing 12-month basis, revenue grew by 4%. We Cengage Academic achieved 7% growth in cash revenues over the period. In a seasonally small quarter, our largest business, U.S. higher ed, grew by 5%, underpinned by robust digital sales and institutional growth. Our secondary business exceeded prior quarter revenues by 12%. Cengage Work delivered 10% growth over the prior year with app-to-Go growing by 17% as our differentiated go-to-market strategy, conversion optimization and payment alternatives drove strong increased enrollment. Cengage Select saw a 7% decline compared to the prior quarter, primarily due to timing within our research business. Our English language teaching business had a solid start to the year, increasing revenues by 4%. First quarter adjusted cash EBITDA effectively doubled over the prior year, reaching $38 million. Our trailing 12-month EBITDA increased by 13%, with our cost savings program accelerating growth and margin expansion from fiscal 2024. Increasing efficiency and driving simplification in our operations on a continuing basis is a key operational objective for Cengage. As a foundation to this, we substantially completed the implementation of our new operating model and through this, substantially advanced our cost savings program. The early results of this are evident in our operating costs in the first quarter, which are 2% lower than the prior period. With a significant progress since we updated you on this program at the start of the year, we now expect to deliver at least $100 million in incremental cost savings over fiscal '25 and '26, exceeding the top end of the range we previously targeted. Of this $100 million, we are confident in our ability to deliver over EUR 60 million of savings in fiscal '25. We are continuously exploring further opportunities to optimize our operations and drive productivity and efficiencies through scale. To this end, we are sharply focused on business simplification, process transformation and commercial excellence and deploying generative AI and other technologies as enablers of continued efficiency and effectiveness in the service to our customers. In terms of these new technologies, we have made significant investments in leveraging generative AI to help students learn and achieve their goals. We are excited to announce that we are just weeks away from launching our first ever student assist product, which will use generative AI to drive personalization and learning and empower students to overcome hurdles in their own learning journey. The student assist bots, available 24/7 are fully aligned to high-quality Cengage content and offer individualized educational resources that promote academic integrity, facilitate autonomy and accelerate learning. We are confident that these student assistance will increase student engagement and learning outcomes. In addition, we are also leveraging generative in our operations to increase productivity and efficiency. Specifically, we are applying technologies within our global content production teams and in our customer support teams. I look forward to sharing more about these efforts in the coming months. In closing, with EBITDA growth accelerating and margins expanding, we are optimistic about both the near-term and medium-term trajectory of our business. We remain well positioned in the diverse and attractive markets we serve. I will now hand the call over to Bob Munro, our CFO, who will provide more detail about our first quarter results.

[Bob Munro, executive]

Thank you, Michael, and good morning, everyone. Before we get into the results, I wanted to address a refinement to the basis of reporting and presentation of our results. With effect from this quarter, we are reporting financial results at actual exchange rates in the period rather than at a constant currency rate. Given our relative exposure to international markets, foreign currency fluctuations have not historically had a significant impact on our results. To normalize for the impact of fluctuations in foreign currency, we will continue to disclose growth rates at constant currency alongside actual growth rates. Whilst this represents a change to past practice, it aligns with how peer companies report and means that reported actual dollar values will not be subject to restatement for currency going forward. I will refer to constant currency growth rates in my comments. Turning to Cengage Group financial highlights and our first quarter performance. We've made a solid start to fiscal '25 and are maintaining the necessary and expected business momentum to deliver on our guidance for the full year, which is unchanged. Adjusted cash revenues for the first quarter were $277 million, up 2% over the prior period. Digital remains an overarching driver of revenue growth with digital net sales ahead 5% in the quarter. On a trailing 12-month basis, which better represents the underlying momentum in the business, revenues are up 4% to $1.543 billion with academic, work and select all contributing to this growth. This underlines the strength of the portfolio. Trailing 12 months, digital net sales were $1.56 billion, up 9% and representing 76% of the total. First quarter adjusted cash EBITDA was GBP 38 million, effectively doubled the first quarter results last year. This includes significant benefits from our cost savings program aligned to the implementation of our new operating model. Having announced the cost savings program with our third quarter fiscal '24 results, we have now substantially completed the implementation of our new operating model. We now expect to realize at least $100 million of incremental savings over fiscal '25 and fiscal '26, topping the upper end of the range of GBP 90 million to GBP 100 million we previously shared. Of these savings, over $60 million is expected to be realized in fiscal '25. In total, these targeted cost savings represent around 600 basis points of EBITDA margin expansion on a pro forma basis. With the strong EBITDA flow-through in the quarter, trailing 12 months EBITDA reached GBP 480 million, up 13% over the comparative period. This represents continuing progression in margin expansion with the EBITDA margin reaching 31% on a trailing 12-month basis. Turning to the Q1 performance across our business segments. Cengage Group revenue growth of 2% reflects the combination of 7% growth in academic and 10% growth in work moderated by a 7% temporary reversal in Select. The first quarter is the smallest quarter in our fiscal year, accounting for less than 20% of annual revenues, which reflects the inherent seasonality of our business. As such, Q1 typically sees higher variability in performance with sales timing effects having a disproportionate impact on quarter-over-quarter growth rates. In Q1, this is most pronounced in Select, where sales timing effects act as a temporary drag on performance in the research and the other segments. In Cengage Academic, adjusted cash revenue for the quarter was $149 million, up 7%, driven by solid starts in U.S. Higher Education and secondary. U.S. Higher Ed revenues was $76 million, up 5% in a small quarter, underpinned by solid digital performance and lower returns. On a trailing 12-month basis, adjusted cash revenue for U.S. Higher Ed was $617 million, up 4%. In fiscal '24, the U.S. Higher Ed business returned to growth, driven by our digital strategy reaching an inflection point where the sustained growth in stand-alone digital products outweigh declines in an ever smaller print and bundled base. Whilst it remains relatively early in the fall selling season, we are seeing growth in inclusive access across some courses and positive momentum in our sales pipelines and institutional offerings. These reinforce our expectation that U.S. higher ed is on track to deliver another year of digitally driven top line growth. Institutional revenues being the combination of inclusive access and Cengage Unlimited institutional sales were $24 million in the quarter, up 13% and grew 34% on an underlying basis after taking account of a large customer that changed billing schedule to the detriment of Q1. On a trailing 12-month basis, institutional sales were $232 million, up 25% and represent 38% of total U.S. higher ed revenues. Whilst it remains too early in the cycle to have a view on enrollment, the positive enrollment trends in fiscal '24 could further bolster growth prospects, if sustained this year. In International Higher Ed, Q1 cash revenue was $22 million, flat against the prior period. The business is on the path to stabilization after declines in fiscal '24, which were driven by strategic actions in the Europe, Middle East and Africa region to rebase that business. Against a market backdrop where we are seeing softer demand in international markets, we have been sharply focused on driving profitability through the implementation of our new operating model and cost savings program. As part of this, we have repositioned our business in Latin America from a direct go-to-market model to a licensing distribution model. This will act as a modest drag on revenues in fiscal '25 whilst improving profitability and margin. Our secondary business has had a strong start to the year, building on a successful fiscal '24. Q1 cash revenues are up 12% to $51 million, with growth being boosted by sales timing effects in a small quarter. The Q1 revenue reflects strong growth in advanced placement and career and technical education and in our math program. Looking beyond Q1 and the sales timing effects, we are seeing solid underlying momentum in the business. Our business has performed well in the Oklahoma math adoption and in Florida social studies and science. And our sales pipelines strongly support our expectations that secondary will deliver another year of modest top line growth. In summary, for the full fiscal year '25, we continue to expect Cengage academic to deliver low single-digit revenue growth, underpinned by sustained growth in U.S. Higher Ed. At Cengage Work, Q1 adjusted cash revenues were $34 million, up 10% compared to the prior period. This reflects the combination of sustained strong double-digit growth in Ed2Go, where revenues were up 17% in the quarter to GBP 24 million, moderated by a small decline in Q1 revenues at Infosec, which were $10 million. In Ed2Go, we are continuing to successfully sustain strong revenue growth fueled by increased enrollment. Driving this, our deeper integration with adjudication institutions, improving organic lead volumes, extended distribution through business-to-business partners and new commercial models, which were introduced last year. All of these, we believe, have significant future runway. At Infosec, our boot camp business returned to growth in Q1 as federal funding delays, which held back the business with our U.S. government customers in fiscal '24 eased. Against this, our security awareness software business had a slow start. This reflects weaker new business and renewals after a strong close to the prior year being amplified by some temporary slippage in renewal timing. We expect to turn around the trajectory of the software business as the year progresses through ongoing product initiatives and refocused go-to-market strategies. Cengage Work delivered adjusted cash EBITDA of $4 million in the first quarter. This reinforces the inflection point passed in fiscal '24 when the business moved firmly into profitability with rapidly expanding margins as the business scales. For the full year, we expect Cengage work to deliver another year of strong double-digit revenue growth, whilst meaningfully increasing its EBITDA contribution and margins. In Cengage Select, Q1 cash revenues were $87 million, 7% lower than the prior period driven principally by expected timing effects in the research business. English Language Teaching had a solid start to the year with adjusted cash revenues of $34 million, up 4%. This reflects continued strong growth in the U.S. and lower returns, which outweighs slower starts in other regions following strong finishes to fiscal '24. As we covered in our last update, in fiscal '25, we expect overall revenue growth to moderate in ELT and to be broadly flat. This reflects the combination of sustained strong underlying revenue and profit growth momentum across all core markets being offset by expected changes in the commercial model on the large Ministry of Education contract in Europe, Middle East and Africa. As a result of this, we expect a one-time rebasing of revenues in fiscal '25 of around GBP 20 million without any significant impact on the profit base. Research had a slower start to the year. Q1 adjusted cash revenues were $41 million, broadly in line with our expectations whilst up 13% against a strong prior period comparative. Q1 performance was held back by timing of archived sales with several large deals completed in the first quarter of the prior year and slippage of subscription renewals into the second quarter. We expect these timing effects to reverse as we progress through fiscal '25. For the full year, we expect research to build on its track record and deliver another year of low single-digit revenue growth, whilst expanding its margins as benefits of cost-saving initiatives come through. In the Other segment, Q1 cash revenues were $12 million, $2 million behind the prior period, again in a seasonally very small quarter. This reflects adverse phasing of export orders in the Australia K-12 business with the malady business off to a solid start. For the full year, we expect the Australia K-12 business to stabilize and the lady to deliver another year of good growth. Turning to our cash performance. Unlevered free cash flow or operating cash flow for Q1 was an outflow of $58 million. This compares to an outflow of GBP 93 million in the prior period, an improvement of $36 million. The Q1 cash utilization principally reflects the normal cycle of the business. That's both the sales cycle and the relative timing of royalties, annual incentives and other expense payments, which are the key drivers of the change in working capital in the quarter. The improvement in operating cash performance reflects accelerating EBITDA growth and improved working capital. The uplift in working capital is driven by normalization of short-term payment delays, which impacted the last quarter of fiscal '24 and sustainable working capital benefits from our ongoing global working capital efficiency program. These significantly outweigh the reducing drag of our ongoing investments in global business systems with the core program now in its final year. We expect to maintain strong upward momentum in operating cash performance in fiscal '25 and expect to deliver significantly improved operating cash conversion compared to the 69% achieved in fiscal '24. Q1 levered free cash flow was an outflow of GBP 127 million. This is after nonoperating cash flows of GBP 42 million and lower interest payments, including timing effects driven by the refinancing. As touched on earlier, we have now substantially advanced the execution of our cost savings program. We expect total onetime implementation costs of around $85 million to $90 million, which are largely cash costs and savings of at least GBP 100 million over fiscal '25 and '26. Of the onetime costs, we incurred profit and loss charges of GBP 59 million in fiscal '24 and a further GBP 20 million in the first quarter of this year. We have paid out $33 million in fiscal '24 and a further GBP 29 million in the first quarter. We expect the balance of cost and cash payments to be incurred in fiscal '25. Under the terms of the preferred equity issue, the company can elect to meet dividend obligations, which are payable quarterly in arrears at a rate of 10% per annum in cash or payment in Cai. As we stated in our last update, our go-forward expectation is that we will pay dividends in cash, given the strong liquidity position of the company. Consistent with this, the Q1 dividend payable at the beginning of July was settled in cash. Future dividend payments will continue to be assessed in the context of our strategy and liquidity requirements. Turning to our liquidity position. Over fiscal '24, we successfully refinanced the entire capital structure, driving a step change in leverage and providing greater financial flexibility and a long runway to support the execution of our strategy and drive future growth and equity value. With the benefits of improving cash generation, the business continued to bolster its already strong liquidity position. We finished the quarter with cash balances of GBP 133 million and total liquidity of $321 million, boosted by increased availability under the new revolving credit facility. Net leverage at the end of Q1 was 3.1x. This is broadly stable to the position at the end of fiscal '24, with growth in trailing 12 months EBITDA, offsetting the temporary drag of cash utilization in the first quarter. We expect net leverage to progressively improve through the balance of the year, driven by continued growth in EBITDA and strong cash generation. This reduction in leverage is expected to drive further interest savings over time. Our new term loan provides for reductions in spread of up to 50 basis points in 2 increments of 25 basis points. These are tied to reductions in net leverage, which we expect to meet in the next 12 to 18 months. To close, we are reconfirming our guidance for the full fiscal year 2025. We are moving through this year with strong growth momentum underpinned by a solid first quarter and sales pipelines and leading indicators supporting our expectations of a successful fall season. In fiscal '24, through our digital and education for employment strategies, we reached 2 important inflection points. Our U.S. higher education business returned to growth and Cengage work moved meaningfully into profitability with rapidly expanding margins as the business scales. We expect both of these trends to be sustained. With this momentum, we expect Cengage Group to deliver another year of robust top line growth, underpinned by our proven go-to-market strategies and execution capabilities, which have driven our sustained growth over the last 3 fiscal years. We have substantially advanced the execution of our cost savings program. We now expect to deliver incremental cost savings of at least $100 million over fiscal '25 and fiscal '26, which is above the upper end of our previously disclosed range of $90 million to $100 million. Of this, we expect incremental savings of over GBP 60 million in fiscal '25. With these incremental cost savings and our inherent strong unit economics, we expect to meaningfully improve EBITDA growth above the 10% achieved in fiscal '24 and further accelerate margin expansion. The combination of expected strong EBITDA growth and working capital efficiencies is expected to improve cash generation and operating cash conversion. We will provide an update with more refined guidance during next quarter's call with the benefit of the results of the fall selling season behind us, which we go into with strong sales and business momentum. I will now pass back to the operator for questions.

[Operator]

Thank you. The floor is now open for questions. [Operator Instructions]. And there are no questions in queue at this time. I would now like to turn the floor back to Michael Hansen for closing remarks.

[Michael Hansen, executive]

Thank you, and thanks for all of you listening into the call today. We take the absence of questions as an indication that both the results are strong. And hopefully, the explanation of the results was clear. If that is not the case, we're always available to talk to you after the call. With that, have a good rest of your summer and look forward to talking to you in the call. Thank you, and goodbye.

[Operator]

Thank you. This does conclude today's conference call. You may disconnect your phone lines at this time, and have a wonderful day. Thank you for your participation.