Brian E. Mueller
Good afternoon, and thank you for joining Grand Canyon Education's Second Quarter 2025 Conference Call. GCE had another strong quarter, producing online enrollment growth of 10.1% and hybrid growth, excluding the closed sites and those in teach-out, of 15.4%. With that, I would like to review the results of the 4 delivery platforms at GCE. First, the online campus at Grand Canyon University. New starts were up in the mid-teens in the second quarter of 2025, which exceeded our expectations, and total enrollment growth was 10.1%, which significantly exceeds GCU's long-term objectives. In the past, I have highlighted 4 reasons for the growth. They include continuing to roll out 20-plus new programs on an annual basis, working with over 5,500 employers directly to address workforce shortages, increased retention levels again in the second quarter and holding the line on tuition to maintain GCU's competitive pricing position. A fifth reason and one growing in significance is the number of students between 18 and 25 years old that are choosing to do college online. There are very few universities that have 303 programs delivered fully online. The online campus growth is benefiting from the growing trend of high school graduates that are doing their total program online as well as students attending the campus that go back and forth between living on campus and using the flexibility of online to engage in other life experiences. Given the trends I just discussed, we believe the momentum that exists in the second quarter will continue into the second half. Comps in the second half are more difficult, but we are still projecting new start growth will be in the mid- to high single digits. Second, the GCU ground campus for traditional students. As has been previously discussed, new and total traditional campus enrollments were down slightly year-over-year in the fall of 2024 for the reasons discussed on previous calls, including the difficulty of navigating the new FAFSA site. Although the spring intake is much less in the fall, we did see an increase in new students starting in -- at GCU in the spring of 2025 as compared to spring 2024, which helped offset the increasing number of students that graduated at the end of the fall semester. Summer ground enrollment increased 16% over the prior year. Traditional students included in the ground enrollment at GCU at June 30 of each year only includes traditional-aged students that have been attending campus that are taking summer school classes. This has become another reason students are able to graduate in less than 4 years. We believe GCU will reaccelerate new student growth on the ground campus because of its significant advantages, including very low price point, very low average debt levels, percent of students completing in less than 4 years and the relevancy of GCU's academic programs. We are currently approximately 10% ahead of last year in new student registrations for the fall of 2025. And although we continue to see greater than historical numbers of students registering and melting at this time of the year, we remain optimistic that we will start the fall 2025 semester 10% above last year in new students, but flat year-over-year in total on campus enrollment. Fall total enrollment is being greatly impacted by summer graduations. Summer school enrollment was greater than expected, and approximately 300 of those students took the credits needed to graduate in the summer rather than returning in the fall, which gets their professional careers started a semester earlier and reduces the debt level their families need to incur. As we move forward, there are 3 trends that are impacting traditional college campuses throughout the country: number one, the number of high school graduates on an annual basis continues to decline; number two, the percent of high school graduates that are choosing the 4- or 5-year baccalaureate path continues to go down, while the number of students choosing shorter certificate or trade programs is going up; number three, the number of high school graduates choosing a baccalaureate path but doing it fully online also continues to go up. We are in a very strong position given those trends. We have a high-quality, affordable offering on a GCU ground campus, but have even greater program choices for students that want to go fully online or to move back and forth between ground and online. In the future, we will be reporting growth of traditional students under 25 years old and the growth of nontraditional students 25 and older. The purpose will be to accurately reflect the flexibility that GCU provides to students across the lifespan, leading to growth levels greatly exceeding the overall trends across the country. Third, Grand Canyon Education's hybrid campus had an increase in enrollment year-over-year of 14% in the second quarter. Excluding the closed sites and those that are on teach-out, enrollment increased 15.4% year-over-year. We expect the new enrollment growth rate to remain up in the low to mid-teens during the second half of 2025. There are 2 main reasons for this continued growth. Number one, almost all of our active ABSN partners have responded to the younger students interested in ABSN programs by admitting advanced standing students or are in the process of making that change: students with partially completed degrees, having accumulated a great deal of debt and are very interested in nursing careers but didn't have an efficient way to earn the prerequisite science coursework. GCU created the science courses and some other gen ed courses so they could be delivered online in 8 weeks. Students can access these courses from anywhere in the world. There are start opportunities almost every week. These courses have been made very affordable, are taught by experienced faculty, class sizes are low, and there is a tremendous amount of academic support, including an artificial intelligence project, which provides students 24/7 access to tutoring. Since implementing these courses, we have already enrolled 17,085 students. We have a waterfall report that allows us to know how students are progressing through their prerequisite courses and when they will be eligible to start at one of our ABSN sites. Graduation rate of students who successfully entered the ABSN programs is in the mid-80s, and the first-time pass rate on the NCLEX exam is approximately 90%. We now have an extremely efficient way to get students academically eligible and prepared to enter the program. These positive results, we anticipate, will continue. There has never been greater interest among potential students for entering the health care professions, and specifically nursing. But because of the low unemployment rate, the interest has shifted to these younger students who haven't accumulated a great deal of debt, completing the bachelor's degree in another area and are underemployed. Nearly all our partners have responded positively to the change needed to serve the advanced standing students. Our goal is still to have 80 locations with our partners with 40 of them -- with 40 of the locations being GCU locations. In 2025, we will open 5 additional sites, including a second location in the Boston area in the fall; another site in New York City; and 3 GCU sites in 2025, 1 in Albuquerque, New Mexico, which was opened in the first quarter of 2025, 1 in Lake Mary, Florida, near Orlando, which was opened in the second quarter of 2025, and 1 in Englewood, Colorado, south of Denver, which will open in the fall. The addition of GCU's 3 new site openings will bring its ABSN location total to 11. We are also expanding our programmatic offerings with our hybrid partners by adding a graduate nursing program with 7 specializations with Northeastern University, including master's and doctoral level degrees, which started this summer at several East Coast locations; a hybrid occupational therapy bridge to master's program to the already successful St. Kate's occupational therapy assistant hybrid program; an online health science degree with Utica University; and GCU will launch a Bachelor of Science in Occupational Therapy Assistants program and a special -- a speech language pathology program in 2025 at the Phoenix West Valley location. Adding additional programs at our hybrid locations is an important component to our business plan. Fourth, the Center for Workforce Development at Grand Canyon University. In the 2022-'23 school year, we started 80 students in GCU's electricians pre-apprenticeship program in partnership with companies that are experiencing labor shortages in that area and are excited about hiring GCU's graduates. The program consists of 4 credit courses and runs 1 semester. 212 students successfully completed the program in 2024-'25, including 11 in the Austin, Texas hybrid location. In fall 2023, we started GCU's manufacturing CNC machinist pathway in partnership with companies that are experiencing labor shortages in that area. The program consists of 4 credit courses and runs 1 semester. 33 students completed the program in 2024-'25 fiscal year. Those students attend for 20 hours a week and then work in the facility as a paid employee for 20 hours. At the end of the semester, they received a manufacturing certificate and became eligible for employment in Arizona's fast-growing manufacturing industry. Students in GCU's growing engineering college are getting experience in this manufacturing facility, which is adding to their engineering education. Recently, this manufacturing company, owned and operated by a recent GCU graduate and housed in a GCU facility, bought a manufacturing company, which has more than doubled its capacity and provides the opportunity to significantly grow the number of students involved in this program. GCU will also be rolling out 2 new 2-semester pathway programs. One is a construction general pathway starting fall of 2025, and one is a manufacturing general pathway starting fall of 2026. I started out by talking about the relevant programs and creative delivery models that GCE has implemented with its 20 partner institutions. In the 7 years since GCE has become a service provider, it has helped its partners accomplish the following. In that time, GCE has helped Grand Canyon University graduate 200,506 students, 54,622 in education, including 26,085 first-time teachers at a time when teacher shortages have created a national crisis; 52,478 in nursing and health care professions, including 3,138 pre- licensure nurses at a time when there is a huge shortage of nurses; 41,122 in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences, including thousands in counseling and social work, where there are also huge shortages. The College of Business has become one of the largest business schools in America and has produced 35,168 graduates. The College of Science, Engineering and Technology has grown by 219% and provided 8,702 graduates. The Doctoral College, Honors College and College of Theology also continue to grow. In addition, GCE has helped its other partners graduate 19,320 pre-licensure nurses and occupational therapist assistants. The numbers that I have just cited have all happened in the 7 years since the GCU/GCE transaction and since GCE has become an education services provider. All of this has occurred while GCE paid $596 million in federal and state taxes. While state universities and community colleges pull money out of the tax system, GCE has helped produce nearly 220,000 graduates while pouring millions of dollars into the system. For those shareholders interested, we recently issued our 2025 Corporate Social Responsibility Report. The report is located at gce.com under investors/corporate governance. We are very proud of the social contributions that the company in concert with its university partners and its employees make to our communities. Before I discuss the financial results, I want to spend a few minutes talking about the regulatory environment. As I talk to investors, it seems like there's confusion about the impact that the Big Beautiful Bill that was passed earlier this summer will have on universities such as our partners. Although some universities might be impacted by the Big Beautiful Bill, our partners should see little to no impact. And most of what is in the Big Beautiful Bill were things that I have endorsed for years. I was very pleased that a Workforce Pell Grant Program was created. Our country needs more students going into programs such as what GCU is creating in its Center for Workforce Development, and the students in those programs should qualify for Pell Grants. I have also been a proponent of lowering loan limits at the graduate and professional level and giving universities more ability to limit what is borrowed by its students, all of which is in the Big Beautiful Bill. All of our partners' graduate programs are delivered either online or hybrid, and thus the tuition levels are significantly below loan limits. Most of the overborrowing occurs because students take the entire difference between loan limits and the amount due for tuition and fees for living expenses. And in a lot of cases, that extra borrowing is not needed as our partner students are working adults. Reducing the amount available for living expenses will, in most cases, reduce the amount of debt master's and professional students take on. Loan limits were not changed at the bachelor's level where they are already fairly low. I also believe the institutional accountability provision contained in the BBB is a much more appropriate way to analyze the value of higher education to students and taxpayers. We will not know the impact of this provision on our partner programs until Ed releases information. But given GCU's low tuition rates and the high income obtained by graduates of our partners' nursing program, we do not expect any issues. Service revenue was $247.5 million for the second quarter of 2025, an increase of $20 million or 8.8% as compared to $227.5 million for the second quarter of 2024. The increase year-over-year in service revenue was primarily due to an increase in partner enrollments of 10.3%, including an increase in GCU online enrollments of 10.1% and university partner enrollments at the off-campus classroom and laboratory sites of 14%, partially offset by a decrease in revenue per student year-over-year, primarily due to contract modifications for some of our university partners in which the revenue share percentage was reduced in exchange for us no longer reimbursing the partner for certain faculty costs, which had the effect of reducing revenue per student and a slight decline year-over- year in revenue per student for online students due to the continued mix shift to students that have a slightly lower net tuition rate. Operating income and operating margin for the 3 months ended June 30, 2025, was $51.8 million and 20.9%, respectively, as compared to $42.7 million and 18.8%, respectively, for the same period in 2024. Net income increased 19.1% to $41.5 million for the second quarter of 2025 compared to $34.9 million for the same period in 2024. GAAP diluted income per share for the 3 months ended June 30, 2025, is $1.48. As adjusted, non-GAAP diluted income per share for the 3 months ended June 30, 2025, is $1.53, which is $0.16 above consensus estimates. With that, I would like to turn it over to Dan Bachus, our CFO, to give a little more color on our 2025 second quarter, talk about changes in the income statements, balance sheet and other items as well as to discuss the 2025 guidance.