Earnings Labs

Element Solutions Inc (ESI)

Q2 2008 Earnings Call· Thu, Jul 24, 2008

$42.77

+10.29%

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. And welcome to the ITT Educational Services Second Quarter 2008 Earnings Conference Call. At this time all participants are in a listen-only mode. A brief question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. (Operator instructions) As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. Joining us today from the management team of ITT Educational Services we have Kevin Modany, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Dan Fitzpatrick, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Before we begin, ITT Educational Services, Inc. wishes to remind you that this conference call may include forward-looking information. Actual results may differ from the information presented during this call. For additional information please review the section on forward-looking information contained in today's news release or in the company’s public filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Thank you. Mr. Modany, you may begin.

Kevin Modany

President

Thank you. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for joining us on this conference call to review our operating and financial results for the second quarter and first six months of 2008. With me on the call as usual is our Senior Vice President, Chief Financial Officer, Dan Fitzpatrick. Let me begin by providing a summary of what we will review with you on today’ call. We'll start by expanding on the extremely strong second quarter operating results, and we reported to you on our press release earlier this morning. We’ll then provide an update regarding the progress made during the quarter and some of the growth initiatives. We'll touch briefly on the current student lending environment and provide an update on our efforts to address the disruptions in the financing market. At that point, I will hand things over to Dan who will provide some additional detail regarding the outstanding second quarter financial results. Following the conclusion of his prepared remarks and a few summarizing remarks by me, we'll open up the phone lines for Q&A. With the agenda for the call out of the way, let's get started. As you have already read in this morning’s press release we reported tremendous results for the second quarter of 2008. Our results exceeded our internal expectations and further demonstrate the commitment and resolve of our faculty, staff, and management to focus on student success as their top priority. Those excellent results coupled with the strong outlook that we have for our business as we enter the second half of the year, have caused us increase our internal 2008 EPS goal from the range of $4.10 to $4.60 to the revised range of $4.65 to $4.75. As we reported in our press release this morning, we believe that we…

Dan Fitzpatrick

Chief Financial Officer

Thanks, Kevin. I'd like to begin as usual by reviewing the key financial highlights for the quarter. In the three months ended June30, 2008, revenue increased 13.6% to 246.4 million compared to 217 million in the same period in 2007. Revenue increase was primarily due to a 9.9% increase in total student enrolment as of March 31, 2008 compared to the same period in 2007, and the 5% increase in tuition that became effective with the academic quarter that began in March 2008. Revenue increase was partially offset by an 80 basis point decline student persistence in the second quarter 2008 compared to the same prior year period as a result of the increased number of graduates during the quarter as Kevin previously mentioned. Revenue per student increased 3.3% in the three months ended June 30, 2008 compared to the same prior year period. Cost of educational services increased 4.6 million or 5.1% to 95.2 million in the three months ended June 30, 2008 compared to 90.6 million in the three months ended June 30, 2007 primarily due to higher costs to support our increased number of students and operate our new colleges. The increase in the cost of educational services was partially offset by greater efficiencies in operating our colleges. As reported previously, the improved efficiency of our operating model was due to a more effective utilization of our existing staffing and facility and was supported by current and previous investments in the technological infrastructure. As a result, the cost of educational services as a percentage of revenue decreased 310 basis points to 38.6% in the second quarter of 2008. This compares to 41.7% in the three months ended June 30, 2007. Student services and administrative expenses increased 6.2 million or 9% to 74.9 million in the second quarter…

Kevin Modany

President

Thanks, Dan. I believe that you can tell by our comments today that the management team is very upbeat and then we like we're seeing in terms of the overall operating environment right now for high quality post secondary education institutions like ITT Technical Institutes. We of course will continue to work on the student financing challenges, but we believe that we've made substantial progress on this front over the past six months. We have more work to do, we believe that we are well-positioned to achieve our near-term goals as well as operating and financial performance over the long haul that is in line with our historical results. We remain committed to delivering a high quality education to our students and increasing the value proposition for ITT Technical Institutes graduates across the country. We strongly believe that shareholder value will be created and delivered over the long-term through our efficient execution of the business model and our singular focus on increasing student success. At this point I'd like to ask the operator to open up the lines and we'd be pleased to entertain any questions you may have.

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, we will be conducting a question-and-answer session. (Operator instructions) Our first question comes from Jerry Herman with Stifel Nicolaus. Please state your question.

Jerry Herman

Analyst · Stifel Nicolaus. Please state your question

Thanks. Good morning, everybody. Nice quarter, guys. I just wanted to pursue the advertising spend again and maybe in the context of the very strong start numbers that existed. Can you talk about placement versus price on advertising spend? Meaning the volume of advertising you did relative to the pricing that you were paying for that advertising.

Kevin Modany

President

I will just say I think you're hitting on it exactly. Really what we're talking about here is that we did not make any material changes to the volume of placements necessary to support any of the growth initiatives, whether they're new programs, new locations or whatever, really what we're seeing here is we’re taking advantage of some of the price differential there and probably a supply and demand thing relative to changes in the marketplace.

Jerry Herman

Analyst · Stifel Nicolaus. Please state your question

Okay. Great. And with regard to the strong starts, can you talk about what (inaudible) matriculation you had on that number as –

Kevin Modany

President

Sure.

Jerry Herman

Analyst · Stifel Nicolaus. Please state your question

Go ahead.

Dan Fitzpatrick

Chief Financial Officer

Nothing more than normal quite frankly. We’re seeing strong intake on the front end of the process and strong demand. So, there was really nothing unusual on either front.

Jerry Herman

Analyst · Stifel Nicolaus. Please state your question

And then one question for Dan if I may, the accounts receivable, this is looking at some of these issues little differently, but accounts receivable number, can you maybe talk about the increase there year-over-year and what part of that was contributed by delays in FFELP and what part by your own internal funding?

Dan Fitzpatrick

Chief Financial Officer

Well, Jerry, we're not going to break out that level of detail, but what I will say the other thing you need to keep in mind is some of the benefits that we'll get as we receive the proceeds of the additional 2000 and sub monies for the students in July and going forward, some of that will in fact offset – now again, the vast majority will offset the deferred revenue going forward, but they are admittedly. Both of those things contributed, we really don't break it out at that level of detail.

Jerry Herman

Analyst · Stifel Nicolaus. Please state your question

Great. Thanks. I'll turn it over.

Kevin Modany

President

Okay. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Gary Bisbee with Lehman Brothers. Please state your question.

Gary Bisbee

Analyst · Lehman Brothers. Please state your question

Hi, guys. My congratulations on the quarter.

Kevin Modany

President

Thank you.

Gary Bisbee

Analyst · Lehman Brothers. Please state your question

Can you tell us what percent of revenue in the quarter was private loans? Is that 12 to 13 – is it right to think of it sort of a blended number once you get past the loan amount increase in July it will go down and it was above that?

Kevin Modany

President

The 12 to 13% really is kind of a forward-looking number. So you are that more factoring in the Title IV activity. The additional $2,000 on the Title IV as a result of recent legislation. So that’s encompassed in the 12 to 13. We really haven't seen that yet and we won't see it until we get past the July 1 date which from this point forward of course we will.

Gary Bisbee

Analyst · Lehman Brothers. Please state your question

So what was it in the quarter? And can you tell us the exact number of loans that you underwrote for your students in the quarter?

Kevin Modany

President

Yeah, we're not breaking out that level of detail, Jerry in terms of the amount of temp credit or internal financing that we’re utilizing and we're trying to give you a more macro view of it. The best way to think about this from our perspective is just trying to have you look at the cash flow and give you a forward-looking view of the free cash flow. I think if you look at where we're at to-date on free cash flow year-over-year you kind of look at the second half of the year you can see what we're projecting in terms of cash flow coming from Title IV and private loans and we think that gives you a pretty good look at it without us breaking out all the different pieces of the (inaudible).

Gary Bisbee

Analyst · Lehman Brothers. Please state your question

I will try one more. Can you tell us roughly where you're reserving against the loans that you’re making?

Kevin Modany

President

Again, we're not breaking out the reserve detail. That’s the best [ph].

Gary Bisbee

Analyst · Lehman Brothers. Please state your question

I will give you a – my $0.02 on it which is that there is going to be fear in the marketplace that you're under reserving unless you can give people at some point some sense of how you're thinking about it that. My advice is to rethink that when you have future opportunities to talk to us. I will ask one more question though. The SG&A you've obviously done a terrific job and the advertising expense sounds like that really helped. When I go back and look at the last five years, it looks to me like just a seasonal pattern for your business like SG&A happens to fall quite a bit in the second half of a calendar year versus the first half. Is it right to think that should happen again? And maybe the second part of the question is do you have a better handle and you’re willing to comment on what amount of incremental costs you're going to have just to do the lending, like I think you said you might outsource servicing and some other things like that? Thanks.

Kevin Modany

President

Yeah, I think in terms of the pattern of the expensing current, nothing materially different there. We will expect to see some upside on the marketing spend as we talked about related to some general softness in the market there is that opportunity and we talked a little bit about that. Our expected spending below the 10 to 15% increase that we originally planned. So that's the only difference in the timing issue there. Go ahead.

Gary Bisbee

Analyst · Lehman Brothers. Please state your question

Just any sense what it's going to cause to actually do the loans yourself? You just that report I think maybe a couple million dollars I wanted to make sure it wasn't, just ballpark if you'd give a sense.

Kevin Modany

President

I don’t think we gave that kind of detail, but I can tell you that we're not anticipating a significant amount of external costs relative to the internal financing program at this point.

Gary Bisbee

Analyst · Lehman Brothers. Please state your question

Okay. Thanks for the color.

Kevin Modany

President

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Brandon Dobell with William Blair. Please state your question.

Brandon Dobell

Analyst · William Blair. Please state your question

Thanks. One more kind of beat the dead horse (inaudible) on deferred revenue. I'm assuming that your comments would imply that year-over-year declines were really unrelated to disbursement timing issues and there was nothing in the way they were having to do account for using your own balance sheet that would change how that revenue is accounted for in deferred revenue which is relates to timing issue, is that fair?

Dan Fitzpatrick

Chief Financial Officer

Yeah, there is a timing issue, but the other thing is still I mean there's no doubt that there is less private loan dollars coming in, but that coupled with the delay in the FFELP disbursements is really what you're seeing there. Relative to how we would recognize revenue on internal financing or otherwise, no impact there. You're not going to see anything from that perspective.

Brandon Dobell

Analyst · William Blair. Please state your question

From a different point of view here, if you look at your physical locations and compare maybe recent school openings in the last year or so to what you guys saw three or four years ago and then look across the network now versus three or four years ago, how we think about the level or the number of people per location or the amount of FFELP service work that students can do, just trying to get a sense for from a personnel perspective what head count growth looks like now as you open new schools versus where it was before if you're getting a lot more efficiency because you just go on adding or don’t need to add as many people as you open new schools?

Kevin Modany

President

Really, nothing made very materially different there, quite frankly. We're seeing efficiencies in the new school model as we talked about before.

Brandon Dobell

Analyst · William Blair. Please state your question

Yes.

Kevin Modany

President

That's more so probably because we're ramping up on the enrolment a little more quickly and then being more efficient in terms of the way we're executing on the delivery of the educational service. But when you’re talking about a start-up there's a certain number of people you need to have there, certain number of positions that need to be filled, and that really hasn't changed very much over the years.

Brandon Dobell

Analyst · William Blair. Please state your question

Okay. And then you also mentioned a little bit about enrolment counselors or recruiters. How do we think about the relative magnitude of the productivity you're seeing from new hires versus the existing stock of people. Just trying and (inaudible) trying to get a sense of what kind of assumptions you built into your thought process going forward for how much more productive they get or when you’re making changes there if you look at what the enrollment growth should be?

Kevin Modany

President

We talked a lot in the past about how new enrollment counselors are certainly not as productive as experienced and that seems the reason. We've seen a little bit of an uptick there, but I don't think anything that moves the dial. When we look forward we're not making any kind of material changes to our expectations and we think that if we can maintain these current rates of efficiency and maybe we would stay conversion rates, we should be in great shape.

Brandon Dobell

Analyst · William Blair. Please state your question

Okay. And then one final question. Anyway that kind of frame out the relative magnitude or the relative size of the graduations this quarter versus last and if you think about the next two or three quarters going forward, any changes there in the size of what those graduating classes might look like, just given how good the retention was back in '07?

Kevin Modany

President

Sure. No, the graduate increases are expected to continue in the second half and probably at about the same level we saw during the current quarter.

Brandon Dobell

Analyst · William Blair. Please state your question

Okay. Thanks, guys.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Trace Urdan with Signal Hill. Please state your question.

Trace Urdan

Analyst · Signal Hill. Please state your question

Thanks. I'm wondering given the strong new student start whether you believe or you have any anecdotal evidence for the ideas that the blended program offerings that you have and the ability to take classes online is a material factor in light of where gas prices are right now and if it makes you more competitive relative to other options that students might be looking at?

Dan Fitzpatrick

Chief Financial Officer

Good question, Trace. And quite frankly, we're not seeing that. I mean, we're still seeing the majority of our enrolments on the resident side, and almost a great majority of them purely resident. So we're not seeing any impact from the gas prices. We heard that anecdotally and read about it, but we're not seeing it in the numbers.

Trace Urdan

Analyst · Signal Hill. Please state your question

Okay. And then I wondered, Dan, maybe you could, obviously, you're hearing the deferred revenue kind of – you've explained it well, but it kind of bagged the question about what are we likely to see in the balance sheet as your lending ramps up. And I wondered if you – I get that you don't want to sort of reveal too many specifics. But maybe you could just talk about what the mechanism is as a private loan comes in. Do you guys – will you put all that money for the loan into the deferred revenue as though it were coming from a third-party source or will it not work that way? How are we likely to see those loans kind of come through your balance sheet?

Dan Fitzpatrick

Chief Financial Officer

What we're trying to do is give some color on that when we try to give some guidance as to where we think we're going to be on free cash flow for the year. And as you can see that it's not going to change dramatically (inaudible). That’s going to impact both the AR side of things and deferred revenue, but nonetheless trying to shed some light if you will, going forward where we think free cash flow would be, and we feel – again, the number we put out there was we think we can exceed that number. So that how we’re trying to address that point. We can’t give you a little color.

Kevin Modany

President

I may – Trace, just to add a little bit to it, as you look at the current quarter and you’re trying to think about looking at the current quarter results and what does that mean to the forward-looking. I mean, you really have to factor in these three kind of moving variables that were going on during the quarter. First and foremost is that we changed FFELP lenders, we brought on new FFELP lenders and that processing was different and as a result it delayed some of the cash receipts. So we have an impact there from that. Of course, we have an impact from the increased use of internal financing and AK [ph] the decrease use to private lending. But thirdly, we’re going to have an offset of that amount as a result of the receipt for the additional $2,000 of Title IV loans. So that comes July 1. That offsets that private differential. We’re not seeing that yet. So if you just purely look at the shift in deferred revenue right now, (inaudible) overstate the expected impact looking forward. So the simplest way for us to try to summarize that for everybody instead of breaking out all these moving parts was to say okay, looking forward we're going to take a 12-month view of this thing, we think we can exceed $150 million in free cash flow. You take a look at where we are today you can see what that means for the second half and it looks pretty good. So, that's the best way we can kind of take a macro view this and try to give you some sense of it without trying to break out all this specific detail on each moving part if that makes sense.

Trace Urdan

Analyst · Signal Hill. Please state your question

Okay. Thanks.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Corey Greendale with First Analysis. Please state your question.

Corey Greendale

Analyst · First Analysis. Please state your question

Hi, Good morning.

Kevin Modany

President

Good morning.

Corey Greendale

Analyst · First Analysis. Please state your question

First question again on the same issue. The first of the three items that you broke out, Kevin, is – it already kind of more in line with what you – are the systems more running as you expected? In other words, have you already received the disbursements that were delayed from June or is this more of an expectation as the quarter goes down?

Kevin Modany

President

That's a good point. No, we actually have – already made the corrections necessary, and we're seeing more normalized disbursements.

Corey Greendale

Analyst · First Analysis. Please state your question

So you have evidence just…?

Kevin Modany

President

Yes, exactly.

Corey Greendale

Analyst · First Analysis. Please state your question

Okay. Understood. Then second question, how many – real time how many lenders are you working with now and where do they stand in terms of being up and running into system?

Kevin Modany

President

From a private lending side, we're getting the majority of the disbursements from three to four lenders although there are others involved as well.

Corey Greendale

Analyst · First Analysis. Please state your question

And those three to four are all up and running?

Kevin Modany

President

Yes.

Corey Greendale

Analyst · First Analysis. Please state your question

Okay. Next question I had was the revenue for student growth was a little bit below the 5% price increase and I’d expected that to be more in line with the 5% given that retention was stable, what’s driving that below the 5%?

Dan Fitzpatrick

Chief Financial Officer

Corey, the one thing, we're talking about retention be still in the persistence impact overall so that is going to drive it down some.

Corey Greendale

Analyst · First Analysis. Please state your question

Okay. So you'd expect it to stay around this level of growth, that kind of 3% growth going forward?

Dan Fitzpatrick

Chief Financial Officer

In that neighborhood. Yes.

Corey Greendale

Analyst · First Analysis. Please state your question

Okay. Then next question I had was on the – I think Kevin you said that overall enrollment was positive in each of the six schools, is that true of new student growth as well?

Kevin Modany

President

Yes, it was. New student and total.

Corey Greendale

Analyst · First Analysis. Please state your question

Okay. And last quick one, on the ad expense, was it primarily television that you’re talking about that was cheaper than expected or is that across all forms of media?

Kevin Modany

President

Across all media.

Corey Greendale

Analyst · First Analysis. Please state your question

Okay. Great. Thanks very much.

Kevin Modany

President

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Mark Marostica with Piper Jaffray. Please state your question.

Mark Marostica

Analyst · Piper Jaffray. Please state your question

Thank you. Just want to follow on that last question and ask whether or not you changed or alter your media mix in the quarter in addition to taking advantage of some lower pricing?

Kevin Modany

President

We do that fairly regularly, Mark, but we didn't do anything materially different. We're still seeing the majority of the dollars going to television.

Mark Marostica

Analyst · Piper Jaffray. Please state your question

Got it. I want to ask more macro question here. If we look back to the last economic downturn, did you see any pressure on starts or enrolments, any of your schools of study that you would attribute to a slowing economy, and perhaps if you could comment on that relative to the situation we're faced with no economically?

Kevin Modany

President

Nothing in general. I mean whenever we see disruption in the technology markets, we see some downward pressure there. So and we've talked before about being more specifically tied to what will be happening in the technology market. But I would say as a general sense, no, we don't see anything other than that.

Mark Marostica

Analyst · Piper Jaffray. Please state your question

And then relative to that point, Kevin, is there typically a lag that you see that certainly may not happen right away or materialize on your starts right away, but is there some sort of metric you can give us as far as what type of lag you might see relative to the effect on certain movements?

Kevin Modany

President

It's pretty quick, Mark, quite frankly. If we were going to see something, we would have already seen it. And we’re just not seeing any of that right now and as we look forward in terms of our demand going into the second half of the year, it's really strong right now.

Mark Marostica

Analyst · Piper Jaffray. Please state your question

Got it. And then there was a comment made in the prepared remarks around number of student retention initiatives that might be in play here. I'm just wondering if you could help give us a little bit of color if you would on some of those and whether or not you think they will have a near-term impact or whether there more longer term in nature?

Kevin Modany

President

Let me take the second half, first. They're probably more longer term in nature. I don’t want to (inaudible) we’re recreating the wheel here, but there are basic things you can do in terms of student retention and you’re focusing on the basics so that making sure students are attending classes, making sure the quality of instruction is there, analyzing all the data course by course, section by section, putting initiatives then where you see some gaps in terms of your expected performance. So it's nothing that we haven't done before. Some things that we've had success with in the past we’re reinvigorating some of those program, but we're – when we're thinking about the guidance or talking to you about your model, we're really talking about trying to maintain the improvements we had last year. If you look in the second half of last year, probably third and fourth quarter we were north of 100 basis points on the persistence which results driven by retention. If we can hold that in the second half, we're going to be pleased with that.

Mark Marostica

Analyst · Piper Jaffray. Please state your question

Great, and then one last item. And I just want a point of clarification. I think in your remarks you talked about not changing your enrolment discipline. Would I assume then that the same type of student you would have enrolled under the prior lender you will continue to enroll going forward?

Kevin Modany

President

That's correct.

Mark Marostica

Analyst · Piper Jaffray. Please state your question

Okay. Thank you.

Kevin Modany

President

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Kevin Doherty with Banc of America Securities. Please state your question.

Kevin Doherty

Analyst · Banc of America Securities. Please state your question

Thanks. I know there's some items you obviously have some sensitivity around, but could you just help us understand, maybe we are in the process, you’re of understanding some of the default rate assumptions that you might have to use going forward for internal financing. And then separately, when you might begin to start to charge interest on some of that funding?

Kevin Modany

President

Yeah. I think to your first question, there's no lack of clarity in terms of what the default rate assumptions are. We're absolutely clear on what default rate assumptions which we’re using because we have a significant amount of history there. So, no lack of clarity there. No confusion as to what the reserve should be. Extremely comfortable in that regard. The question really is what type of student will make it through the underwriting criteria. First and foremost, the question that was out there was, are the underwriting standards moving? And they were. And so what we’re seeing now is we’re seeing some stability on those underwriting standards. Again, the liquidity has been tightened, but we're seeing some stability in terms of what the underwriting standards are. The second piece that we had talked about before is still outstanding is some of these other lenders that we're talking to and trying to bring them on. And by bringing them on how does that change with the expectations are in terms of throughput. So, it's not a question on what the reserve should be. That’s not a question – I mean there is no question. The question is what is the profile of students that will come through? And then therefore what will be left behind? And what will we have to fund with internal financing. So that’s the only question that’s outstanding.

Kevin Doherty

Analyst · Banc of America Securities. Please state your question

Could you just talk about maybe did any of that reserving occur in the quarter? I guess some still just a little confused how you have been accounting for the lending that you have been doing so far. Particularly, as we try to think about your earnings guidance and how you’re going to account for some of those items really I think it's a little tougher to get comfortable with that range if we don't know where you’re ad for some of those reserve assumptions or maybe how much of that 12 to 13% you think is going to be funded internally.

Kevin Modany

President

Sure.

Kevin Doherty

Analyst · Banc of America Securities. Please state your question

I'm just trying to think about – right some of the sensitivities around that earnings range.

Kevin Modany

President

Sure. Let me take some of the initial part of your question where you were asking about. Did we reserve anything in the quarter? Yes, we did. I mean we reported some internal financing, we reported appropriate reserve against that. So that is in the results right now. In terms of looking forward until we're exactly sure what ultimately will go through to private lending, it's hard for us to know what we're going to end up carrying. And while may seem simple to you both that we could have an exact number, you just can't until those variables solidify. So we're going to be conservative in terms of the way we reserve right now as much as the accounting regulations will allow us, but there should be no question in terms of what we reserve at this point.

Kevin Doherty

Analyst · Banc of America Securities. Please state your question

Okay. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Corey Greendale with First Analysis. Please state your question.

Corey Greendale

Analyst · First Analysis. Please state your question

Hi, (inaudible) to get back in that quickly. I had two follow-up questions. Kevin, on the 12 to 13% of revenue from private loans, just to clarify that, would that incorporate a 5% price increase for next year that you (inaudible) of the 13% after that?

Kevin Modany

President

Yeah, we think that will probably be the range. I don't want to get too ahead of ourselves there, but we'll see increases in FFELP brands and that will offset some of the price increase that we will see soon. Probably in the same range, again although we have not gone that far out in terms of that percentage from a guidance perspective.

Corey Greendale

Analyst · First Analysis. Please state your question

Okay. And second follow-up question I had is on the internal private lending, do you have a processor that you're currently working with? And when do you think you’re going to have the approvals that you're looking forward to start charging interest on those loans?

Kevin Modany

President

We're working with the processor right now. In terms of charging interest, it's probably the fourth quarter, maybe in the beginning of 2009.

Corey Greendale

Analyst · First Analysis. Please state your question

Okay. Thanks.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Kelly Flynn with Credit Suisse. Please state your question.

Kelly Flynn

Analyst · Credit Suisse. Please state your question

Thanks. Just on the free cash flow, could you just specify how you're defining that? Is that just the operating cash flow on the cash flow statement minus CapEx?

Dan Fitzpatrick

Chief Financial Officer

That's exactly it.

Kelly Flynn

Analyst · Credit Suisse. Please state your question

Okay. And then I know you've been asked many questions on this, but could you give us a sense of your 150 million target there? And what's the drag from deferred revenue change in '08? What's the assumed drag?

Kevin Modany

President

I'm trying to follow you here.

Kelly Flynn

Analyst · Credit Suisse. Please state your question

How much should we assume is negative impact of deferred revenue change in '08 to get you the 150 million? You’re saying it was weaker than it will be going forward, but that would be helpful.

Kevin Modany

President

I think actually we’re going [ph], Kelly. We're not breaking out the individual pieces there to be honest with you. We're trying to just again give you a macro color until we get some more of the details around how much is private, how much is that, because there's differences in the way those loans are disbursed and could have an impact on some of that. So it's hard for us to give – we think the conservative number is 150. There could be some upside on that if in fact we see some positive changes on the private lending side. So, again, trying to stop short of saying that we know (inaudible) where it all falls out. We think on a conservative side it's at least 150 million.

Kelly Flynn

Analyst · Credit Suisse. Please state your question

Okay, and then a simple question probably for you guys to answer. Could you just give us the exact definition of deferred revenue on your balance sheet? (inaudible) up from payments just from Title IV and private loans or what else there?

Kevin Modany

President

Sure. Deferred revenue is cash received not yet earned.

Kelly Flynn

Analyst · Credit Suisse. Please state your question

And then can you tell us how much historically has been Title IV cash receipt versus private loans?

Kevin Modany

President

It would be relatively close to the percentages received. So, you know, it's probably stock on 60, 70% Title IV, and somewhere around 25%, probably private. Some more in those ranges.

Kelly Flynn

Analyst · Credit Suisse. Please state your question

Okay. Thanks a lot.

Kevin Modany

President

Sure.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Suzi Stein with Morgan Stanley. Please state your question.

Suzi Stein

Analyst · Morgan Stanley. Please state your question

Hi, just a question on when students are accessing the ESI internal loan program, is there any difference in the out of pocket costs that they have versus when they access the third-party loans?

Dan Fitzpatrick

Chief Financial Officer

It's actually a little bit less. There's some origination costs that students pay whenever they’re accessing a third party loan, but it wouldn't be material to them. They wouldn’t notice at this point in time, but it's a little bit less.

Suzi Stein

Analyst · Morgan Stanley. Please state your question

Okay. And also are you doing anything to try to increase cash payments from students?

Kevin Modany

President

You know, that's a good question, but we really kind of maxed out on that in terms of doing that previously. We’ve always we’re trying to push for cash payments when students could afford to do it, so we're still doing that, but I wouldn’t anticipate any upsell.

Suzi Stein

Analyst · Morgan Stanley. Please state your question

Okay. Thank you.

Kevin Modany

President

You're welcome.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Andrew Simon with JP Morgan Chase. Please state your question.

Andrew Simon

Analyst · JP Morgan Chase. Please state your question

Hi, Kevin and Dan. Could you talk about the operational efficiencies as to on the hedge services line, you gave some color on where it was coming from and the magnitude being 300, 310 basis points year-over-year, do you feel right that level of efficiency year-over-year will continue into the second half of the year?

Kevin Modany

President

Let me take the first part of your question. These operating efficiencies that we start similar to what we reported previously, really relative to the delivery, the educational services been efficient with our class room and facility space and talk about some technology we had implemented (inaudible) in doing that so, those are the things we're talking about. In terms of maintaining that level of expenditure in the second half of the year that certainly are our expectation, we will start anniversary as we get closer and closer to the point of implementation which we really already done and we even picked up some more efficiencies even that we anniversary, so you will start to see the year-over-year change kind of narrowing, but we anticipate continuing those. Those are one-time efficiency as I’ve said.

Andrew Simon

Analyst · JP Morgan Chase. Please state your question

It sounds like as you anniversary those I think going into next year you hold them but not increase from those high levels.

Kevin Modany

President

We are not projecting any additional increases over the efficiencies we have obtained. There are opportunities for us to get efficiencies, but we are not projecting those in any kind of guidance right now.

Andrew Simon

Analyst · JP Morgan Chase. Please state your question

Okay. When do you think that anniversaring starts to happen? Well, it's already happened. It was third quarter of ’06, fourth quarter of ’06 when we really start to putting those out there. We kind of ramp our anniversaried that already, but what happened was some of the technologies we put in we actually saw additional efficiencies as the field management team gaining more experience with the utilization. So, that kind of slows down as well. And so, you start to see again the gap on the year-over-year narrow.

Andrew Simon

Analyst · JP Morgan Chase. Please state your question

Okay. Sounds good. Thank you very much.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Gary Bisbee with Lehman Brothers. Please state your question.

Gary Bisbee

Analyst · Lehman Brothers. Please state your question

Hey, guys, one thing that hasn’t got a lot of commentary in the Q&A is actually to start which were pretty terrific. You said all six schools were up, can you give us any more color, is there any regional things you can talk about or any of those areas particularly strong – I know it's a smaller – seasonally a smaller quarter, so the numbers can jump around, but any more color you can give us as to why that number came in the way it did?

Kevin Modany

President

While we did see good strength on the technology side, we had been seeing that, but we saw in another little spike there (inaudible) and then in the other areas criminal justice and visits, CJ was strong, and business were just in kind of flat, we have been talking about that. We saw a little bit of a spike there as well. But I would say sort of technology and the CJ leading, FFELP [ph] sciences is too small to make a difference, Gary, but it will be the first two.

Gary Bisbee

Analyst · Lehman Brothers. Please state your question

Okay. And actually I heard a radio commercial the other day for a health sciences program, I guess, where are you with that in terms of adding that more campuses? Is that happened lot in '08 or that really going to be more something for next year? Thanks a lot.

Kevin Modany

President

It's more something for next year. We got a baseline number of colleges out there offering one or more of the health sciences program; we have been measured in our extension on that, more so than we or in other areas of our programs of study. And just that because it's new laws, we're trying to get our arms around it. So I'd say if we're going to see some list there it's ’09, also nursing is one of the programs there, and that's just something that takes a lot of time to work through some of the state regulation. So, that's a little bit of a slower sort of roll out on what we typically used to we don't have to deal with the state by state regulation

Gary Bisbee

Analyst · Lehman Brothers. Please state your question

Okay. Thanks a lot.

Kevin Modany

President

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Our final question comes from Jerry Herman with Stifel Nicolaus. Please state your question.

Jerry Herman

Analyst · Stifel Nicolaus. Please state your question

Hi, thanks, guys. (inaudible) a philosophical question for you that maybe would work into some numbers, you guys have said that you wouldn't change your enrolment criteria based on the funding issues, in light of the really strong start numbers, and what seems to be really strong demand for the product, how do you think about balancing that volume versus the incremental risk in this environment, i.e. the margin on the incremental students versus the risk associated with the students?

Kevin Modany

President

We are always thinking about sort of the profile of our student where we want to set that enrolment standard and how that might impact some of the academic aspects of what we do, and we set an enrolment standard for a profile of student, a minimum enrolment standard that we think works really well for us. We don't think about it in terms of the financial per se, we're thinking about where that level needs to be, that profile needs to be to establish the appropriate academic environment, that you can really have some negative impact here, if you go too low, quite frankly, that's certainly our belief, anyway. So, we feel comfortable with our level works very well, we've seen strong demand at that level, there's really no need for us to go beyond that. So, right now, what it works for us is working operationally and it's working financially. So, thinking philosophically or looking forward we really don't think we need to make changes to that model that is work so effectively for us, we're probably 10 or 15 years.

Jerry Herman

Analyst · Stifel Nicolaus. Please state your question

Yes, interior [ph] willing you take on more risk because the funding environment?

Kevin Modany

President

Well, again, we think we got a lot of information about the funding aspects of it and so we feel very comfortable with that. I mean the history we have is makes us comfortable and the risks we are taking there and at the end of the day we feel like it's the right investment to make and we want to continue to provide that, student profile that we know can succeed from an academic process, we want to provide them access to education. So there is a disruption in the marketplace that ahs limited their access. We feel it’s more than appropriate and very consistent with our mission to provide that access for them, and we can do so within the confines of our model as we look long-term we can achieve our long-term historical performance doing so. So, when you put all that together you really come to know other conclusion and this is the right thing to do for the business.

Jerry Herman

Analyst · Stifel Nicolaus. Please state your question

Okay, thanks.

Kevin Modany

President

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. I'll now turn the conference back over to management for closing comments.

Kevin Modany

President

Thank you very much. I want to thank everyone for participating on the call, and we look forward to talking with you again during our third quarter conference call. Thank you very much.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. This concludes today’s conference. Thank you all for your participation. All parties may disconnect now.