Good morning and welcome to Wiley’s Second Quarter Fiscal Year 2021 Earnings Call. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. At this time, I'd like to introduce Wiley's Vice President of Investor Relations, Brian Campbell. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Good morning, and welcome to Wiley's second quarter 2021 earnings update. With me today are Brian Napack, President and Chief Executive Officer; and John Kritzmacher, Chief Financial Officer. Brian and John will make some formal comments and then we'll open up for some questions. A few reminders to start. The call is being recorded and may include forward-looking statements. You shouldn't rely on these statements as actual results may differ materially and are subject to factors discussed in our SEC filings. The company does not undertake any obligations to update or revise forward-looking statements to reflect subsequent events or circumstances. Also Wiley provides non-GAAP measures as a supplement to evaluate underlying operating profitability and performance trends. These measures do not have standardized meanings prescribed by U.S. GAAP, and therefore, may not be comparable to similar measures used by other companies, nor should they be viewed as alternatives to measures under GAAP. Unless otherwise noted, we will refer to non-GAAP metrics on the call and variances are on a year-over-year basis and will exclude the impact of currency. After the call, a copy of this presentation and a playback of the webcast will be available on our Investor Relations webpage. I'll now turn the call over to Wiley's President and CEO, Brian Napack.

Good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining today. Our performance this quarter underscores the value of Wiley’s role in the global economy. Through the year, we've seen an acceleration of the trends that have defined our markets for years. And this is driving a strong increase in the demand for scientific research and online education. Our first half performance demonstrates that our longstanding strategy to lead an open research in digital career focused education is paying off, especially in these extraordinary and challenging times. Now, more than ever, the world is turning to research and education to help solve its unprecedented challenges. Scientific research is firmly in the spotlight and is more and more integrated into both corporate strategy and public policy. As part of the United Nations’ sustainable development goals, countries have pledged to substantially increase their R&D spending and their number of researchers by 2030. Today, as always, we see investment flowing into the most critical fields of study, including areas such as renewable energy, artificial intelligence, and of course, vaccine science. This demonstrates how peer reviewed research always remains essential to both problem-solving and innovation. At research institutions worldwide, demand to publish high quality research keeps growing, and this is evidenced by a rapidly increasing publishing output. The demand to apply this research is also growing rapidly. And this shows in the record consumption of scientific content on our platforms. COVID-19 has brought the future of education forward, accelerating the digital transformation of learning in universities and companies; and now of course, in our homes. Career enhancing education is increasingly delivered online and it is finally becoming more affordable and more broadly available, exactly what the world needs. Once again, post-secondary education is proving to be countercyclical as people seek a leg up in a tough job market.…

Thank you, Brian. Our cash flow from operations and free cash flow were favorable to prior year by $23 million and $32 million respectively, primarily due to improved earnings, partially offset by unfavorable timing of working capital items. As a reminder, cash flow is normally a use of cash in the first half of our fiscal year due to the timing of collections for journal subscriptions, which are concentrated in the third and fourth quarters. Our strong balance sheet, consistency of annual cash flows and ample liquidity, afford us the flexibility to continue investing, acquiring and returning cash to shareholders. Capital expenditures, including technology, property and equipment and product development spending, were $47 million through the second quarter, roughly $9 million lower than prior year. We expect full year capital expenditures to be approximately $100 million with investment focused on adding and enhancing tech-enabled products and services in our core focus areas along with continued investment in process optimization and workflow automation. With respect to acquisitions, we will remain opportunistic as we look to add scale and capabilities in Research Publishing & Platforms as well as online education. Our quarter end debt balance was up $43 million compared to the same time last year, primarily due to acquisitions, while our interest expense was down $2 million benefiting from the lower interest rate environment. Our net debt-to-EBITDA ratio at quarter end was 1.9 times as compared to 1.8 times in the year ago period. In terms of liquidity, we reported $86 million of cash on hand and we ended the quarter with undrawn capacity of $655 million. Our current dividend yield is around 4% and we expect to resume share repurchases under our existing repurchase authorizations as global economic stability returns. As Brian noted, we've been expanding and accelerating our efforts…

Thanks, John. So, let me recap the key takeaways from our second quarter and first half. Our business remained strong, as the pandemic has accelerated trends that support the core strategy that we've been consistently pursuing, open research, online education and digital content and courseware. We're seeing significant results from our efforts to publish more in research and grow our volume-driven revenue to accelerate enrollment and profitable growth in Education Services to return Ed Publishing to profitable growth by driving sell-through with affordable digital units and to improve margins by optimizing our structure and our processes. Pretty sure, we're experiencing some COVID-related disruptions to in-person training and to print book sales, but this represents an increasingly small part of Wiley. Remember that around 85% of our revenue today is generated from digital products and tech-enabled services. The year has presented numerous unexpected challenges, but Wiley performed very well during the first half of 2020. We will continue working hard to deliver strong performance for the balance of the year while taking advantage of this unique moment to accelerate our strategies and improve how we operate. Although the pandemic continues to weigh on the global economy and parts of our business, our core markets are resilient, essential and counter cyclical. Of course, strategies in open research and online education are succeeding and prevailing trends in the market are reinforcing our direction to travel. As always, Wiley's performance is a team effort. So, I want to thank our wonderful colleagues around the world for their commitment to our mission and for their many accomplishments this quarter. And as 2020 comes to a close, I wish them all and all of you a joyful holiday season and the best of luck for a happy and healthy 2021. I'll now open the floor to any comments and questions.

[Operator Instructions]. Our first question comes from Daniel Moore with CJS Securities. Your line is now open.

Brian, John, good morning. Congrats on a really solid results. Thanks for taking the questions. Let me start with the -- call the online program management. But segment already exceeded your goal of 15% margin. Do we anticipate being able to sustain that level of profitability from here going forward? Just wondering if there's anything unusual in terms of seasonality or some of the investments in H2 might push that down before it comes back up?

Yes. I'll let John answer that after an initial comment. Basically, we set a target of 15 plus percent. We're over that now. We're very pleased and proud of that. We believe that we can operate this business consistently as we should profitably, while growing it significantly. And I think that the expectation we should have going forward is the 15 plus percent. There is definitely some seasonality and some ebbs and flows as the year goes through. So I would basically reinforce the expectation rather than setting the expectation at a significantly higher level that we've already achieved. John, do you have anything add to that?

Very little other than to say yes, I completely agree that the year-to-date trend is a better way to think about sustainable performance. They are in line with our expectations around driving growth. So there is some seasonality. The six months trend is a better indicator of the momentum of our business there.

Very helpful. Switching gears, talk a little bit less about it typically, but corporate and Professional Learning, wondering if you anticipate the switch to digital delivery that you're -- have taken obviously in midst pandemic, do you expect that to remain somewhat permanent and what implications might be for growth in margins longer term?

Yes, it’s a great question. In corporate, like everywhere else and we've certainly seen it in our higher ed businesses, the transition to digital teaching and learning digital training is one that comes at the expense of some very long and well-established trends and behaviors. We were extremely positively surprised by how well we would have been recovering from the initial shutdown of in-person training. It's bounced back significantly better than we thought. For example, originally we were down 70% and you can imagine, right, no in-person training means very little activity for us there. But already we're back to down 30% and that's terrific. And at this point, I believe it's 80% or 85% -- I think 85% we had in the comments, are already virtual and we're getting people who are partners and companies who had said they would never go to virtual, all of a sudden doing virtual. So we do expect that this has allowed us, as it has across our business to lock in the digital transition in many of the places now where teaching and learning exists. So how that translates into growth and into profitability remains to be seen. But certainly trends that you've seen elsewhere as we move through digital transition should be consistent here. So yes we're moving faster than we thought, and we think we're locking in the game, but I think that's what really matters here.

That's certainly helpful. Maybe one more, just in terms of cash generation. The guide, John 175 million to 200 million, just remind us timing, magnitude of any benefit of tax deferrals from CARES Act or if I'm getting that right? How that impacts cash flow this year? And just wondering if the $100 million CapEx is sort of the new norm? Or is that, you're sort of pulling forward some investments?

Sure. So with respect to the cash flow projection for the year, again, our expectations around free cash flow are being primarily driven by our earnings improvement year-over-year, and we're showing some good strength there, as indicated by the full year guides that were given. There is some adverse impact that we're anticipating with respect to working capital that's mostly due to, in some cases, elongated payment terms with certain customers, particularly on journal subscriptions. By the way, I should note that we're very pleased with our progress overall around collections. We're seeing minimal risk at this point in terms of bad debt or defaults. And so, we're making really good progress on collections. But there's some elongation that plays into our forecast for the year. The expectation with regard to the CARES Act refund is that we'll receive that refund before the end of the year. So, that will play into our cash results. I would just note though that on a year-on-year basis, our cash taxes paid within that projection will be essentially flat with that refund. So, it’s a neutralizing effect on cash taxes on this year.

Very helpful, and I'm going to sneak one more in. Capital allocation, just given the strength of the balance sheet, results and stickiness of the business and free cash flow trends that we're seeing, clearly better-than-expected, I guess why wait for an economic recovery to be opportunistic from a share buyback perspective? Thanks again.

Dan, I would say, at this point in time, we are striking a balance between investment in the business and returning cash to shareholders, and at the same time also navigating what is somewhat of an uncertain period of time. I think we're getting closer to being on the other side of that uncertainty. And so, we continue to closely evaluate the opportunity to begin again share repurchases. But we're going to proceed with some degree of caution there. Again, looking for more economic stability before we go back deeply into our repurchase program.

Our next question comes from Sami Kassab with Exane BNP Paribas. Your line is now open.

Thank you and good morning, gentlemen. I have a few questions please. First on the research division. Could you please comment on the rate of revenue growth you are seeing in open access in H1? And also, can you discuss how significant might be the risk of seeing and bundling of the big deals in the remaining 80% of your contracts that are still up for renewal? That would be for research. Then secondly on higher ed publishing. I understand you guided for mid-single-digit decline Academic & Professional Learning. But could you guide for any revenue growth you expect to see in Education Publishing. Is it fair to expect a return to sustainable growth going forward in that sub-segment? And lastly, on OPM. Can you please elaborate on what is driving the decrease in student acquisition costs? Are you seeing overall deflation in digital advertising price points for instance, or has it more to do with some company-specific cost actions that you're undertaking? Thank you, Brian.

Terrific, Sami, thank you very much for those questions. Our rate of growth in open access is very, very strong I believe and I'll ask John's actually give me the number now, what the growth was in the first half. I believe it was -- well John, can you quote?

So setting aside if you -- if we normalize for the impact of the transitional agreements that we have underway and get to, if you will, an operational number, we're on the order of 40% growth in open access publishing.

Yes, which is great, right, I think that’s exceptional growth. We're seeing very strong growth in open access, great enthusiasm for our brands. The model as you know that P times Q, price times quantity model is one that we like a lot because it allows us to lock into the endemic growth into marketplace which as you know the article count in the world tends to go up by mid-to-high single-digits every year. And so we were very pleased with the growth we're showing. And it comes from a lot of different places. Certainly we're getting far more submissions than we had. We're up in the high 20s with regards to the volume of submissions. I think it's up 28%. Our article output based upon that is up 22%. And that allows us -- we get these articles, it allows us to cascade them through our system. So yes, we are feeling very good about the strong growth in open access. If that's answering the question on that? The -- with regard to this big deal -- excuse me?

Yes, please, with regard to the big deal?

Yes. I thought John was trying to break in. Never mind. Yes, with regards to the big deal -- I'm getting some feedback here, so I'm sorry if I'm a little hesitant, there's some noise on the line. But with regard to the big deal, we have seen very consistent high renewals in our base of library, subscription customers. As we discussed, we have some price pressure this year. We're seeing no evidence of an unbundling though because the bundle that we provide to our institutional clients is exceptionally important and plays a very, very important role in the success of their institutions. Research winds up very high on the top of the pile of things that they have to have in order to be successful library, successful institutions, so they have a successful research and discovery program in their universities. And so we're feeling strong and confident about that. With regard to higher ed -- and you asked a specific question about the expectations going forward there, higher ed is a business where print declines have gone on for some time. As we said, the digital growth is now outpacing the print decline. We're very pleased to hear that, but we do expect the print decline to continue for some time. We do expect to return that business to profitable growth, as we said. We're not providing a time horizon on it because of the uncertainties in the marketplace. But the strong growth that we're seeing in the adoption of our digital programs and the sell-through of in terms of we get in adoption, there’s a portion of the adoption students that we can monetize is significantly higher when we go digital. So the math basically says we'll do better in the long run with lower price, higher impact…

This is very helpful. Thank you very much, Brian. I just don't understand why you allocate for higher publishing. A bit more constructive in the sense that if we now have digital growth offsetting print decline, why would it reverse, is print to accelerate, is digital to slow down? Or what is the uncertainty that kind of holds you back from a more affirmative outlook, now that the inflection point seems behind us?

Well, what I would say is -- I wouldn't say the inflection point is behind us, what I would say is what I said earlier, which is that digital is now outpacing print decline. So, the issue here is that, for a number of years, the industry and we are not alone, has been looking for the bottom and print sales continue to be challenged as it continues to become less and less preferred format for the delivery and consumption of content. So, we're just being conservative in what we're saying about when we will see the benefit from it. But what we do know -- and I think it's very important. I share your confidence, but it is for -- and it is important to know that the vast majority of courses around the world are taught with content that is published by Wiley or one of the other leading publishers. And as we move from print to digital, it allows us to repatriate those sales, many of which were going through used channels or rental channels, or other sorts of non-paid channels. So we are feeling good about the business. But calling the exact moment of pivot is another story.

So, it’s not a view that OER might become more of a competitive pressure going forward. So, your conservativeness has nothing to do with a scenario where open education resources were to gain more share?

No. We don't. What we have found is that, as we have -- as prices for our courseware have become more in line with expectations in the marketplace, we're gaining share, not losing share. And there is certainly a very small portion of the market that is OER at this point in time. But we participate in that market with our platforms. And so, no, we don't view that as a threat to the business and the stuff that is moving, an OER tends to be -- OER that comes at a price point. And so -- and by the way, most of the OER stuff is based again upon published content. So, no, we don't view this as a -- my comments have no reflection on the OER phenomenon.

Our next question comes from Greg Pendy with Sidoti. Your line is now open.

Just wanted to understand the free cash flow guidance a little bit more. You mentioned a 3Q charge. Is that a cash charge or a pre-tax charge on that upwards of $15 million?

The Q3 charge, it will be a cash charge in the sense that -- in the sense of there are expenses that it will be -- these are facility charges, right? So there'll be cash outlays over time to continue to pay those leases. So it's cash charge in that sense, but it doesn't change the momentum of cash in the short-term. Does that help? Does that answer your question?

I think so. Yes, that helps.

Your question is really specific to the restructuring charge, right? And more broadly, I commented earlier that we've got a few moving pieces there are working capital elements at play, given just the timing of collections and some of the impacts that we've seen around COVID on the extended payment terms with certain customers to help get through difficult time. So there's a bit of working capital movement, but the cash flows will be primarily driven by stronger earnings performance for the year, offset a bit by working capital. The restructuring charge really doesn't have a material impact on the timing of cash flows for the year. And as I said, the tax refund that we're anticipating is a neutralizing effect on cash taxes for the year as compared to prior year.

And then just, I guess on that topic, just trying to understand -- I know you mentioned the extended payments for the accounts receivable. Should we be thinking about that, though, as in you've gone through 20% of the renewals. So does that stay elevated for a while as you still have to work through 80% more renewals?

No, I would not describe this as being directly tied to the progress of renewals. We're talking about extended payment terms in very limited cases, many of which are related to the timing of government funding in various countries around the globe. But I wouldn't call the timing of our renewals an indicator per se for the broader population. It's really a -- it's a relatively narrow part of the population that is on extended payment terms.

Okay, great. And then just one final one, just on the inflection point, just trying to understand that -- in digital versus print declines, and just trying to understand that how much of that is potentially just being -- I know it's being accelerated given COVID, and you've mentioned that, but how many students are potentially getting courseware bundled with their courses as they are online and may pivot back to print, I guess, if classes sort of return in-person? Is that a potential, maybe step -- slight step back that we might see? Not that the trend doesn't continue towards digital, but just trying to understand given the inflection point.

Yes, it's always a good question. The human behavior changes typically slowly. In this case, we've seen a very rapid change. And what we see across our client base is that students and professors are adopting first because they had to because digital -- you just need the digital environment, if you're going to teach virtually. But now, what they're realizing is that it's working, and that they can do so much more with it. We don't view -- but in terms of a bundle, they're not getting -- there are certainly bundles in this business, but the courses are typically -- the content is not typically bundled, with the course. The student typically has to go out and purchase that bundle, purchase that product themselves for the course. So, there's not a bundling unbundling effect, to be clear, Greg. There may be some professors or some students that choose to return to print, but we typically haven't seen that. The trends for satisfaction with digital products, particularly versus print products has been increasing consistently over the years and is well above 50% now. And so, because of that, what we see is that this will be locked in and move forward -- will move forward with the digital units. I can't say, there won't be some -- some come back. But, no, we view the acceleration of trends as an acceleration of trends. It's not a one-time thing to adopt to a -- adapt to an unusual event in the marketplace.

Our next question comes from the Matilda Derezano with Barclays. Your line is now open.

Hi. Thank you for taking my questions. I’ve got a couple. So, first, I wanted to ask, whether your guidance for low-single-digits in research for the year [indiscernible] after growth of 5% in the first half means that we should expect the journal growth to decline in calendar 2021 versus calendar 2020. And then, I wanted to ask if you could give a bit more color on the pricing pressure that you are seeing in renewals, is that limited to U.S. institutions or more global? And lastly, what changed in enrollment in 2021 versus 2020? Are you budgeting for travelling for the college textbook business? Thank you.

Okay, John, why don't you pick that up, if you can? I did not get the third question. So, we may need to ask that -- we may need to repeat that one.

Let me respond, Brian, to the first two, and then we can come back for clarification on the third question. So, thank you. So, your question with regard to research revenue performance on the second half of the year. We are anticipating, in the research segment, modest growth in the second half, as compared to the second half of the prior year. So, you're correct. It's presumed that we will realize a slower rate of growth. Some of that in our forecast is anticipating some pricing pressure, as we've noted, around the subscription renewals for calendar year '21. Again, we continue to expect that pressure to be modest. And so far, the evidence that we've seen is consistent with that. But, we have somewhat limited visibility. So, our presumption at the moment is that we'll see some pressure there that will be pretty much offset, slightly more than offset by our growth in open access. But again, somewhat limited visibly, but those are our expectations. You have pressure on the subscription side, upside on the open access side and that those are going to, relatively speaking, balance them out. In terms of the geography around pricing pressure, I wouldn't say that it's distinguished in any particular part of the globe. As we see it today, it's largely a function of the health of the university customers that are our subscribers as research universities have a strong need for research. So far, the pricing pressure has been again limited in terms of both its breadth and depth. So, there's no particular geography that I would point to, or no particular customer base, other than the institutions that are going to struggle more here are clearly those that have weaker overall financial position than challenges around getting through a pretty difficult period. Could you then repeat for us your question around 2021 enrollment?

Yes. I was just wondering, basically what your expectations are for 2021 enrollments and how you're planning for that for your college textbook business compared to 2020?

We haven't -- it has been a bit of a moving target since the beginning of the COVID crisis. As we indicated in our comments, enrollment has been significantly better than we expected it to be with undergraduate being down a little bit, and graduate programs and master's programs being up a little bit. Significantly community colleges were hit quite hard. But, we don't have too much exposure in this community college market. Although it is obviously an important part of the education -- the education ecosystem. And so, it's been a bit of a moving target. We haven't projected the following academic year yet. And so, we'll come back to that as we start to do an outlook for fiscal ‘21, which as you know for -- excuse me, fiscal ‘22, which as you know, doesn't start for us until the middle of calendar year ‘21. So, no real comment on forward-looking, although we will continue to underscore that enrollment tends to be countercyclical and we expect the economic effect of COVID to last for quite some time.

Our next question comes from Matthew Walker with Credit Suisse. Your line is now open.

I've got three questions if that’s okay. The first is on open access. You got very strong in open access revenues. My understanding is that deals that you've been done on open access that would be like an upper and lower band of revenues that the university partners would pay. So, no sort of direct linkage or exponential linkage to the volume of articles published. The thing from what you're saying that actually there is a big opportunity to generate revenue from the number of articles published. So, I was wondering if you could explain that. The second question is, you've answered some questions on renewal seasons for journals and books. Have you seen any impact from universities using the unsubed company to help them get rid of unnecessary journals? And then, the third question is, you mentioned your market share in higher education. I think, you said, I could be wrong, but it went from four to five, which is a very strong performance. That sort of implies that the market is a bit worse than your performance. So, what would your growth look like, if you hadn't gained any share at all? Thanks.

Got it. Hopefully, we'll be able to cover all those questions, or I should say, I'll be able to remember all those questions. We'll start with the OA growth. So first of all, let's remember that our OA growth, which is certainly very strong is made up of two parts. One part is the traditional gold OA article-by-article business, which represents roughly two-thirds of the growth that we -- a little less than two-thirds of the growth that we have talked about this year. The other is the volume that comes from our strategic deals that we've been talking about for quite some time. And so, that proportionality is important, first of all. Second of all, every deal is different. Every deal has a different structure and different flavor to it. So, there's no real way to fully answer your question in a single way. But, what I will say is, the model itself is built on price times quantity. And typically, there may be an upper bound, but then there are also ways for those articles to be published anyway, because the articles continue to be delivered. And in each one of our deals, there is a -- this price times quantity mechanism exists. The question is, what happens if you do come to a maximum if there is a maximum. And the answer is, those articles get published anyway. We have to figure out -- and somebody has figured out how to fund those articles. So, yes, there is -- every deal is different. The relationship for price to quantity remains, and it plays out in different ways, depending on the specific deals, geographies, budgets, et cetera of the cases. So, hopefully, that addresses that question.

Brian, if I could just jump in. I would just point out that our open access business is much larger than just the transitional deals, right? They represent a significant element of our open access business. But, the majority of our business in open access is actually outside of those transitional deals. And so, there is lots of opportunity for us to drive growth out of our improvements in OA volume.

Yes, yes, absolutely. And as I was saying, it's sort of a one-third, two-thirds with one-third -- a little more than one-third being the deals that John and I are talking about. If that's what you're referring to, John, I think it was.

Yes. Sorry.

No. It's fine, fine. Great. The second question was on renewals and the ability or desire of the universities or the librarians to use different sorts of services and different sorts of approaches to more -- to figure out how to reduce their paid commitments. And we have not seen this is -- it’s certainly in the marketplace, certainly any smart buyer is always looking for ways to make sure they're only paying for what they really need and really use. And in fact, our relationships over the years have become increasingly focused on the performance, meaning the usage of the subscriptions that people are paying for, meaning the access to the content. We've talked extensively about how significantly higher, how significantly elevated those have become over the last couple of years as our usage of our content increases, certainly accelerating in this past year. So, there is less belief than you might expect that it is not something that they ought to be paying for. And we have not seen a material impact of any third-party services that seek to help libraries tailor their subscriptions. We haven't seen that effect in any material way on our business. Then the last question. Let me see if I can recall it now. Market share. So, yes, our market share has been increasing, and we are very pleased with that. We're seeing it in increased adoptions, and increased sell-through as we succeed with our programs. You will remember, if you've been following the story, which all of you have, that we took an approach of being very active and aggressive in our pricing in order to make sure that students and schools had access to reasonable pricing, which would drive, in theory, unit sales. And happily, what we've learned is as we…

I think what I was trying to say is that all the people who post about being close to the tipping point, it just so happens that they individually have gained a lot of market share, but that suggests that the underlying market is not as healthy if you haven't gained any market share.

I would argue that you should study the industry statistics closely, and you'll see that there has materially been share shifts, and there has been consistent increase in the number of units sold in the industry. So, we won't go into discussion of relative performance to competitors. But, what we can say is that we feel in the long run, we will have the units in the unit growth, and we will have -- we will continue to perform well relative to our competitors.

Okay. Thank you very much. Thanks for the help.

We have a follow-up question from the line of Daniel Moore with CJS Securities. Your line is now open.

Thank you. And I realize you've covered a lot already. Just ed services, just following up on the decline in marketing costs. Can you just talk briefly about the profitability curve today for a new partner institution, compared to what maybe that was a couple of years ago? How quickly they get to breakeven and ramp to more mature levels of margins? Thank you.

Yes. So, every partner is different. Every partner requires a different upfront investment and every partner has a different profile to get to maturity. What I can say is that the relationship between marketing costs and that is a significant relationship, and that our ability to be a much more efficient acquirer of student lead is helping us to make sure that not just we get there faster, but that all of our programs are profitable. As you know we're very attentive to the profitability of our portfolio. So, I won't make specific comments on the times of profitability because it's so variable. But, I will say that our efforts to improve the efficiency of marketing and improve the efficiency of the student journey allows us to get there faster. I mean, that's the point. As you know, Dan, as well as anybody, the upfront marketing investment is a big part of what we invest in when we stand up a new partner, and what we do. So, the more efficient we can be there, better the whole portfolio does, but certainly, the faster we are to profitability and in a new partner.

Understood. Okay. Thank you again.

We’re showing no further questions in queue at this time. I'd like to turn the call back to Mr. Napack for closing remarks.

All right. All I'll say is thanks for joining us today, and once again, happy holidays. We look forward to talking to you around the time of our third quarter results in March.

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.