Stride, Inc.
Q2 2019 Earnings Call Transcript

Published: 28 Jan 2020

[Operator:]

Greetings. Welcome to the K12 Second Quarter Fiscal 2020 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. [Operator Instructions] Please note this conference is being recorded.I would now like to turn the conference over to your host Mr. Mike Kraft. Thank you. You may begin.

[Mike Kraft:]

Thank you, and good afternoon. Welcome to K12's second quarter earnings call for fiscal year 2020. Before we begin, I would like to remind you that, in addition to historical information, certain comments made during this conference call maybe considered forward-looking statements. These statements are made pursuant to the Safe Harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. They should be considered in conjunction with cautionary statements continue in our earnings release and the company's periodic filings with the SEC. Forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties that may cause actual performance or results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such statements.In addition, this conference call contains time-sensitive information that reflects management's best analysis only as of the day of this live call. K12 does not undertake any obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements. For further information concerning risks and uncertainties that could materially affect financial and operational performance and results, please refer to our reports filed with the SEC. These reports include without limitation cautionary statements made in K12's 2019 Annual Report on Form 10-K. These filings can be found on the Investor Relations section of our website at www.k12.com.In addition to disclosing financial results in accordance with Generally Accepted Accounting Principles in the U.S. or GAAP, we will discuss certain information that is considered non-GAAP financial information. A reconciliation of this non-GAAP financial information to the most closely comparable GAAP information was included on our earnings release and is also posted on our website. This call is open to the public and is being webcast. The call will be available for replay for 30 days.With me on today’s call is Nate Davis, Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board, and James Rhyu, Chief Financial Officer and President, Product and Technology. Additionally, we are joined by Dr. Shaun Mcalmont, President of Career Readiness Education and Harsh Patel, Chief Executive Officer of Galvanize, who will be available to answer questions following our prepared remarks.I would like now turn the call over to Nate. Nate?

[Nate Davis:]

Thank you, Mike. Good afternoon, everyone, and thanks for joining our quarterly call. I'd like to devote most of my time to providing details about the announcement we made earlier today. K12's acquisition of Tech Pioneer Galvanize. I'd like to welcome Harsh Patel, CEO of Galvanize to our team and also welcome him to the call today. Harsh is calling in remotely and he will participate in our Q&A session as Mike noted.Let's get going with a brief summary of this quarter's financial results. As you saw in today's press release revenue was $257.6 million in the second quarter of fiscal year 2020, an increase of 1.1% year-over-year. Tied to our revenue growth, adjusted operating income for the quarter was $36.5 million, and capital expenditures for the quarter were $9.3 million.Note that our revenue, adjusted operating income and capital expenditures for the second quarter of fiscal '20 met or beat the guidance we provided last quarter. These numbers underscore the ongoing strength of our core business. It's also worth noting that excluding the impact of our acquisition, our business is on pace to achieve the full-year revenue and adjusted operating income guidance we originally provided.Now, let me turn to a discussion of the Galvanize acquisition and our career readiness strategy going forward. As most of you've heard me mentioned before, our career readiness initiative allows us to support a peer student of every age and background, for an increasingly competitive job market. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, job growth is expected to create more than 1 million new jobs per year through 2028. At the top of the list, for in-demand job, now and in the future, our software engineers and data scientists. However, despite the growing demand for these roles, they are some of the most challenging positions to fill.K12's acquisition of Galvanize puts us in a unique position to make a difference in this area. Galvanize is one of the country's top providers of workforce training in software engineering, and data science. Like K12, Galvanize provides high quality, affordable, online and facilities based learning program.Through its full and part time bootcamps, Galvanize help students gain the most relevant and in-demand skills in these fields. Galvanize offers the software engineering bootcamp under its industry recognized brand name, Hack Reactor. Hack Reactor is rated in the top five bootcamps on-site by Core Support and Investopedia.One of the synergies of this acquisition is that our destinations academies now have even more ability to provide high schools with entry-level software engineering schools. We will do this by tapping into Galvanize expertise and tech training, and adapting their curriculum for high schools. This also gives us the opportunity to license this content and train to public school districts, the colleges and the universities and to other institutions. For both our schools and public schools, we can help high school grad with early exploration of this career option.Now you might ask, how effective is the Galvanize training? Nearly 85% of Galvanize web development and data science business are gainfully employed within six months of graduate, and I bet many other forms of post-high school education would love to make that claim. Additionally, graduates earn on average, annual base salary of $90,000 and more. Graduates in New York and San Francisco started even higher salaries. Galvanize graduates have been hired by more than 2000 companies, which includes 50% of the Fortune 500. For instance, Amazon, Facebook, Google and Apple have all used Galvanize to train their technical teams, or help them find skilled workers. And the alumni base is now more than 8000 professionals and growing.We conservatively estimate, that the adult learning market we are targeting with this acquisition is more than $50 billion annually. It's estimated that corporations are investing $1 trillion around the world in the digital transformation which in turn drives this demand for software engineers and data scientists.Galvanize is among one of the many young and growing enterprises which will add to this kind of growth, and K12 is now in this market. K12's revenue growth this year, will be accelerated by Galvanize and well into the next year. In fact, in the next fiscal year after the effects of purchase accounting, the revenue growth should accelerate. Over the next year, I expect Galvanize's growth to accelerate the following reasons. First, Galvanize will now have the funds to expand its direct-to-consumer education of business. This includes adding students to existing facilities, while also opening up new markets across the nation.Together K12 and Galvanize will also increase the use of both hybrid and fully online training model. Here, Galvanize will be able to leverage K12's deep expertise into teaching students in blended and online environments. Second, we believe the use of income share agreement, or ISA will help drive demand. Income share agreements make training programs more accessible, that students can defer their tuition costs until after they secure a job. This is a win-win for both Galvanize and participating students.Third, Galvanize will work with new and existing enterprise clients to re-skill and up-skill their workforce, a market that has huge potential both domestically and abroad. In fact, the World Economic Forum has concluded that given the wave of new technologies and trends disrupting business model, the vast majority of skill is required to promote most jobs will have shifted significantly over the next five years. And the skill that’s most needed is data analytics and software development. It's worth noting that in the U.S. 54% of companies think there's some sort of re-skilling of their own workforce will be needed by 2022. This tech oriented corporate training requirement is a perfect for fit for Galvanize’s expertise.And fourth, we plan to expand Galvanize's existing efforts related to IT staffing requirements. Corporations will spend more than $39 billion in outsourced IT staffing support by 2024. Galvanize is positioned to provide companies with candidates that have customized credentials, tailored to each company's unique needs. Many graduates won't have to find jobs, because they can immediately feel the company's need as an outsourced IT staffer.In summary, here's what we gained from this acquisition, the Galvanize management team, brand recognition, network of alumni, campuses, and of course, industry leading software engineering, and data science programs. All of these benefits will allow K12 to accelerate its entry into the important and growing market for software engineers and data scientists. Importantly, this acquisition also fits nicely into our existing strategy of being the industry leader in career education for learners, at all stages of life.Our goal is to continue to build a strong and profitable career readiness business, reaching nearly $300 million in revenue over the next couple of years. We're already nearly $100 million in our destination career academies alone, this fiscal year and growing, and we're just getting started. Excluding the effects of purchase accounting, Galvanize will add more than $50 million to that revenue stream this calendar year. Importantly, Galvanize business unit, will be EBITDA positive, excluding purchase accounting in fiscal year 2021.A reminder that James's comments, he will discuss how purchase accounting will affect your revenue and your costs. Both organically and inorganically, we will continue to look for opportunities to further expand our technology enabled career readiness business, especially in the areas of healthcare and information technology. As you know, K12, has a very small amount of debt and a balance sheet full of cash. Investors have often asked, how we will use cash to drive shareholder value. The Galvanize transaction was funded completely with cash from our balance sheet. We're putting our cash to work as we said we would.However, we do believe that this isn't the only smart properly funded acquisition to be done. To fund other acquisitions should the opportunity arise, we just closed the line of credit with a bank that will give us up to $300 million in additional financing. This funding in addition to our strong balance sheet and cash flow gives us the flexibility to continue to grow. This line of financing will only be used if needed, since our core business continues to demonstrate strong cash flow from operations.In closing, career readiness and skills based learning, that prepares students for a rapidly changing workforce, is increasingly important in our country and around the world. Career readiness is critical for our economy, for employers and for the diverse student body that we serve.Our acquisition of Galvanize is consistent with our goal, to help students prepare for their futures, while also driving long-term growth and profitability for shareholders. We intended to continue leverage, expertise and tech enabled education to build a strong career readiness business, a marketing which we are rapidly becoming a national leader.I want to remind everyone that K12's mission remains the same. We help students to reach their full potential through inspired teaching and personalized learning. But remember, full potential can mean the workforce, college through military career further pursuits, students and learners, coming all ages can come from all locations. Our flexible tech enabled platform allows us to be a leader in this field.Thank you for your time today. Now, I'll hand the call over to James. He will elaborate on second quarter financial results, as well as provide some additional details on the Galvanize transaction. James?

[James Rhyu:]

Thank you, Nate. Good afternoon everybody. First, let me quickly recap our reported results. Revenue for the quarter was $257.6 million, an increase of 1.1% from last year. Adjusted operating income was $36.5 million, a decrease of 2.4%. And capital expenditures were $9.3 million, a decrease of $0.3 million. In each case as Nate mentioned, these results network beat the expectations we provided in our guidance last quarter.Our core business continues to perform well and positions us for accelerating growth into next year. And excluding the Galvanize acquisition, we are on track to be well within the guidance ranges we previously provided. More on Galvanize in a minute.Let me turn to our results for the quarter. Revenue for Managed Public School programs increased $6.8 million or 3% to $229.6 million. This was a result of increases in both enrollments and revenue per enrollment. Enrollment grows 1% year-over-year and revenue per enrollment grows 2%. For the full-year, we expect revenue per enrollment to be roughly flat to last year.Institutional revenue declined 16.2%. This is largely due to the fact that several large general education customers for whom we provided the infrastructure and content have gone out of business, of course the major clients in our business. For the full-year, I've noted last quarter, the Institutional Business School declined approximately 15% to 18%. Private Pay revenues were $8.6 million and roughly flat from last year.I want to note that for the remainder of the year, we will include the Galvanize results in the Private Pay line of business. We will be revisiting our external reporting for fiscal '21 and we will provide more insights to any potential changes in the fourth quarter.Gross margins were 35% and marginally up from our first quarter gross margins, including the impact of Galvanize and purchase accounting, gross margins will be 33% plus or minus around 100 basis points for the year.Selling, general and administrative expenses were $59.8 million, slightly down from last year by $1.5 million. The acquisition of Galvanize will put some pressure on SG&A costs for the back-half of the year particularly, with the impact of purchase accounting. But we still expect cost to be relatively flat to last year plus or minus a couple hundred basis points.EBITDA for the quarter was $47.5 million and adjusted EBITDA was $53.7 million. Operating income was $30.3 million and adjusted operating income was $36.5 million. We ended the quarter with cash, cash equivalents and restricted cash of $213.1 million, an increase of $45.7 million compared to the first quarter. We funded the Galvanize acquisition, as Nate mentioned, from cash on hand, so we expect our cash balance to drop materially when we will report next quarter.And in addition to acquisition of Galvanize, we've entered into credit facility. This facility provides us with up to $300 million in financing. We believe that this facility in addition to our strong balance sheet and ability to generate free cash flow, provides the financial flexibility to fund our existing operations, while continuing to pursue acquisitions in the career readiness space.Capitalized costs were $9.3 million, which is basically flat for last year, and our effective tax rate for the quarter was 33.5%. We still expect our full-year tax rate to be in a 28% to 30% range we indicated last quarter. We will also see a multiyear cash tax benefit from the Galvanize deal as their net operating loss carry forwards will help offset some cash taxes we would otherwise pay.Our guidance for the rest of the year implies a decrease of approximately $20 million of adjusted operating income. The decrease is attributable to the impact of purchase accounting and negative EBITDA of Galvanize. Please keep in mind, that while we do pick up the revenue for the remainder of this fiscal year, the revenue is also diluted by purchase accounting, which is why the impact to our guidance somewhat needed.And as Nate mentioned, we expect the underlying Galvanize to contribute more than $50 million of revenue this calendar year. And we fully expect the underlying Galvanize to grow into next fiscal year and exit next year positively contributing to our adjusted operating income.So for the full year, we're now looking at an outlook of revenue in the range of $1.33 billion to $1.40 billion, capital expenditures of $45 million to $49 million, tax rate of 28% to 30% and adjusted operating income in the range of $48 million to $52 million. And for an upcoming third quarter, we're looking at revenue in the range of $252 million to $255 million, capital expenditures of $8 million to $10 million and adjusted operating income at the range of $18 million to $20 million.Before we hand the call to the operator for Q&A, I want to reiterate Nate's sentiments that the Galvanize deal will have accelerate our strategy of pursuing the large and growing career readiness and lifelong learning market. I believe, this is the first-step in creating meaningful shareholder value to our current business and we will continue to look for opportunities in this space.Thank you. Now, I'll turn it over the operator. Operator?

[Operator:]

Thank you. At this time, we'll be conducting a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of Corey Greendale with First Analysis. Please proceed with your question.

[Corey Greendale:]

Good afternoon. Congratulations on the acquisition. I have a couple questions about Galvanize. First of all, how would you describe Galvanize's differentiation versus other bootcamp providers in the market?

[Nate Davis:]

Well, hi, Corey this is Nate. Thank you for attending today. I want to talk first about the things that attracted me to Galvanize and then I'm going to ask Harsh to give his description of how it differentiates itself. So, first of all, I wanted to find a company that is a student centered culture, and I think they have that, they're all about outcomes for students. I wanted a company with large enough to have a proven that they can scale. It's critical that we not be stuck with a small company that can't grow.I want a company that had chunk growth, I want a company that had a strong management team, which I think this team has, so I think they'll be able to differentiate themselves. And I wanted somebody who is recognized for high quality. And when we looked on sights that evaluated many of the bootcamp companies, they were highly recommended because they were already rated very highly in the quality of their curriculum. But Harsh, I think I did that from my perspective, Harsh, I'd love you to say, how do you differentiate yourself in the marketplace?

[Harsh Patel:]

Thanks, Nate. One of the biggest ways that we differentiate ourselves is the size of the alumni database. I'll give you a quick example, when I look at our alumni back threads or our alumni communities, the biggest and most frequent message I see in there as, hey, my company is hiring for software engineers or data scientists who's interested. And I mentioned that as a differentiator, because not very many places can have a well engaged, large 8000 plus professional network, but that [Technical Difficulty]. The network effects are something that may [indiscernible] Galvanized and Hack Reactor because of the size. We've been around since 2012, one of the earliest in the space and therefore our alumni size is just larger than most other places.The other thing is when you look at rating sites, one of the differentiators is that Galvanize and Hack Reactor show up amongst the top five often top two best places to go to learn software engineering and data science. And so, from a student perspective, that immediately differentiates us from the 10s if not 100s of other competitors or players in this space. Back over to you Nate, let me know if there's something you feel like I had missed.

[Nate Davis:]

I think, the only thing that we didn't cover with the high places rate.

[Harsh Patel:]

That's right. Galvanize and Hack Reactor both have historically been known to have some of the highest placement rates out of all of the coding bootcamps in the space. And we continue to keep that as our number one focus. Earlier in the call the majority of our graduate 85% or more placed within six months, average starting salaries across the entire nation at $90,000 plus, and over six figures in the big markets like New York and San Francisco. And the alumni base has a lot to do with that as well as the reputation in the marketplace as being high quality generating, junior to mostly mid-level engineers when they're coming out.

[Corey Greendale:]

Good. And then, my follow up and I'll get back in the queue. Nate, you mentioned a number of potential synergies from the acquisition. I was interested in specifically -- could you say a little bit more about what Galvanize's primary methods of customer acquisition are and whether you see any synergy on that front, like marketing the programs to graduates of the existing kind of managed public schools or anything on those lines?

[Nate Davis:]

Yes, I'll talk a little bit about this and Harsh, you can elaborate if I miss anything. First of all, there's two segments of the marketplace for Galvanize. One is the consumer business. And then the consumer business, they use a number of techniques you would imagine. There's a lot of social contact and recommendation. They do a little bit of web advertising and search names, search engine optimization, and marketing.So the most of the acquisition for consumers is coming from either social recommendation or coming from the internet. They do very little on-air advertising that affects many that I know of. So that's the most of how we get their customers. I don't want to minimize this reference and referrals, because that business is pretty big based and in fact, that there are 8000 alumni. And they recommend others who have gone through who need to go through the same process they've gone through.But in the enterprise business, it is a face-to-face sale, very , very different. There is a face-to-face workforce that's growing and calls directly on corporations, to have corporations give them information about the kinds of specific needs they have. And then they go and train in their bootcamps specifically for what those corporations need. But that's a face-to-face sale much different than the consumer business. Harsh, anything else you want to add?

[Harsh Patel:]

No, I think you know that the majority of them come from referrals, word of mouth from our alumni, that strong alumni network, and the rest of it through digital advertising, digital acquisition online.

[Corey Greendale:]

Good. And inside do you foresee marketing directly to people who are in or graduating from the managed schools or anything along those lines?

[Nate Davis:]

Yes, we do. But, I want to be clear that this is a pretty intense program. It's 12 weeks, but most of the people who apply the first time don’t get in the first time. They have to take a few entry level courses before they really qualify to go to the immersive intense program. So, we intend to market to our students, but we also intend to help our students get some of those basic courses done first, so they can roll into the program that Galvanize runs on a qualified basis.But yes, I think there's a synergy there that we can have many of our students who aren't going to go to college or don't want to go to college, who are looking for their careers. I think we can help them with exploration courses and then we can help them with getting into the Galvanize as well.

[Corey Greendale:]

Excellent, thanks very much.

[Nate Davis:]

Thank you Corey. Have a good day.

[Operator:]

Our next question comes from the line of Alex Paris with Barrington Research. Please proceed with your question.

[Chris Howe:]

Good afternoon. This is Chris Howe sitting in for Alex. Just, congrats on the acquisition and the partnership with Galvanize. Some questions in regard to that, you mentioned the potential for re-scaling and up-scaling the workforce. Could you provide some more color on what you're seeing as far as the lifetime revenue of a student and the potential for them to go to Galvanize for initial training, enter the workforce? And then after three years, as software changes present to reroute for additional training. Is that an opportunity currently or how do you see that evolving?

[Nate Davis:]

Harsh, I think you are best prepared answer this.

[Harsh Patel:]

Yes, absolutely. I think that's one of the biggest opportunities for Galvanize long-term down the road. Right now, that entire 8000 plus and growing by over 1000 every year base of alumni, we have not yet offered contained education programs or second time around programs to re-scope from a consumer perspective.But what is happening today is when the students enter into job, their managers may say, hey, where did you learn this modern stuff, and they'll reference Galvanize and Hack Reactor. And then they backed off the conversation with that company or that enterprise for us to come in and reskill their existing engineering talent.So there's two aspects to this, from a consumer perspective, that lifetime value is huge, and we have not yet begun to extract that for second time or third time consumer based courses. But then the bigger, I think lifetime value is when the enterprise engages through our consumer graduates, which actually could double, triple that lifetime value over time. Does that answer your question?

[Chris Howe:]

Yes, it does, thank you.

[Nate Davis:]

Chris, before you go on there is one other thing I want to add to that is, it sort of talked about how we put all of this together. We invested in a company call Tallo, they are up to a little over 700,000 students now. We are going to be working hard to put all 8000 alumni here and all graduates on the Tallo platform.Now what that will allow us to do is track that alumni and track their skill. And so as they grow, and as corporations see them grow, we want them to come back into the system and can get upgraded skills. And we'll be able to track when was the last time they got some skills to be able to market to them and say, you realize this is the new technology, you ought to be trained on and talk about skills. So we'll be able to talk to those graduates through our Tallo platform as we get them on the platform. So, that's another synergy in way of having continued education.

[Chris Howe:]

That's great. And my last question or series of questions, you mentioned some comments in the Q&A about the go-to-market proposition and the difference in value that you bring. Being a top five bootcamp, what are you seeing as far as student mix, geographic trends? Are you seeing increasing percentage of your students? I wouldn't call it transferring or moving to your more elite bootcamp from other competitors.

[Nate Davis:]

Harsh?

[Harsh Patel:]

Yes, I'll be frank, I wish I could answer that with specific data off the top of my head, but I'll tell you more example based. We do get students who either graduated or went through some other program, halfway through a quarter to way through and decided to change to come to Galvanize for data science or Hack Reactor for software engineering. That does happen. I'll be honest, I don't have the data to tell you whether it's increasing or at what rate. But, as consolidation happens in this space, I expect it to continue to increase, especially because we need to be focused on quality as our top most metric.Does that answer your question?

[Chris Howe:]

Yes, that's good, all very helpful. And this is a lot of interesting things in front of me. But I'll hop back in the queue, and thank you for the color and look forward to the combination.

[Nate Davis:]

Thanks, Chris. Devin?

[Operator:]

Our next question comes from the line of Jeff Silber with BMO Capital Market. Please proceed with your question.

[Jeff Silber:]

Thanks so much. I also wanted to follow-up on Galvanize. You had mentioned in the prepared remarks about the use of income share agreement. And I know that's one of the things that Galvanize prides itself on. Is it possible to tell us roughly what percentage of students who use that? And how that's been impacted in the market? Thanks.

[Nate Davis:]

I don't know if everybody else understands what these income share agreements are, so Harsh, you can answer that. But, first I want to mention to everyone that the reason we think it increases the market is, Galvanize actually has just started using an income share agreement. So, it's not something that's driven growth in the past, which is why we believe it's a growth accelerator. Galvanize had just find an arrangement to have their ISAs funded. We think our cost of capital is lower than their so, we will probably renegotiate and develop a new set of ISAs at even lower cost work.So with that, I'm going to let Harsh answer, but I wanted to make sure everybody knew how we look at that as an accelerated not as something they've been doing a long time. Harsh?

[Harsh Patel:]

Yes, I'll just double down on that, we just started broadcasting and publicizing ISAs more broadly, I want to say just a few months ago. And so, our initial data, I believe for our most upcoming cohort is going to be about 20% of the cohort, using ISAs to fund their education. And like Nate said, we just started doing this. So, we actually believe that it opens up an entire set of the market that beforehand wasn't open to us, so, it's going to be added into our enrollment, which is really exciting.

[Jeff Silber:]

Okay, that’s perfect. [indiscernible] any other something online or somewhere that that Galvanize was doing this, I thought you were doing this for much longer, appreciate that clarification. I'm sorry, you want to say something?

[Nate Davis:]

No, no, go ahead.

[Jeff Silber:]

Okay, great. I'm going back to the combination of both companies and forgive me, I came on late. Can you just repeat what you said about the path to profitability for this company? And you can give us a little bit more color in terms of how you're going to get there? Thanks.

[James Rhyu:]

Yes, hey, Jeff. So it's James. So what we expect is that we're going to exit our fiscal 2021 with a profitable Galvanize subsidiary. And we've already seen, we've already signed a growth in this calendar year, we see that growth continuing, the underlying business growth continuing through this calendar year into next year, which is going to drive that profitability exiting or next fiscal year. But, as you know the impact of the purchase accounting will sort of knew that particularly in the first six to 12 months. So you're going to see our financials will reflect something different. But then again, as that washes some of that washes through and then on it the adjusted EBITDA exiting next year will be positive of all fiscal year next year.

[Nate Davis:]

Yes, this is a Nate speaking. This will get to be a little confusing because we haven't disclosed all the details around purchase accounting, but I would say this, the EBITDA not adjusted operating income yet, but EBITDA, will be positive for the full-year of our fiscal year '21.The comment that James is making about the exit, when you fall down to full operating income, or EBIT, you're going to see some impact of obviously purchase accounting that shows up in amortization of goodwill and things like that, which will cause it not to be fit to be exiting in the year. But if you just look at the EBITDA, it's positive for the full-year of our fiscal year '21. So, it's going to contribute to our EBITDA .

[Jeff Silber:]

And is it possible to give it some kind of framework about the purchase accounting impact both from a revenue perspective and the EBIT perspective?

[Nate Davis:]

Yes, I think right now, it's really early in the acquisition. As you know there is some mechanics we have to go through, but we will provide some updated guidance over the next couple of quarters. We just think it's a little early for us having just done the acquisition to give any guidance right yet. But we will be for now or next year. Yes. Sorry.Last thing I will mention on that from an operational perspective I think it's important to understand, in the first six months, the Galvanize is part of K12, we intend to remove the shackles, so to speak from their arm. They were working hard as a company that didn't have a lot of funding and they were tight on things like opening up new sites. They were tight on their marketing expenses. So we have said, we don't mind spending a little bit more money to open up new sites, getting more money to do a little more marketing to students, and to do a little bit more development.So, with those ideas, especially by the way, there's an opportunity to have in the military market, which we didn't talk a lot about, but they will work with military bases to retrain soldiers as well. And all of these things will require some money and investment in the first six months. So, that's why we say it would be EBITDA positive in fiscal '21. But for the next six months, we're going to let them spend a little bit of money to get some of these revenue opportunities going. Does that help, Jeff?

[Jeff Silber:]

Yes, it does. Thank you, so much.

[Nate Davis:]

Okay.

[Operator:]

[Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from the line of Stephen Sheldon with William Blair. Please proceed with your question.

[Stephen Sheldon:]

Hi, thanks. From Galvanize's standalone financial performance, can you provide some detail on how quickly it's been growing in the past few years, the mix of online provided versus classroom based revenue, and maybe just in detail on a standalone margin profile right now.

[Nate Davis:]

Well, Harsh, I think you should start with the mix question of online versus classroom.

[Harsh Patel:]

Sure. So, Galvanize has a couple online offerings. One is a full-time online and the other is a part-time online, the former being about three months long and the ladder about nine months. So, if you add up the revenue of both of those and compare them against the on-campus offerings, it's about -- it depends on the enrollment cycle. So, it's roughly about 20% online, 80% on-campus.

[Nate Davis:]

And Harsh, how do you think that changes over the coming years?

[Harsh Patel:]

I think the online enrollment continues to increase going up. And what we're finding is that a lot of students are loving the synchronous online offering. It really feels like you're developing really strong student relationships, which goes counter to typical assumptions about online education. And so, we expect that to continue growing. Our most, our incoming cohort that starts in a few weeks is going to be one of the largest ever for online offering. So, my expectation is that that mix will grow while the overall pie will also.

[Nate Davis:]

To your other I think question on gross margin, the current mix of business as it's constructed today, and again, excluding the impact of any purchases county, has gross margins that are better than the current K12 gross margin by 10% to 20%. But with the mix that Harsh is outlining, changing over time, we obviously think that that gross margin profile will improve over time, but it currently and actually is in fact better than the K12.

[James Rhyu:]

In terms of growth, your other question I think was, what does the growth look like in the past? The growth in the business has -- the two segments have different growth profiles, the fastest growing segment of the Galvanize businesses and the enterprise business. It was a smaller of the two, but it's definitely growing at a much higher rate than the consumer business. The consumer business is growing as well, but certainly the enterprise business has been growing too fast. And we don't disclose revenue growth rates of individual business units. I can tell you that the enterprise business would grow faster than the core business at K12 has grown faster than the consumer business at Galvanize. It's the fastest growing opportunity we see in the segment.One thing just add to the growth question, I think it's safe to say that, as Nate mentioned earlier, the Galvanize team was I'll say a little bit restricted in terms of what they could invest in for growth was we won't be so restrictive. And we fully expect that Galvanize business to grow at a rate higher than we were expecting the overall K12 business to be growing i.e. well into the double-digits for years to come.

[Stephen Sheldon:]

Got it. That's very helpful. And then, I guess, in your core business, I guess on NPS student retention. How is that trended so far in fiscal '20 relative to your expectations? In both school readiness and regular NPS program?

[Nate Davis:]

This is Nate speaking. Without going into the gory detail, we tried something this year, and we talked a little bit about it on the call for the previous quarter. We talked about the fact that we changed the way we were marketing and the way we did enrollment. And what that, we put a little more money into some things early on in here. I think the market was not expecting it. So, it was part of our plan. The market probably didn't anticipate it. But what it did was it shifted the characteristics of our withdrawal and retention metrics.So, we expected and we have seen greater withdrawals in the first half of the year. But it's sort of a washing out that happens that we expect through the rest of the year, retention will be slightly better than last year. So, we expected to see more draws early in the year and lessen draws as the year goes on based upon the way we marketed to students and programs to put in play.So, in terms of retention and how it's going, it's been largely flat with previous year but just with a different characteristic. We have seen, by the way, in the last three months pick up in retention, which is exactly what we expected to happen based upon the way we put our new marketing programs in place.

[Stephen Sheldon:]

Thank you.

[Operator:]

Our next question comes from the line of Greg Pendy with Sidoti. Please proceed with your question.

[Greg Pendy:]

Thanks for taking my question. I just want, I guess, trying to get a graph on the 85% placement rate. I assume as you try and embed some of the program into CTE. Is that still going to be based on endpoints, exams type thing, types of outcomes or you are going to be able to use placement rates as well on that? Because my understanding was under CTE, you're looking for things like Python certification as the outcome. So I'm just trying to understand, because it seems like this is a much more intense program that already is going into the placement rate and sort of salary outcome?

[Nate Davis:]

Yes, if I got the question, right, the answer will be, we don't expect the average person coming out of one of our programs at the high school of DCA programs to be able to be immediately qualified to move into a Galvanize program. The Galvanize program you are right, is a more intense program at a higher level. However, the key here is for us to be able to take the Galvanize content and install the entry level courses, because remember I mentioned, when you go to apply to Galvanize, if you don't get in, they have recommended a number of entry level courses you can take to get your skills strong enough that you can enroll in one of the immersive programs. So, we're going to take that content and make sure it's available, but at the high school level. And then once it's available at the high school level that makes more of our students more qualified.Now, sometimes that may mean after they graduate from high school, sometimes they'll be able to do it fitting on their performance while they're in high school. But, we certainly think there is a step of learning that needs to happen between your average high school and before you get into one of these programs.And by the way, there's a lifestyle change that happens there as well, not just your intellectual intensity, it's also your life capacity, because it's very immersive, it's very intense. And so you have to really be dedicated, much more dedicated that most high school students are going to be this is Galvanize level. So, that's a gap that will have to bridge and I think it's an opportunity for us going on, because it means, we could take a number of high school students and we can roll them more in the lower-end courses, which means they can grow the revenue on the lower-end courses. Harsh, did I miss anything that you would like to add [ph].

[Harsh Patel:]

I do know that.

[Nate Davis:]

Okay.

[Greg Pendy:]

Thanks a lot.

[Nate Davis:]

Thanks, Craig. Operator?

[Operator:]

There seems to be no further questions up in the queue, and I would like to turn the floor back over to you for any closing remarks.

[Nate Davis:]

This is Nate speaking. As always, I really appreciate those who attended the call, I Appreciate the questions. And it's obviously, you are well engaged in what we were talking about, and I look forward to talking to you more about this. This is a very exciting time for K12. And, I hope we will demonstrate to you that we can grow this business and grow overall business.I think, James also wants to make a closing comment, if I can, James?

[James Rhyu:]

Yes, I think because of the Galvanize transaction, we had a very large group of listeners today, it's much larger than we usually have. So, I did want to emphasize with any of the callers that if anybody has a follow-up question after this, please contact my craft, I think the information is on the press release we issued earlier today. So, Mike will be available for any questions or follow-ups after this call.

[Nate Davis:]

Devin, back to you.

[Operator:]

This concludes today's teleconference. You may now disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation and have a wonderful day.