Lincoln Educational reports Q4 EPS 23c, consensus 27c

Reports Q4 revenue $102.5M, consensus $96.2M. CEO Scott Shaw states: “Our team is successfully executing our transformative growth strategies, which has led to increased student starts, retention, graduation and placement rates, and allowed us to exceed all of our 2023 guidance metrics. During the fourth quarter, we achieved a 16% increase in student starts, all from existing campus operations, and grew revenue to more than $100 million. Our solid student start growth enabled us to begin 2024 with a thousand more students than the start of last year. We have completed the build-out of our new East Point campus in Georgia, which is planning to have its first enrolled class in March. Additionally, plans for the opening of our Houston campus are moving forward as well as the campus relocation efforts in Nashville and Philadelphia. Program expansions across our existing campuses remain in progress and are expected to be operational in the second half of this year. We also remain on track to complete the transition to our highly scalable hybrid instructional platform, which we call Lincoln 10.0, by the end of 2024, which we anticipate will begin to deliver lower instructional costs as a percentage of revenue in 2025. With $80 million in cash and no debt at year end, Lincoln’s strong financial position allows us to make significant investments to expand our business and create long lasting benefits to our students, graduates, instructors, and corporate partners, while increasing returns to our shareholders.”