Nerdy Inc. (NRDY) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Started with our next session. Sorry, as we run from room to room. It's my pleasure to host the team from Nerdy. We've got Chuck Cohn, CEO. We've got Jason Pello, CFO. Chuck, Jason, thanks for being part of the conference again this year.

Thanks for having us, Eric.

Thank you, Eric.

Yes. Great to see you as well. I think if we take a step back, Chuck, for those less familiar in the room, I think one thing that's always helpful to sort of set the stage is the company has evolved a lot over the last couple of years and has a number of areas of focus where you're trying to aim for growth over the medium to long term. Why don't you level set what some of the key pillars are and initiatives within the company that you're aiming for?

Sure. So Nerdy is a leading platform for live online learning. And our mission is to transform how people learn through technology. So our flagship business is varsity tutors, that's how we sell to both consumers and institutional customers. And we leverage technology, including AI to deliver high-quality live learning at scale and create an immersive learning environment that kind of surrounds that entire customer journey. And so over the course of the past year, we've transitioned from what had been a transactional model of selling packages of hours on the consumer side for our classes, for our tutoring, for a couple of other different modalities of learning, and have since bundled them into what we call an all-access learning membership and recently announced that now that accounts for about 100% of the new customers joining the platform, exactly 100%. So we really have brought them together in a way that allows us to support students over academic calendar years, across modalities, across subjects and has framed the relationship in terms of one that allows for us to be their academic partner. It really allows for us to have much deeper relationships with consumers. And on the institutional side, we've been able to piggyback off of the significant infrastructure we have in place to then deliver live learning to K-12 school districts and take a whole host of the different products and capabilities we have on the consumer side and make them available to school districts.

Understood. Okay. So there's a lot to mine in all of that in terms of the journey you've been on. But one more big picture question. I think we've talked about this in the past. I think a lot of investors generally see education, they see technology. They sort of blur those two terms together and lump a lot of companies in the same category. How do you see the competitive landscape? What are you, in your mind, competing against and trying to disrupt versus what might be sort of investor or investment perceptions out there today?

Well, I've always thought of this as a consumer Internet business. And certainly, as we ventured into K-12 institutional sales, that's getting into more traditional go-to-market strategies. But we're taking a platform-oriented approach to growth. You can learn any of 3,000 different subjects on the platform. Our super power is live, and we deliver that at a scale that nobody else does. And then we add additive components like content and additional learning formats and others that allow for us to provide immense value in any given subject. So what you'll see out there is that there's lots and lots and lots of companies that are focused on a specific subject, and there's lots of companies that are offline. There's estimated to be 1 million to 2 million independent tutors. There's 5,000 mom-and-pop tutoring companies. There's professional testing companies. But we're the only company that's doing live online at scale, doing so through a platform-oriented approach. And then as we build these different product capabilities, we're able to just add more and more value in any given area.

Yes. Understood. One last big picture question. We've asked everybody here at the conference so far the first 2 days, but just thoughts on the broader macro environment. Obviously, you operate in a specific part of the economy where, as a parent of a 16-year-old, I, myself can tell you, you want to get your kids what they need in terms of the education curve and continue to move them along that path. But how are you thinking about the health of the consumer some of the key learnings of what happened through COVID and now in the sort of post-COVID normalization period and bringing that back to your business?

The way that we've -- I've been doing this 16 years, we've never been able to connect like an economic cycle to any discernible impact to our business. And so from our perspective, what drives growth is enhancing value to the consumer or to now the institutional customer. So we don't see any macroeconomic impact whatsoever. This has shaped up to be a kind of normal back-to-school with people looking for live tutoring consistent with our expectations. We feel good about that kind of durable demand and need state. And the changes that we're making in the business are frankly, so much more significant than whatever is going on in the economy that, that's ultimately the driver of growth and adoption. So over the course of the past year, we've gone from charging anywhere from, call it, $1,000 to $2,000 upfront for a package to now something that could be as little as a couple of hundred dollars a month that aligns with traditional kind of spending patterns, budgeting patterns, and we've significantly enhanced the value we're providing and the perceived value.

And then the only thing I'd add on the institutional side, certainly, there's a whole host of government monies that are in the hands of schools. They still have a substantial amount yet to be spent. And then there's also a significant amount of teacher shortages, which are leading to surplus budgets within school districts and increasing their capacity to spend monies against COVID learning loss. So unlike B2B, there hasn't been a pullback in what we're seeing from school districts from a spending perspective.

Understood. Okay. You talked a little bit about the transition to membership that you've been through. Why don't we take a step back? Obviously, when you introduced this transition in the shareholder letter in the initial quarter, you talked about the curve and the transition you were going to go through as a platform and you're on the other side of that transition. At this point -- before we go into how the platform will continue to evolve, why don't you just talk a little bit about the key learnings from that transition? What were the things that happened the way you thought they would play out? Some of the things have played out differently than the way you thought a little over a year ago, just so we can level set on the journey you've been on.

Sure. So first, I think we indicated we were going to start introducing this to consumers because we thought it was ultimately such a better experience for the consumer, for the student, but also for the business in terms of what we expected to become significantly extended lifetime values, better gross margins, allowing for people to actually use all of these different product capabilities that we had. And so we started rolling that out kind of audience by audience, so different groups of subjects for a given like cohort of students and then testing our way into it. And we had preconceived notions around where it would or wouldn't resonate. And what I think we ultimately realized as we completed the transition was that the model resonated just as much with some folks like a professional learner or a test prep learner as it did with an academic learner. And if we could kind of have a deal, we probably would have ripped the bandage much faster transition to this much better and more streamlined model. And then the second part is just around how important it is to improve discovery of these different product capabilities because as people actually find and use the most relevant piece of content or additional learning format, you're rewarded with additional engagement, additional perceived value, ultimately, additional spend over time. And so that's a vector that we're very, very aggressively leaning into now because as we kind of connect the learners to that next experience, it's hyper relevant to them, which is something that we're using AI to do. It's something that we're then like seeing immediate benefit as we actually get them into that next experience.

Okay. You highlighted 2 things in there that we had talked about in the past with respect to KPIs or measuring this transition, customer lifetime value and sort of the margin output of a cohort. I know you're only through the transition, and obviously, ahead, you'll build all the incrementality around subscription and that will continue to grow in momentum. But any updated thoughts on what you're seeing in terms of your view on customer lifetime value and/or what the margin structure of the business might look like at 100% subscription now from a run rate basis versus where it was a year ago?

Sure. I can take that one. So some of the key KPIs that we track in a membership business were the number of active members as well as lifetime value. As you mentioned, we produced in our shareholder letter every quarter the curves that demonstrate the superior lifetime value of the membership model versus the legacy transaction-based package model, which is almost 2x what it was at the 12-month mark at this point and continuing to grow and expand. So LTVs are better. Gross margins on a consolidated basis were 70% in the second quarter. Those continue to move up on the consumer side, should approach probably 75% as we get to the fullness of everyone being on a learning membership given the value that we have from those. The average revenue per member is about $350 a month. And so with 31,000 members at the end of Q2, that's about $130 million ARR that's been generated over the course of just the last year. And then the way we think about from a TAM perspective is there's generally 50 million to 55 million students in the U.S. at any given time. And so if we can just capture half of a percent or $250,000, you're looking at a $1 billion run rate business. And we think we're well on our way to getting there.

Understood. And one of the changes you made more recently were you went from sort of an a la carte model to an annual membership and now you're introducing a monthly membership. Maybe bring us inside the decision to go down the road of a monthly membership and give users more choice and how we should expect that to maybe have an impact on the model going forward.

Sure. So we want to create a best-in-class mass market product for consumers. And we want to make sure that we can appeal to a broad audience. And one of the things that we initially did was we tried to align it a little bit more the package model starting off with the annual contracts, and we've since introduced what we call month-to-month contracts as an option, and that's something that allows for us to appeal to a broader set of people who may have either like not want to have the barrier to trial a long-term contract or alternatively have a shorter [indiscernible]. So we started introducing that earlier in the spring, call it, like January, February-ish, and we've seen great results. And so you're kind of rewarded at the top of the funnel with higher conversion. You're able to appeal to more audiences, lower that barrier to starting. And then there's higher average revenue per member per month, so people actually pay a premium for it. And then the good thing is that people continue to stick around when they're happy and engaged. That model of driving engagement and then seeing people stick around and actually continue to spend with you is high. So I think we've been very pleased with that sort of trend and how the cumulative retention has looked of those cohorts since we introduced it.

Okay. And in totality, just to make sure we put a finer point on this, the transition to all membership, whether it's monthly or annual, that still is a less seasonal, less churn model coming out of this process than what we had a year ago. Is that correct?

Yes. And we still had package revenue that got continued to get consumed down into the summer. And so particularly as you get into next summer, it will be even less seasonal.

Got it. Understood. So that will be an impact we'll see more in 2024 than we did in 2023?

Correct. Yes.

So you saw some impact this year, but you'll see a greater impact when it's entirely subscription revenue, which will be by Q4.

Understood. Maybe turning to the institutional business. Obviously, we came out of COVID, Chuck, you've talked a lot about this on public earnings calls and conversations, I believe we had on the stage last year about some of the lag in learning that had happened as a result of COVID and trying to align your business to be there for the unlock of institutional dollars. Talk about what the elements of strategy were that were initial drivers of building the institutional business. And what have been some of the key learnings as you've built into that business in the last couple of years because it's a very different go-to-market strategy. It's a very different sell-through process for institutional than it is for the consumer.

Sure. So we had schools that would reach out to us over many years, even predating COVID. And we always felt like we had so much left to do on the consumer side, so many different product capabilities that was the highest and best use of our time. And we finally got to the point where the platform had matured, and we are capable of just extending a lot of these products that we've built in the platform itself to an institutional audience. So one of the things that changed during COVID that was very different than what happened beforehand is that it kind of shook loose historical buying habits of schools and how they operate and made them more open to leveraging a third-party platform to an extent that was not the case pre-COVID. So when we initially went to market, we felt like we were well positioned to deliver effectively the same model that we had on the consumer side but do so at district-wide scale given the capabilities we've built. And we were selling effectively large blocks of what we called high dosage hours that were oriented around like recurring tutoring and service of learning loss that could remediate that specific need. And that went well. We're only 2 years into this. But kind of year-end, we realized, wait a second, there's a different way to approach this. Anthony Salcito led Microsoft's Worldwide education business. I was fortunate to join us about a year ago. He helped us shift that strategy to one that was a per student per year SaaS model and not just address the primary problem that school districts have of learning loss and student achievement, but also then align the model to helping teachers and helping with the teacher retention problem, which is typically the second biggest problem that school districts have. So we rolled out a model that we call Teacher Assigned that was oriented towards empowering teachers to prescribe tutoring to any student that needs it when they need it and provide them immense leverage reduces their stress, but that also allows for them to have a huge impact. And that's a product that we first actually sold into market in the spring. That went exceedingly well, and now we're rolling that out to more school districts and feel really good about that being a mass market product in the year to come.

Okay. So you talked a little bit there about the pivot you made even within the institutional business. How should we be thinking about the evolution of product initiatives and go-to-market strategy? How do you think about where the opportunity set sits in front of you on both in the institutional business and how you're sort of lining investments or product road map to what you want to accomplish in the institutional business longer term?

Well, in general, there's a lot of investments we're making in our platform and products that are leveraged to the consumer world...

They cut across.

That we can then extend into the institutional market. So we're trying to build once, leverage twice. And we've been taking a lot of the different capabilities we have and then extending them into the institutional market. So the platform access you get as a customer of our city tutors for schools is getting better and better and better. And so school districts are now this back-to-school able to actually piggyback off of certain kind of unlimited capabilities like essay editing and chat tutoring, but also all of the live classes on a weekly basis that are, frankly, very hard to do at scale the way that we do, those are part of learning memberships. We're now extending those into our kind of standard platform access for school district customers. And another example would be we rolled out an AI tutor early in the school year on the consumer side, that's heavily leveraged. And we're now extending that into institutional customers as well. So schools are able to leverage that as well. And so we're just going to continue to add more and more and more value, but being cognizant that we're building for both audiences.

And maybe just to provide the audience some context on the size of the varsity tutors for schools business. It started 2 years ago. In 2022, it did $19 million of revenue. This year, we're targeting $30 million or a little bit over a 50% increase. And then more recently, what you would have seen is in the second quarter, $10.5 million of bookings, which was up 175% year-over-year. So all the changes that Chuck mentioned and the evolution of the product and the go-to-market strategy are resonating with schools, and we're able to bundle those solutions to meet all of school districts' unique student learning needs.

Yes. And I would say, like what probably isn't even reflected in those numbers is the quality of the relationship is now a top-down sponsorship by the superintendent and/or School Board. And as a result, we feel really good about those spanning multiple years and being a much more strategic conversation that is one about serving multiple different like student populations and then how that can evolve over time as opposed to what was the case in the first year, where we are selling sometimes at like the building level to a director for instance. So it's a very different go-to-market strategy, a very different sales team.

Well, that's the next area I wanted to go into, sort of this evolution of the sales team around the institutional business and maybe ask about how far along that process you are of having sort of an upsales force in place for the institutional business that you feel can be firing on all cylinders. Obviously, there's a productivity curve with most sales force investments that take some time to go from investment to yield. And then elements of how do you think about the brand awareness and knowledge you built on the consumer side of varsity tutors and how that possibly can create a bit of a halo effect back into the institutional business as well.

So we definitely learned how to contract with a K-12 school district over the course of that first year and the learning curves, so that's something that we've gotten sequentially better at over these last 24 months. And as we've gotten more and more evidence, particularly related to new products, about effectiveness, having happy large reference customers, leveraging those products, that's something that is immensely valuable heading into this back-to-school that we didn't have to the same extent a year ago. So that's something that is a function of time and just execution, but something that makes our job selling a lot easier in terms of building trust. So one of the big points of leverage is simply being able to provide more value to school districts. So it's just a no-brainer to use you. And that's why some of these platform access capabilities are so important in terms of just providing overwhelming school district with value. And then similarly, we've been able to extend some of the platform capabilities related to one to many and then bring those into some of our existing products like Teacher Assigned that we didn't previously have.

Got it. Okay. When you -- maybe one follow-up here. In terms of key learnings or how to get better at selling into school districts, I can imagine the government procurement process is not the easiest, most frictionless process to get over the finish line. So how do we think about driving more efficiency into that sell-through process or speeding up time to market or maybe some areas of friction you've learned through the first year or two and how you plan on maybe continuing to evolve the go-to-market strategy?

We've been just improving the quality of the materials, the quality of the evidence, making sure that it's kind of a streamlined approach in terms of communicating to all of the different school constituencies. That's something where there's different personas. There's different types of districts. There's different student populations you serve and we've had to kind of fill in the gaps on how we communicate and demonstrate value to each of those different audiences, which took time and learning and customer conversations to understand how -- what is a platform-based approach could be communicated in such a way where people understand why it's relevant to them and the problems that their students are experiencing.

Understood. So you've talked a couple of times in your answers about artificial intelligence and Generative AI and some of the things you're building. And I think we first had this conversation in the February time frame on that earnings call. Maybe talk about how you think about generative AI, both in terms of an outward-facing product set of initiatives as well as an internal facing elements of creating content and creating efficiencies inside the company as well and how you're aiming investments against that landscape?

Sure. So we started using machine learning to first assist with matching the student with the tutor who is best able to help them. In a world where you have 1,000 tutors available, how do you pick the right one and you're able to detect patterns that no human could with the data. So we started doing that in, call it, 2016, 2017, and the immediate leverage we got was so significant in terms of actually enhancing the customer experience and then being rewarded with lifetime value extension that we then put in place a lot of infrastructure and started instrumenting the business in such a way where we could take the data, capture the data throughout the entire vertically integrated customer journey and then actually enhance that experience in a way that demonstrated value to the customer such that they would actually stick around. So when Generative AI became a thing, we were in a position to run really fast in that regard. So we have consumer products involving AI less implant generation, an AI tutor, we use it to now generate content. So we're producing content at scale that's hyper personalized. We announced 2 weeks ago that we had 66,000 AI-generated practice problems that are used in diagnostic testing that will then continue to be scaled up to fill in kind of any conceivable content hole you could have over time across those 3,000 subjects you can learn on the platform. And then it's also being used to drive a lot of efficiency and cost out. So whether it's using it for customer support chat bots or using it to identify other kind of inefficiencies. We're actually getting a lot of leverage in that regard. We're using it for call scoring to enhance our customer service experiences, where we're using GPT powered algorithms to actually score against the predictive model of what is a good or bad customer service experience. So it's actually something that removes a couple of million dollars in costs this year. But it's also something that enhances the experience from the customer's perspective. But it's kind of getting threaded throughout that experience to create something that is immersive and allows for us to provide way more value to the customer.

Understood. Okay. You've talked longer term around where you're going from a margin standpoint. You've always been very disciplined in talking about wanting to invest for growth, first and foremost, and then building trajectory in the margins over the medium to long term, but you've also still started to prove out some good trajectory on the margins in the last couple of quarters. How should we be thinking about the variables or the building blocks between where you are today and where the long-term margin structure for the company can be?

Yes, sure. Great question. So to give some context, we always thought that the transition to learning memberships would allow us to have higher LTVs, better unit level economics, stronger gross margins and provide for operating efficiencies within the business. At the beginning of the year, we guided to that we would improve adjusted EBITDA margins by 1,900 basis points on the year. In the second quarter, they improved 2,555 basis points. So up and down the P&L, we're seeing benefits across the board. Gross margins improved 200 basis points year-over-year. Sales and marketing through LTV extension and more targeted marketing spend improved 1,100. And then on the G&A side, through the automation and AI efficiency efforts that Chuck mentioned, we improved 1,300 basis points. Those are all very durable and allow us to achieve our stated goal of 25% to 30% adjusted EBITDA margins over the coming years. So we'll continue to balance that growth and profitability, but we feel really good about the trajectory that we've undertaken over the course of the last 12 months.

Yes. And we've been able to hold G&A constant while continuing to invest pretty aggressively in product and engineering with a specific focus on some of those AI product enhancements. So that's coming through a lot of just cost out efficiency that's variable in nature, so therefore, durable.

Okay. Within that cost structure and against those goals of building the margin over the longer term, when I see membership model, I see institutional business. I think, over time, marketing efficiencies can get better and better. LTV to CAC can continue to rise. How do you think about marketing as a potential lever to increase the rate or accelerate the rate on your margin trajectory just because of where you are in business mix today versus where you were 2 years ago?

Well, we've tried to stay disciplined in terms of holding our teams to effectively a customer acquisition cost or customer acquisition costs adjusted for different revenue levels or tiers so that we're holding CACs constant and allowing LTVs to get extended, which has allowed for us to drive significant operating leverage in sales and marketing thus far. And I think that's important to kind of maintain and make sure that we don't allow for just significant increases in customer acquisition costs, absent robust data around long LTV over extended period of times across audiences and such that we don't get over our skis. So we feel good about the discipline and creativity that, that drives in the business and among our marketing teams. And then separately, like we'll also then take some big swings on certain types of customer acquisition project. So we will have some what I consider to be speculative, but big swings related to marketing that's back-to-school that are already implied in our budget that we think are appropriate, but the rest of the business will be kind of operating on the normal discipline that we have around holding CACs constant and then allowing us to grow into those extended LTVs.

Without getting into too much detail and I know it's already embedded in what you've guided for going forward. Is that thinking about new interesting alternative marketing channels? Or is that a mixture of both new channels and possibly more money that's already encapsulated in it. So it's scale of marketing and new channels or one or the other?

It's more so that new channels that are kind of different than what we're doing today.

Okay. I have to be on the lookout for that. Wanted to talk about capital and investments. You've talked a lot about where you want to invest in the business for the medium to long term. Against your broader strategy of allocating capital into the business versus back to shareholders, talk about how your capital allocation strategy continues to sort of evolve?

Yes, sure. I can take this one. So from a capital allocation strategy perspective, we're going to focus on the organic opportunities that are in front of us. We feel like we're in the infancy on the Varsity Tutors for Schools opportunity set and also early days on the transition to learning members. Those will drive continued growth in the future. When we think about M&A, again, the organic side is where our focus is over the coming years. Just given where our cash levels are at $90 million and no debt, wanting to make sure that we drive that continued P&L leverage and free cash flow positivity into 2024.

Yes. So a balanced approach to growth and profitability, we would not expect to gear to one extreme in that regard. And then to Jason's point on M&A, we -- there are some incredible companies out there in education, education technology that never get escape velocity. And as I think we all know, there's kind of a venture apocalypse going on right now. And we've been the fortunate beneficiary of 1 [indiscernible] on a business that had raised about $15 million and has an exceptional product in kids coding. But absent something like that, we wouldn't expect to do something big or we feel like the organic road map is so robust that, that's how we drive the most value for shareholders and also for customers.

Even though I'm sure you've been meeting with investors, it sounded like you at least heard a little bit of what happened here in the VC panel earlier today.

No, I didn't. I didn't hear it. I can imagine.

The disconnect between public and private market valuations continues to be pretty wide, I think, in the minds of most of those folks. I wanted to touch upon two quick things before we wrap it up. One, you guys made an interesting announcement recently talking about reducing potential dilutive impacts of warrants and earn-out shares. And I want to talk a little bit about what led to that transaction and how we should be thinking about once it closes, which it has not closed yet, how to think about the closing of that transaction and bring it back to the model.

Sure. So we had 19.3 million warrants outstanding and 8 million earnouts. And the goal of the exchange into common shares is to really simplify the capital structure, look more like a traditional public company, eliminate mark-to-market accounting and the variability that those instruments drive within the P&L. And we think we can do it, and we plan to be able to do it on a nondilutive basis. So you'll issue some shares on the warrant side and then we've also gotten earnout holders to cancel some shares to the tune of 60% of them, which allows for Net Zero dilution when the transaction closes later this month in September. So by the end of the quarter, the transaction will be complete, and I think we'll look more like a traditional public company thereafter.

Yes. I think technically it was like 0.1% dilution. But let's see.

We'll call that a rounding.

Well, I don't know if that's rounding for legal purposes.

Understood. Until things close, I never sort of count in our model anyway. On the flip side of it, certainly laudable to reduce dilution, and we appreciate that. I think, Chuck, you've also been a buyer of the shares. Talk a little bit about that. You see value in where the company is going. And certainly, I think when management puts money behind a stock that certainly should warrant a lot of shareholder retention. So why don't you talk us through your thought process of allocating your own personal capital in the company, which is certainly, we don't probably see enough of that.

No, it's been incredible what we've seen in terms of like the evolution of the business model and how much better it is for the business, how much better it is for customers, how much easier it makes to innovate. So Jason kind of rattled off stats of trending to be 2x higher LTV at Month 12, higher gross margin. People are now engaging in all these additional 0 marginal cost products that are very, very scalable and allow for us to have more and more value and then it's just easier to operate. So as we think about growth, it's just a really compelling investment opportunity from my perspective, and I'd like to put -- I think it's $31 million or so of my own money to work, buying shares in the open market over the course of the last year or so. And it's just a function of the extent to which I think this can be a massive business over time and the conviction there.

Understood. So with that, as a finer point to end on, if we look out over the next 12 months, we've talked a lot about where you're trying to take the business, how you're trying to invest behind it, what the momentum is, how should we be thinking about what your key priorities as a team are for investing behind growth, executing against product? What is top of mind for you that when we're sitting here, hopefully in a year and having this conversation, you're going to be -- that's what I focused on, that's what I delivered on, and that's what we did as a management team. What's top of mind for you?

Sure. So on the consumer side, we are improving the entire experience for a logged in member where you're able to now find and discover all the different ways you get value. And that's something that has gotten better over the course of the last month or two. We had some screenshots in our shareholder letter, but there's a lot yet to come. And I think sitting here a year from now, we will be able to have dramatically enhanced that experience such that it looks and feels very different and the amount of value we provided, how that then manifested in way higher conversion at top of funnel, allowing us to expand the market and who we appeal to significantly and then allowing us to build long-term multiyear relationships I think will look very different than it does today. And obviously, we've made huge strides over the course of the last year in that evolution. And then on the institutional side, I think you'll start seeing the power of the actual like platform-based approach to providing value and enhancing that experience and piggybacking on the build once leverage a number of times where we can take the investments we've made on the consumer side, extend them to the institutional audience and provide immense value that hopefully, they're not accustomed to getting.

Okay. Well, you've been through this membership transition. It's going to be interesting to watch how the membership base continues to scale and continued execution on the institutional side. Thanks, as always, for the conversation and the time. And please join me in thanking the team from Nerdy for being part of the conference this year.

Thank you, Eric.

Thanks, Eric.