Coursera Q1 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

Quartr
Provided by Quartr
April 24, 2025

There are 12 speakers on the call.

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by and welcome to Coursera's First Quarter twenty twenty five Earnings Call. All participants are in a listen only mode and this call is being recorded. Following the prepared remarks, we will hold a question and answer session. I would now like to turn the call over to Cam Carey, Head of Investor Relations. Mr.

Operator

Carey, you may begin.

Speaker 1

Hi, everyone. Thank you for joining us for Corcyra's Q1 twenty twenty five earnings conference call. Today, I am joined by Greg Hart, our President and Chief Executive Officer and Ken Hahn, our Chief Financial Officer. Following their prepared remarks, we will open the call for questions. Our earnings press release was issued after market close.

Speaker 1

It is available on our Investor Relations website at investor.coursera.com, where this call is being webcast live and more versions of today's supplemental materials, including our new quarterly shareholder letter, can be found. During this call, we will present both GAAP and non GAAP financial measures. A reconciliation of non GAAP measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measure can be found in today's earnings press release and supplemental materials. Please note, all growth percentages discussed refer to year over year change unless otherwise specified. Additionally, statements made during this call relating to future results and events are forward looking statements based on current expectations and beliefs.

Speaker 1

Actual results and events could differ materially from those expressed or implied in these forward looking statements due to a number of risks and uncertainties, including those discussed in our earnings press release, shareholder letter, and SEC filings. With that, I'll turn it over to Greg.

Speaker 2

Thank you, Cam, and good afternoon, everyone. I wanna begin by saying how exciting the past few months have been as I've settled into my role. Since joining Coursera in February, I have immersed myself in the business. As part of a listening and learning process, I've prioritized getting to know our team, engaging with our customers and partners, and deeply understanding our operations in order to implement new executional rigor that can begin to accelerate our progress. Fortunately, I'm starting with a strong foundation.

Speaker 2

Today, I'm pleased to share that Coursera is off to a solid start in 2025. We delivered first quarter revenue of a hundred and 70 9 million dollars, up 6% from a year ago. We generated over $25,000,000 of free cash flow, up 40% year over year. And our growth expectations for the full year have improved. We now expect to deliver $725,000,000 of revenue at the midpoint of our range as we lay the groundwork for our next chapter of growth.

Speaker 2

In addition to our financial progress, we welcome more than 7,000,000 learners this quarter, marking a q one record and underscoring the global demand for job relevant skills and trusted credentials. I'm particularly excited about our innovation efforts, where we're focused on building durable capabilities that can reimagine the learning experience and deliver more value for our customers. Over the past two months, I've learned a great deal and wanna provide some initial observations. First, it is clear that Coursera attracts a dedicated and talented workforce. The company has a strong culture, rooted in innovation and motivated by our mission.

Speaker 2

Our team cares deeply about the millions of learners our platform serves and is focused on expanding the impact we create and the outcomes we can unlock by transforming access to education and career opportunities. I am thrilled to be working alongside them. Second, the pace of change is accelerating around the world, expanding our market opportunities while creating new avenues for growth. In January, the World Economic Forum estimated that 59% of the world's workforce will require some form of upskilling or reskilling training by 2030. As the need to develop new skills progresses at an unprecedented rate, individuals require access to education that can help them advance their careers and remain competitive in a global labor market.

Speaker 2

Businesses across every sector need to develop a more agile workforce that can drive innovation and transform their operations, and higher education must adapt to mounting pressures. Students desire a more compelling value proposition, and employers demand graduates with job relevant skills. And demographic and enrollment trends will require universities to expand their revenue streams. Meeting this moment will require a leader with the scale, technology, and ecosystem to reinvent how education is delivered. Coursera is positioned to do just that.

Speaker 2

We operate on solid footing with a strong, continuously improving set of foundational assets and the capacity to drive durable, long term growth. Our team has made strong progress delivering new products, capabilities, and experiences across our platform, but I believe we can move at a faster pace. Working with the leadership team, I have started to implement thoughtful changes to our operating model, focused on driving more innovation and engagement throughout our learner experience, more rapid product development cycles, and a data driven approach to continuous improvement in all aspects of our business. At the highest level, our mission is to serve learners by providing trusted education that unlocks career mobility. As part of this effort, we have simplified our business model and segment reporting, integrating the consumer and degree segments as both support consumer learners around the world.

Speaker 2

The degrees market opportunity will continue to be an important part of our long term strategy, but our new model is designed to accomplish three things. Simplify our structure, reflect the learner journey at the center of our decision making, and focus the investments we are making in a unified end to end platform experience that spans all product categories. Whether it's a stand alone course, a professional certificate, or a college degree, our job is to deliver the right content at the right time to support each learner's personal goals. By building an integrated learner journey, we ensure that our investments in platform capabilities, marketing, and discovery, and the next breakthrough learning experience provide a consistent experience for the broad audiences that we serve. From helping our consumer learners navigate their careers to supporting our enterprise customers looking for the best way to upskill their workforces to adapt to a rapidly changing business environment.

Speaker 2

As we lay the groundwork for our next phase of innovation and growth, we continue to execute on our 2025 plan with strong progress in expanding our ecosystem. Content is the engine of our business and the foundation of that ecosystem. Our catalog now includes nearly 10,000 courses, growing by 37% over the past year. We are building a faster, more agile content model that preserves the value of our credible, high quality brands and meets the rapid pace of skills development for real time learner and business needs. A key offering is our generative AI content and credentials.

Speaker 2

Our content creators, many of which are the world's leading AI companies, have launched nearly 700 AI courses as they look to meet the growing demand for these skills. So far this year, we are seeing 12 enrollments per minute in AI content, up from one per minute in 2023 and eight per minute in 2024. We also continue to expand our catalog of entry level professional certificates. This year, we have launched five new certificates from industry partners, including Adobe, Deep Learning dot ai, IBM, John Hopkins Medicine, and Microsoft, expanding our total catalog to 90 certificates. These certificates provide our learners with a pathway to entry level jobs in fields such as software development, cybersecurity, data science, business, and health care, while students can increasingly earn college credit for these certificates.

Speaker 2

More than 30 of our certificates in this catalog have received one or more credit recommendations from ACE in The US, ECTS in Europe, and NSQF in India, which are part of our efforts to create more distinct value for learners and customers by enabling pathways to college degrees. Later this month, we will publish our twenty twenty five micro credentials impact report, drawing insights from more than 2,000 students and employers. A preview of several key findings showcases why we continue to enhance this catalog. 85% of employers are more likely to hire a candidate who has a micro credential compared to one without, and 94% of students want micro credentials to count towards their degree, which is up from 55% in 2023. As students are increasingly concerned about whether a traditional degree will equip them with the skills they need to land a job in a competitive labor market, micro credentials have emerged as a solution that prepares graduates for the modern workplace, augments the expertise of traditional university courses, and gives employers assurance that entry level hires possess the job relevant skills needed by their workforce.

Speaker 2

The breadth and quality of our content engine enables us to serve both upskilling and reskilling value propositions. As a result, our catalog attracts learners from around the world, making Coursera one of the largest and most globally distributed learning platforms. We have attracted over a 75,000,000 learners with The US, India, Mexico, and Brazil among our largest markets. This global reach not only drives scale but creates powerful opportunities for localization, enabling us to tailor content, language, and experiences to meet the needs of learners and labor markets in different regions. Additionally, many working adults access learning in institutional settings.

Speaker 2

We now serve 1,651 paid enterprise customers, spanning businesses, governments, and campuses. Our customer partners our customers partner with Coursera not only for content, but a robust set of platform capabilities that can meet the unique needs of each vertical with a shared foundation, driving skills transformation for employees, enabling government workforce development at scale, and powering academic innovation. Our growing base of learners and enterprise customers continues to attract leading content creators from world class universities to industry leaders. These creators are trusted by learners for their academic rigor, industry expertise, and real world relevance. As demand for career aligned education grows, we believe top universities and industry partners will increasingly view Coursera as a strategic platform to extend their reach and impact.

Speaker 2

Google, one of our strongest partnerships, has created several of the most popular certificates on Coursera. Last year, they launched AI Essentials, a course designed to help learners across roles and industries gain valuable AI skills and hands on experience with AI tools to boost productivity. It was the most popular course on Coursera in 2024 with over 1,000,000 enrollments to date. And in February, Google added a course on agile essentials to our catalog, teaching software development methodologies to professionals across industries and teams. Additionally, our relationship with Microsoft, which began in April 2021, continues to deepen.

Speaker 2

Over the past three years, we have partnered to launch more than 35 professional certificates and specializations that encompass over a 70 courses covering topics ranging from Azure cloud to Excel and, more recently, AI. Earlier this month, we announced more than 1,000,000 learners have enrolled in Microsoft content, with learners coming from more than 195 countries. We are proud of how our shared commitment with these partners can broaden access to job relevant skills and technology education, and we look forward to expanding our efforts so that learners everywhere can succeed in an evolving labor market. I believe our next chapter of growth will be defined by innovation, and I am committed to accelerating the role our platform will play in shaping the future of learning. Coursera's ecosystem is powered by our platform, which benefits from rapidly expanding global reach to scaled access to learning, data driven insights to inform our content strategy and skill recommendations, and advanced AI and technology tools to enhance discovery, deliver a more personalized and interactive learning experience, and empower instructors to create and augment courses that are engaging and impactful for learners.

Speaker 2

The team has made strong recent progress building new products and capabilities across our platform. I would like to highlight three examples that demonstrate how we're focused on driving improvements in engagement, retention, and conversion by delivering more valuable experiences for our learners. First, technology continues to rapidly reduce language barriers, opening access to education and career opportunities. As you know, Coursera started rolling out AI powered text translations in 2023, which have enabled nearly 3,000,000 learners to access more than 5,000 courses across 26 languages. Last week, we announced the next phase of our translation initiative with the launch of more than 100 AI dubbed courses in Spanish, French, German, and Brazilian Portuguese.

Speaker 2

Now learners can not only read but hear courses in their native language with natural voice, tone, and lip sync, which offers a remarkably better experience than conventional dubbing. In the initial text based phase, learners completed translated courses at higher rates and nearly 25% faster compared to those offered only in the original language. With the advancements in audio, we're excited about the possibility of driving stronger engagement and better outcomes. Over the course of q two and the rest of this year, we will expand the breadth of courses and range of languages available with AI dubbing as we continue our efforts to bring the world's best education to learners everywhere. Next is Coursera Coach, which started as a learning assistant but is rapidly expanding in breadth and depth.

Speaker 2

Coach has become an increasingly core presence across our platform with expanding features in career guidance and discovery, instructional design, and customer support. In q four, we piloted coach dialogues, which allow instructors to incorporate personalized, interactive learning experiences throughout their courses, acting as an extension of their teaching to help learners think more deeply about course material and concepts. The early signals are promising, showing a significant impact in learner engagement for courses with dialogues. I'm pleased to share that dialogues are generally available as of the April, and we'll be closely monitoring performance as we seek to drive broad adoption of this new capability across our catalog. Finally, Coursera's prominence as a global destination for career motivated learning attracts a broad range of learners.

Speaker 2

From our survey data, we know that the majority of learners looking to start or switch their careers do not know what they need to learn or where to begin. Historically, our search and discovery experience has emphasized the breadth of our offerings. We recognized opportunities to better understand our learners' goals, guide them on what roles can be learned fully online, and how high quality education and credentials can provide a pathway to a more satisfying career. Starting in q four, we began testing an improved career based discovery experience that maps our broad selection of credentials to specific job roles and skills. The new experience, which continues to be rolled out globally, includes improved onboarding, allowing us to better understand learner goals and provide more personalized recommendations, 60 role description pages, which provide credential recommendations across different levels of career progression and expertise, and localized salary and job data for approximately 40 countries.

Speaker 2

The preliminary results are showing positive impacts in our paid learner conversion. We expect to rapidly expand these early features with a wider selection of roles, a better understanding of learner goals to personalize guidance and recommendations, and a clear learning and career progression from beginner courses to industry certificates and college degrees. This is an experience that Coursera is uniquely capable of creating. As I reflect on my first months as CEO, I'm excited about the opportunities ahead in Coursera's role in shaping the future of education. The foundational elements are all in place.

Speaker 2

Solid financial performance with a strong balance sheet, an expanding ecosystem at the forefront of learning with distinct assets and global scale, and a growing market opportunity to serve both individuals and institutions with an integrated platform. Our efforts to unlock Coursera's next chapter of innovation and growth are well underway. In the coming quarters, our priorities will be centered around three key areas. First and foremost, product innovation is key to our strategy. We are committed to expanding access to the world's best education and career opportunities through focused improvements in our learner experience.

Speaker 2

This means accelerating product development cycles, leveraging advanced AI and data driven insights, and continuously enhancing our platform's capabilities. Second, we will continue to accelerate our content engine. By rapidly growing our high our catalog of high quality, job relevant courses with more leading content creators, we can meet the fast changing skill requirements of learners looking to transform their careers and companies needing to transform their businesses through their most important asset, their people. Third, we will enhance our go to market capabilities. We aim to guide individual learners more effectively through improved discovery, merchandising, and a clear value proposition.

Speaker 2

Career based discovery is just the start. This, combined with optimizing our enterprise channels, enables us to reach and serve our customers efficiently and effectively. While it's still early days, I'm confident in the clear direction we are taking grounded in strong fundamentals, an important mission, and a highly motivated team. Now I'll hand it over to Ken to walk us through the financial performance and outlook in more detail. Ken, please go ahead.

Speaker 3

Thank you, Greg, and good afternoon, everyone. We delivered a solid first quarter. As Greg mentioned, our expectations for full year growth have improved as we begin to implement new operating capabilities and a focused set of initiatives. Please note that for the remainder of this call, as I review our business performance and outlook, I will discuss our non GAAP financial measures unless otherwise noted. In q one, we generated total revenue of $179,000,000 up 6% from a year ago, driven by growth in our consumer and enterprise segments.

Speaker 3

Gross profit was $100,000,000 up 9% year over year with a 56% gross margin, up from 54% in the prior year period. Total operating expense was $87,000,000 or 49% of revenue, an improvement of four percentage points from the prior year period, reflecting our disciplined approach to managing our cost structure while making investments intended to drive long term, durable growth. Net income was $20,000,000 or 11% of revenue and adjusted EBITDA was $19,000,000 or 10.4% of revenue. Turning to cash performance and the balance sheet. Q1 was our strongest quarter of cash performance to date.

Speaker 3

We generated more than $25,000,000 of free cash flow which included over $4,000,000 in purchases of content assets treated similarly to other categories of capital expenditures. As Greg highlighted, we will continue to invest in expanding our content engine's capabilities. This includes new partnerships, production arrangements and formats that can deliver more value for our learners, customers and content creators as well as long term benefits to our business model and economics. Our strong cash performance bolstered our already healthy balance sheet. As of 03/31/2025, we had approximately seven forty eight million dollars of unrestricted cash and cash equivalents with no debt.

Speaker 3

We are operating from a position of financial strength with the flexibility and stability needed to navigate changes in the technology landscape and remain focused on executing on our long term strategy. As we have discussed in the past, our capital allocation framework emphasizes the strategic optionality provided by our strong financial position which we believe is particularly valuable given the industry's rapid recent transformation as well as our desire to grow and establish a leadership position. Now turning to our operating segments. I wanna begin with the segment reporting simplification introduced today, which is aligned with the information Greg, our chief operating decision maker or CODM in accounting parlance, is now using to manage the business. Going forward, our degrees results will no longer be reported as an independent segment.

Speaker 3

Degrees is now a product within our consumer segment. As a result, we're no longer disclosing the number of degree students as it will not provide a meaningful indication of consumer segment performance. As a one time practice to ensure clarity in today's report, we have provided our operating results in both our historic segment reporting structure as well as our new simplified structure. While the change is straightforward and has no impact whatsoever on either our consolidated results or enterprise segment results, a reclassification table for the past two years is included in the appendix of today's shareholder letter as well as posted to our IR website in a downloadable spreadsheet for complete clarity and ease of modeling. Additionally, all performance and outlook commentary today includes comprehensive discussions of both our consumer segment and Degrees product trends ensuring full visibility into the standalone first quarter results and our 2025 expectations as we transition to the updated reporting structure.

Speaker 3

We will discontinue this presentation after this transition quarter. Now let's discuss the segment results in more detail starting with consumer. In Q1, combined consumer segment revenue was $118,000,000 up 5% from a year ago. This is composed of our historical consumer product revenue of a hundred and $2,000,000 and degrees product revenue of $16,000,000 both of which grew 5% year over year. On a standalone basis, historical consumer product revenue was driven primarily by solid top of funnel activity and receptivity to our Coursera Plus subscription offerings.

Speaker 3

Degrees product revenue was slightly ahead of expectations due to stronger student persistence in several North American programs as well as a year over year increase in the total number of degree students. Moving to gross profit. Combined consumer segment gross profit was $72,000,000 up 9% from $67,000,000 in the prior year period. In historical terms, this included standalone consumer product gross profit of $57,000,000 and Degrees product gross profit of $16,000,000, up 105% year over year respectively. Combined consumer segment gross profit margin was 62%, up 190 basis points from a year ago.

Speaker 3

In historical terms, consumer gross profit margin was 56%, up 220 basis points from a year ago. It was the primary driver of the combined segment margin expansion as there is no change to the degree gross profit margin of 100% and remains the same year over year. The consumer expansion was driven by an improvement in our gross profit margin rate as learners engage with more recently launched content and credentials created under new production arrangements with more favorable revenue share economics. To summarize, our consumer trends remained stable in q one. As Greg highlighted earlier, we added more than 7,000,000 new registered learners bringing our total base to 175,000,000.

Speaker 3

Additionally, we saw strong receptivity to our Coursera Plus subscription offerings and marketing campaigns including localized promotions that benefited our paid conversion rate. Overall, I'm pleased with our continued progress in consumer, the renewed level of prioritization and focus in our execution, and the initiatives underway across content, product, and marketing as we begin to implement our new operating model and seek to drive more significant growth. Moving to our enterprise segment, which I will remind you is not impacted by the segment reporting change. Enterprise revenue was $62,000,000 up 7% from a year ago, by growth in our Business and Campus verticals. Our first quarter performance was solid and like most companies, we are closely monitoring budgetary trends amidst the backdrop of an uncertain macro environment.

Speaker 3

Segment gross profit was $43,000,000 up 10% from $39,000,000 in the prior year period. Segment gross profit margin was 70%, up 200 basis points from a year ago. The total number of paid enterprise customers increased to sixteen fifty one, up 12% from a year ago, and our net retention rate for paid enterprise customers was 91%. Finally, turning to our financial outlook. As you know, our historical practice entering a new year has been to provide some incremental color on the composition and pace of our business, including one time segment growth rates.

Speaker 3

Last quarter Greg and the team assessed our business model and market opportunities and started to refine our operating capabilities in the prioritization of initiatives and investments intended to reignite our growth trajectory. As such, we shared high level full year expectations with a commitment to providing a more detailed 2025 outlook soon. To that end, for Q2, we expect revenue to be in the range of 179 to $183,000,000 representing growth of five to 7% year over year. For adjusted EBITDA, we are expecting a range of 11 to $15,000,000. For the full year 2025, we now expect revenue to be in the range of $720,000,000 to $730,000,000 representing growth of approximately 4% to 5% year over year.

Speaker 3

From a segment perspective, this reflects single digit growth in our consumer and enterprise segments with more weighting towards consumer given, one, the stabilization trends we've been driving in our consumer performance and two, acknowledging the macroeconomic trends that have unfolded in recent weeks with less certainty surrounding the corporate spend environment. Lastly, consistent with last quarter's commentary, we continue to expect our degrees product to decline as we invest in more productive near term opportunities that can benefit the broadest number of learners and customers across our platform. Now moving to EBITDA. As you know, our long time operating practice as it relates to EBITDA is not focused on the optimization results for any single quarter. Rather, we set an annual EBITDA margin target and work within that framework to invest in our most productive growth opportunities.

Speaker 3

This practice provides us with the flexibility to make the right long term decisions quarter to quarter while demonstrating our commitment to operating with discipline and driving scale in our model every year. For 2025, we are targeting an annual adjusted EBITDA margin improvement of 100 basis points to 7%. As we discussed last quarter, this is a more moderate pace of improvement following several years of aggressive expansion. At the end of the day, our long term prospects and value will depend most heavily on us growing and succeeding in our large and attractive markets. We remain committed to extending our strong track record of operating with discipline while providing the team with the optionality and capacity throughout this year to implement the new operating capabilities Greg outlined, further differentiate Coursera's leadership position, and bolster our return to higher growth.

Speaker 3

With that, I'll open the call for questions.

Speaker 4

As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please click on the raise hand button at the bottom of your screen. Once prompted, please unmute your line and ask your question. We will now pause a moment to assemble the queue. Our first call, question will come from Brian Spillak with JPMorgan. Please unmute your line and ask your question.

Speaker 5

Great. Thanks for taking the questions. I guess, Greg, to start, can you just help us understand where you're spending the most time, you know, in your new role and where you see the most opportunity to drive improved growth? Is it in the consumer segment, Coursera for campus, enterprise, or the mobile app? Thank you.

Speaker 6

Thanks, Brian. Great question. So my top priority is unlocking the next phase of innovation led growth for Coursera. So I spent my first few weeks here deeply understanding all areas of the business and the organization, and then turning to start to implement some thoughtful changes to our operating model and our ways of working with a focus on new capabilities that can help us better serve our learners, our university and industry partners, and then our enterprise customers as well so we can drive higher growth. Some of the near term focus areas.

Speaker 6

Number one, product innovation. I believe that we can accelerate our product development life cycles. We can do that both by leveraging advanced AI and data driven insights, but but also by focusing on the right spots within the product for innovation, again, tied back to durable capabilities that can better serve our learners, and then make sure that we're continuously enhancing the core foundational capabilities that the platform has. Second area, our content engine. So content obviously is the fuel that runs our business.

Speaker 6

So expanding our content catalog continues to be critical. The need and the interest in learning has never been greater. You see that reflected in the strong, growth to 7,100,000 new registered learners in the quarter. We believe that need is going to continue to increase, over time, and so we need to make sure that our catalog can meet that need. And so we need to become more more nimble.

Speaker 6

We need to make sure that we're filling in gaps in the catalog, and we need to make sure that we're continuing to evolve not just the breadth and depth of the catalog that we offer, but also the learning experience itself. And then finally, our go to market. So expanding our go to market capabilities. And by that, I mean everything from sort of registration and onboarding, career based discovery, etcetera, to guiding individual learners more effectively through that experience, how we merchandise, how we communicate our value proposition, and then how we do all of that across all segments of our business. So not just for consumer learners, but for our enterprise customers as well.

Speaker 6

It will also, you know, continue to make improvements to the enterprise area of the business, specifically for enterprise admins and and the specific needs that our enterprise customers have. I would say, you know, overall to the the last part of your question, Brian, I think you would start to see just because of the nature of the two businesses, I would expect that we would start to see more signs that translate into sort of business output metrics on the consumer side of the business. But I would expect that over time, that would also translate into enterprise.

Speaker 5

Great. Thank you. And I just had a quick follow-up too. I mean, January was such a, you know, strong quarter and record quarter in terms of registered learner net adds. Could you just help us understand what drove that performance?

Speaker 5

You mentioned stabilization across trends. Was that across retention, top of funnel, or both?

Speaker 6

I would say it's a mix of the two. On top of funnel, obviously, a good quarter with 7,100,000 registered learners. We saw some real success on the marketing front with improvements in our return on ad spend and efficiency there, but also saw some great improvements in that we made on the platform itself that are helping to drive a better learner experience. And so, you know, we talked about some of

Speaker 3

those in the scripted remarks with things like dialogue, translation, AI driven translations, etcetera. But conversion and retention will be the two things that we are focused the most on driving improvements in over the course of the coming year. And from a product standpoint, we saw the the biggest uplift in our c plus subscription offerings. And so there was a big focus. We do an annual promo every year, around the c plus annual subscriptions, and that was also particularly, successful, which drove a lot of nice free cash flow as well as future revenue for the course of this entire year.

Speaker 5

Great. Thank you both.

Speaker 4

Our next question will come from Stephen Sheldon with William Blair. Please unmute your line and ask your question.

Speaker 7

Yeah. Thanks. Greg, wanted to to follow-up on the content front. Now that you've had a few months at Coursera, where do you see the bigger opportunities to expand the content on the platform as we think about subjects? You know, for example, building out more breadth in health care or other subjects by the source of content as we think about corporate university partners along with potentially new sources and just by content type.

Speaker 7

I'm I'm curious how you're thinking about how how that content kind of portfolio might look as as we might sit here two to three years down the road?

Speaker 6

Great question, Steven. So, you know, content, as I mentioned earlier, is the engine of our business, and it really powers the flywheel, of our ecosystem. So, you know, stepping back, you've got the branded content that comes from both our university partners and our industry partners. That content is the reason that learners come to the platform. As more and more learners come to our platform and engage with the platform, that obviously makes Coursera more and more appealing to our partners in both higher education and in industry as a way to bring their content to a large and increasingly growing audience.

Speaker 6

This past year, we've expanded our courses our course catalog by 37 year over year. So we now offer nearly 10,000 new courses, and that includes things that are both incredibly topical, like GenAI. So we have roughly 700 GenAI courses now with an incredible amount of demand for those courses. And so just to provide a little context, as I mentioned in the scripted remarks, you know, we saw demand of so far this year, we're seeing demand of 12 enrollments per minute in GenAI content, up from eight last year and one in 2023. We also wanna keep adding new entry level certificates because that brings both very career aligned learning and things that employers are looking for in their prospective candidates.

Speaker 6

And so we added five new entry level certificates in q one. '1 of them was from Johns Hopkins, you mentioned health care. And so we we added one from Johns Hopkins. I do believe there's opportunity for us to continue to expand in the health care space. The total number of certificates we now have is more than 90, and about a third of those have at least one credit recommendation.

Speaker 6

So they're also useful to full time students, and they help augment the offering that our partners at the university level provide to their student base. I think what we wanna get to with our content offering is one that has both breadth across every different subject and domain area, depth in all of those areas, and is also really nimble. And so one of the things that we're really trying to do is figure out how do we accelerate our content engine. You've heard us talk on prior calls about Coursera produced content. Those, I think, will continue to increase our investment in that.

Speaker 6

We started that investment last year, maybe the tail end of 2023. We will increase that investment this year. A couple of really interesting things about Coursera produced content. One, obviously, we have better control of that content because we are creating it. Number two, it is favorable for us economically, so it's, you know, accretive from a gross margin perspective.

Speaker 6

And, obviously, it's exclusive. The other thing that we can do with that content is really use it as a test bed for what works to drive more learner engagement. And so that's one of the things that the team has been doing and will continue to do. And the goal of, obviously, all of our content is to make sure we're doing a fantastic job of improving that learner experience. And so we we really look at it in terms of what's the supply that we need to have of content to attract learners to our catalog, what's the learning experience that we provide that converts them from, you know, a registered learner to a paid learner and keeps them on the platform for longer, and so it drives higher retention.

Speaker 7

Got it. Thanks, Greg. That that's really helpful. Maybe as a follow-up on the career discovery solution, you know, really interesting what you guys are doing there. And, I guess, as you as you think about the opportune how comprehensive of a solution could Coursera look to build there, especially as you think about the opportunity to actually be a connection point potentially down the road between learners and prospective employers.

Speaker 7

Is there a bigger monetization opportunity that you may may start to pursue at some point?

Speaker 6

You know, perhaps down the road. I I would say right now, it's still early days. You know, we have 60 odd, you know, different roles that are covered by our career based discovery. We believe there's a massive opportunity to expand that. We continue to ingest more and more third party data to help build out that underlying sort of career and role and skill graph.

Speaker 6

And the, you know, the goal is to enable a learner coming in who may not be sure about what they're you know, exactly what they're trying to learn, but has an interest in a given area to better understand what does that interest look like. So say I'm interested in data. Okay. Well, what kind of roles are there, you know, out there in in the job market that are in the data field? What are the skills that those roles require?

Speaker 6

And then what are the courses that I can take on Coursera to help me build those skills and make my resume more appealing to employers in those spaces? I would say we're still early days on that, but we're showing some good positive signs from a conversion perspective as we do that. And so we'll absolutely increase our investment in that. Over time, I would like us to be, you know, viewed as an authoritative source on that. And as we do that, that potentially creates opportunity down the road for looking at, you know, additional things that we might go after.

Speaker 7

Got it. Thank you very much. Appreciate you taking the questions.

Speaker 4

Our next question will come from Rishi Jaluria with RBC. Please unmute your line and ask your question.

Speaker 8

Oh, wonderful. Hi, Greg. Hi, Ken.

Speaker 9

Thanks so much for taking my questions. Maybe I wanna start with the recategorization of consumer and and degrees into one segment. Look, I understand what you're talking about streamlining the organization, but but maybe two pieces there. Number one, I mean, they they are fundamentally different businesses. I understand with with micro credentials and pathways, there's there's maybe a little bit of a blurry line, but you're you're you're targeting different people.

Speaker 9

So maybe help me understand better the logic behind that. And and and the second piece to that, I mean, the the obvious pushback that I think you're gonna get from investors is, well, degrees has been a little bit of a challenge business over the past couple years. Is this just a move to hide future weakness and degrees? Maybe just help us understand both of those, and I've got a quick follow-up.

Speaker 3

Hi, Rishi. It's Ken. So thank you for that question and the clarity around it. As you mentioned, as we think about it and as Greg looks about it, new in his role, ultimately, Degrees is another consumer product. It's just another consumer.

Speaker 3

Albeit, it is the the longest in duration and the highest in price, and it's sourced differently, but it is one more consumer offering. So as we look at how we operate the business and the changes we're making there, as we stay focused on the biggest growth opportunities, We've changed the data that we look at, day to day that we use to manage it, which ultimately drives the accounting around it. It is, as you mentioned, 9% of revenue. We've tried to be as open as as possible, breaking everything out, including the forward look. And to your point, Rishi, we do expect the degrees to decline.

Speaker 3

So before we collapse that reporting to be in sync with the reporting we do internally, We wanted to make sure we're not hiding anything. We wanted to be very clear about it. And so for this small portion of the business, which while it's still important for consumer, it's an important product, is a smaller portion, and especially as we move forward, and as degrees has again, we expect it to decline slightly this year, we wanted to make that statement. And as consumer and enterprise, we both expect to grow at significant rates, it will become less relevant to investors, and it's less relevant day to day for us as we manage it. Again, important for a consumer, but we think of it as a consumer offering.

Speaker 3

And so as we look at the data that we look at to manage the business, and, Greg, not to be too goofy about accounting, who's our CODM or chief operating decision maker, what he looks at as we look at the health of the business and as we manage the business, it it indicates we should collapse it. So we think the the if if you want, the the noise around, degrees is is not fitting with the, with the focus externally. But we have provided historic combinations, and we go out of our way to be transparent around these things. So you can look at the historic combination. And, again, we've tried to do our best by giving the forward guide, and we're we're not trying to hide the ball.

Speaker 3

That's for sure. But, hope that helps.

Speaker 9

Yeah. No. Thanks, Ken. That's that's super helpful. And then maybe I just wanna think about, now the the outlook for the year.

Speaker 9

Nice to see a raise there. I I just wanna kind of understand your your sets of assumptions behind that guidance. Right? And especially just given I mean, no one knows how this macro picture and and and everything is gonna shake out, but I think it is clear we've seen consumer sentiment start to weaken. That's obviously, you know, a very critical growth driver on your side is is is the consumer business.

Speaker 9

Maybe just help us understand, you know, given the global nature of your business, global nature of your learners and and the the the consumer business, how you're thinking about what's kind of the base case embedded in in the guide, especially as it pertains to all these pieces. Thanks.

Speaker 3

Sure, Rishi. So as you know, I break it down between consumer and enterprise. And as we said in the original remarks, the we expect both to grow single digits, but consumer more than enterprise. What we've built into our consumer outlook is some observed improvements that we've seen in our metrics. Greg talks about top of funnel conversion retention and ARPU internally as as we look and think about the consumer business.

Speaker 3

We have seen improvements already, that are that we've indicated, essentially, we've reflected in our forward guide. We will also continue to invest in the business, and we see lots of opportunity there operationally. It's so we've increased our EBITDA outlook by a hundred basis points, which is good. We continue to improve the economic model, but not at the rate we have historically. And the reason for that is we wanted to be sure we set aside enough so that we can pursue growth initiatives and new capabilities that will also drive growth, and we've built that into the business.

Speaker 3

But we haven't assumed that we're going to see any incremental growth from them yet. It's too early. It needs to be proven. So we absolutely think we have a lot of opportunity just to operate differently and better. As you know as well, we've seen historically during slower economic times some counter cyclicality.

Speaker 3

We're not necess it's always hard to read that internally. As you said, everybody's trying to understand that, but we, I wouldn't be surprised if we see some of that as well. Every downturn's a little bit differently. To contrast that, on the enterprise side, we had a nice q '1. We're still expecting enterprise to grow, but we expect it to grow at a slower rate.

Speaker 3

And that is not necessarily because of what we're seeing directly right here, right now, associated with the revenue, but due to some caution around enterprise spend. We think in this category, as budgets soften during macro environment uncertainty and businesses pulling back in particular, that there could be some risk of of slower growth going forward. We haven't seen it necessarily, but we think, you know, some amount of caution, which I think everybody is is looking for, is fitting. Where we have seen some particularly nice, outcomes recently, and in the near term expectancy, is around Coursera for campus, as compared to Coursera for business or government. So Coursera for campus, we think, should be continue to be a bright spot.

Speaker 3

But overall and it gives us some confidence in the lower single digit growth we see for enterprise. But that that's how we came to our outlook, Rishi.

Speaker 9

Very helpful. Thank you so much.

Speaker 4

Our next question comes from Josh Baer with Morgan Stanley. Please unmute your line and ask your question.

Speaker 10

Great. Thanks for the question. For Greg, just wondering I mean, I'm very bullish on the long term secular trends around skilling and reskilling, but I'm more uncertain on the timing of of when it is gonna matter for companies and exposed. And so I'm I'm wondering your perspective coming into this sector on the timing of that opportunity. When does skilling and reskilling inflect and and translate to momentum, you know, for you?

Speaker 10

And and, really, what will it take to to get there?

Speaker 6

Great question, Josh. So I'll give you my thoughts. Number one, I don't have a crystal ball. I wish I did. And I think some of the things that Ken actually just mentioned are are really pertinent.

Speaker 6

So on the one hand, you've got stats like, you know, the report from the World Economic Forum that 59 out of every hundred jobs in the global workforce will need retraining by 2030. So that is a longer term, you know, push that companies will need to figure out how to deal with. How do they upscale and reskill their workforces? Balanced against that, you have the uncertainty in the macroeconomic environment now. So you've sort of gotten, you know, near term uncertainty that obviously is causing corporate leaders to be a little reticent about spending until they have a better sense of what the trends might look like, and then you've got that balance against this, you know, longer term shift that I think all of them absolutely agree on.

Speaker 6

You know, we mentioned in the scripted remarks the the stats about enterprise leaders and the the need for learner or sorry, workforce members with AI skills. I think that the that what you'll see is that you'll see it play out a little bit differently in different sectors for relatively obvious reasons because AI will have different impacts in different sectors at different timelines, that the companies that are more forward leaning and continue to invest in reskilling will have an advantage. And that will be a real competitive advantage because it'll give them, you know, a combination of both better operating leverage as they become more efficient and better capabilities to attract and retain consumers regardless of the industry that they're in. They can leverage AI to do a lot of things from a customer experience and marketing perspective more effectively than they could with, you know, prior tools. So the companies that lean into that will be the ones that get the benefit of that, and I expect that those will be the ones that will continue to invest in reskilling and upskilling their workforces.

Speaker 6

And we wanna we wanna make sure that Coursera does a great job of serving those companies. And then, of course, the, you know, the ones that are forced for for whatever reason because of the macroeconomic uncertainty to hold off on, you know, we wanna make sure that we stay in dialogue with those companies about the value that we can provide to them and the way that some of those, you know, reskilling and upskilling might provide benefit to their business that might help them in these uncertain times.

Speaker 10

Great. Thanks, Greg. I I was hoping, Ken, you could just comment on why a hundred basis points is the right level of margin expansion. You know, we can see that that's below where it's been. If you could talk through some of the the methodology of deciding how much to invest and in what projects and, you know, that that level of margin expansion is also coming with a lower level of growth this year than in the past too.

Speaker 10

Thanks.

Speaker 3

Yeah. Sure, Josh. And and part of it is just budgeting. I guess, I'd say, as we're making a lot of change in kicking off a new year with incremental focus. So we wanted to be sure we did not shortchange our opportunity for growth, and it's something Greg and I talked a lot about when he came on board, and the board was very interested in even before Greg started in anticipation of Greg starting, that we made sure there was enough dry powder so that we could pursue changes in the company to reignite growth at levels that we would find, more satisfying.

Speaker 3

And so, you know, what we've done is we've we've started to identify those opportunities. We're well along the way. We've started to identify the resources required to it to achieve those. We'll go through a process where we actually implement that and start to think more about exactly how much revenue, and we'll balance those as we move forward. But, essentially, we've we've baked in the cost to provide that opportunity, and we haven't baked in a lot of top line.

Speaker 3

I don't think that'd be appropriate right now to do so given that these are new initiatives and given that we have a relatively uncertain environment right now, more so than we've had in some time. So pragmatically speaking, that drives you to a lower you know, if if you add more cost but don't don't take much benefit top line in your forward forecast, which I think is prudent and the right thing to do. Mechanically, that's the answer it provides you. It was important to us that we did continue to improve it. I hope that we get the confidence once we see the metrics that these actions take so that we can confidently forecast new top line, but it would be premature to do that.

Speaker 3

So I think of it as a little bit of a transition methodology, if you wanna call it that, but, you know, important to us to continue to improve the economics of the business model and and create the best opportunity for return to growth. We're still early. We're still small. There is a lot of growth opportunity, and we think we'd be shortchanging the investors if we did anything differently.

Speaker 10

Great. Thank you.

Speaker 4

Our next call comes from Ryan MacDonald with Needham. Please unmute your line and ask your question.

Speaker 11

Hi. Thanks for taking my questions. Greg, as you think as you think about, the investments you're making in the business today, a lot of them, you talk about product innovation, content, generation. It seems like there are sort of benefits to the core consumer business that perhaps, if successful, will also benefit sort of the enterprise segment down the line. Is that the way you're sort of looking at in terms of prioritization in the business, or are there separate sort of enterprise specific investments that you think also help to separately drive growth in that business or drive a reacceleration of growth in that business?

Speaker 6

Yeah. The way that I think about it is sort of threefold. Like, number one, the improvements that we make on the content side of the business benefit all learners, whether those are individual learners or enterprises. So as we make improvements, you know, with things like Coursera Coach or dialogues to the actual learning experience, those benefit individual learners. They also benefit enterprise customers.

Speaker 6

We are also, though, making very specific investments in the enterprise business to improve that experience. So better creation of curated sets of content that meet the specific needs of of enterprises in different verticals and different sectors. So so for example, you know, if you are an enterprise and you wanna make sure that you give the the product management arm of your business all of the skills that they need to continue to improve and understand what's changing within AI and how to leverage that within your particular company, well, we can provide a curated set of courses that can do that for you. So those types of things, you know, better integrations with corporate systems, LMSs, etcetera. Also, better admin tools for our enterprise customers, better reporting and data.

Speaker 6

So we're definitely making specific investments that are only going to benefit our enterprise business. But, generally, my viewpoint is a lot of the improvements that we make to the content side will benefit both consumer and enterprise. Then we're certainly also making specific improvements to sort of, like, the life cycle journey of the consumer side of our business as well from a customer life cycle management discovery. Actually, the career based discovery also benefits both because it helps the enterprises understand the skills that you know, if they if they have a specific type of workforce, what are the skills that workforce needs to develop, which they're obviously gonna have a point of view on. So that that information is incredibly valuable and helpful.

Speaker 6

But, also, we are gonna bring a point of view on in terms of how our catalog maps to that.

Speaker 11

Super helpful color there. Thank you. Ken, maybe for you. I I recognize that we're on an annual basis showing some nice EBITDA margin expansion, but the sort of implied guidance for second quarter and what's implied for the back half of the year sort of shows some adjusted EBITDA margins, obviously, that are sort of below the annual targets. So one, can you talk about when you think, adjusted EBITDA margin troughs, as we think about fiscal twenty twenty five?

Speaker 11

And '2, how are you thinking about sort of payback period on these investments? I understand you're not including any revenue benefit, in the implied guidance right now, but how should we think about how quickly some of these investments could actually, translate to top line improvements? Thanks.

Speaker 3

So great question, Ryan. The, again, I described the methodology as we look to do those forecasts, and it it's, unless you build in, top line growth associated with the investments, it it creates the result, the exact result you're talking about. I wanted to be very careful we didn't get in front of ourselves, but naturally, mathematically, again, definitionally, that creates a slowing throughout the course of the year. I I do think if we're successful with these investments, we will see relatively near term results. It it depends on exactly what we're talking about, of course, but the the categories are product innovation, the content engine itself, and the go to market.

Speaker 3

The go to market investments, I think we will see, immediate more immediate payback, less so on the enterprise, but much more so on consumer, and there are a number of initiatives around there. Content will also be a mix of near term and longer term. We're investing in building, increasingly, we've had good success so far, our Coursera produced content, which has less of strategic benefit on top of immediate financial benefit, but we do expect that to continue, to deliver. And then the product innovation will be a mix. Some of that will be longer term.

Speaker 3

Some of it should have some immediate payback. The other piece, and that that's how we we're grouping our priority our priorities around growth. But the other part is operationally what we're doing and the metrics where, we're investing in infrastructure to be more metrics driven. And, while it's soft, I expect that we're gonna see payback from that. We're already seeing payback from that.

Speaker 3

It's frankly one of the reasons this quarter ended, as well as it did for us. So I think you'll start to see that. I hope we have a real opportunity to increase our growth outlook during the course of the year, but, it's not a conservative forecast if you tell people you're gonna beat it. So, if we perform the way I'd expect we're going to perform, we should start to see it sooner rather than later. And I would love it if mechanically, we we didn't have the result we did with, with implied slower growth at the end of the year.

Speaker 3

It's not what I expect to see, to be clear.

Speaker 11

Appreciate the color. Thanks again.

Speaker 4

Our final question will come from Jeff Silber with BMO. Please unmute your line and ask your question.

Speaker 8

Hey. Can you hear me?

Speaker 6

Yep.

Speaker 8

Hey. This is Ryan on for Jeff. I just had a quick question. It is helping us to measure the success of product innovation and the go to marketing initiatives from the outside looking in. Just wondering what percentage of registered learners are paid today, and then what percentage of registered learners do you envision as paid once all these initiatives have worked through?

Speaker 8

Thank you.

Speaker 6

I wasn't sure that I followed exactly what all of the the question was, but I would say that, you know, we don't break out necessarily our conversion at that level, but we do expect to see improvements in registered learners to paid learners through a lot of the things that we're focused on. Those are some of the things that we believe, you know, that, as Ken mentioned, might translate in the nearer term to to benefits in the business, but we don't break out the the specifics around conversion on that. Obviously, the size of our learner base at a 75,000,000 is a tremendous asset, and so we have opportunity to convert registered learners both immediately as they register and over time as well, and we see both of those things happen.

Speaker 8

Understood. Thank you. And then just quick follow-up. I was wondering if there's any knock on impact of the Department of Education potentially closing, whether it's budgets or grants coming into scrutiny at some of the higher end of the education institutions that you partner with?

Speaker 6

It's a great question. I would say that this is Greg. I would say that what we're seeing from our partners in higher education is, you know, obviously, a lot of consternation about what's happening and how they respond to that. I would say that in that environment, Coursera is a great partner for them because as their funding from the federal government comes, you know, potentially under threat, you know, we drive revenue for them through the courses that they provide in our revenue sharing arrangements. And so one of the active conversations that we're having with institutions across higher education is how can we help you create more courses, improve the performance of your courses, and make sure they're as relevant as possible for the massive global audience that we have, you know, so that you can bring in revenue from, of Coursera, to potentially help offset, you know, to a certain degree some of the funding challenges you might be seeing in the current environment.

Speaker 8

Thank you.

Speaker 1

That wraps today's q and a session. A replay of this webcast will be available shortly on our Investor Relations website. We appreciate you joining us today. Take care.

Speaker 4

This concludes today's conference call. You may now disconnect.

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Coursera Q1 2025
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