Hi, this is Mike Dunlap-
Good day, and welcome to Nelnet, Inc. Annual Meeting of Stockholders. I will now turn the call over to Mike Dunlap, Executive Chairman. Please go ahead.
Hi, this is Mike Dunlap. I'd like to call the 2020 Nelnet Annual Meeting of Shareholders to order, and welcome everyone who's participating this morning on the call. I'd also like to introduce several people that are on the call with us today. Our executive team, Jeffrey Noordhoek, CEO; Terry Heimes, Chief Operating Officer; Tim Tewes, President; Jim Kruger, Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer; Bill Munn, Secretary and General Counsel. Our board of directors, Jim Abell, Chief Executive Officer, NEBCO; Preeta Bansal, former White House Counsel and Solicitor General of New York, and member of multiple boards and councils; Bill Cintani, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Mapes Industries; Kathleen Farrell, Dean, College of Business, University of Nebraska, Lincoln; David Graff, Chief Executive Officer, Hudl; Joanne Martin, Vice Chair, Emeritus; Thomas Henning, President and Chief Executive Officer, Assurity; Kimberly Rath, Co-Chair, Talent Plus.
Others in attendance, Tim Sabo, Executive Director of Internal Audit, serving as our Inspector of Election for today's meeting. Shaun Stoker, our KPMG audit partner. Shaun is available to respond to any questions that shareholders may have this morning. Bill Munn, Nelnet Secretary, will now report on the mailing of the notice of this meeting and the presence of a quorum. Bill?
Thanks, Mike. The company posted a notice of Annual Meeting of Shareholders on the website on April 9th, 2020, and on the same day, we mailed a notice of internet availability of proxy materials to each shareholder of record as of March 27, 2020, who's entitled to vote. Immediately prior to the meeting, our Inspector of Election counted 36,918,946 shares of the company's Class A and Class B common stock, representing 138,143,764 total votes, which were present in person or by proxy. This represents 97.76% of the combined voting power of all classes of the company's stock. Based on that, I declare there is a quorum present at this meeting.
We thank everyone that voted in advance of today's meeting, and based on the votes cast in advance, the shareholders have approved all three items of business. However, the polls will remain open throughout the meeting for any shareholders who do wish to vote individually during the meeting. The final results of voting for each proposal will be reported by us on an 8-K, Form 8-K, filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission within the next four business days. As a reminder, if you have already voted in advance of this meeting by proxy, there is no need to vote today unless you would like to change your vote.
Thanks, Bill. Based on the votes cast in advance, the shareholders have approved all three items of business. Proposal one related to the election of our board of directors. Bill Munn will report on this item.
Three years ago, the company's shareholders approved an amendment to the company's articles of incorporation to classify the Board of Directors into three classes, with directors in each class serving staggered three-year terms. For this year's Annual Meeting, the company's Nominating and Corporate Governance Committee nominated, and the shareholders approved three Class Three directors to serve for three-year terms until the 2023 Annual Meeting. The individuals named in the company's proxy statement who have been reelected to the board are Kathleen Farrell, Dean and Professor of Finance, University of Nebraska–Lincoln; David Graff, Chief Executive Officer, Hudl; and Tom Henning, President and Chief Executive Officer, Assurity.
For those voting this morning, for those that wish to change their vote on the election of directors, please do so now. The next item of business was to ratify the Board's appointment of KPMG as the company's independent registered public accounting firm. To report on this item, I recognize Tom Henning, Chairman of the Audit Committee.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The Audit Committee was assigned the responsibility of recommending the independent registered public accounting firm to be appointed by the board of directors. The committee was established in August 2003, and since its inception, has consisted entirely of directors who are independent of corporate management. It has had direct access to both the outside and internal auditors. Since the inception, the committee has worked closely with KPMG, has had substantial opportunity to evaluate their work, and has found it to be of consistent high quality. The committee recommends KPMG, and the shareholders have ratified the Board's appointment of KPMG to audit consolidated financial statements of Nelnet and its subsidiaries as of and for the year ending 2020.
For those voting this morning, for those that wish to change their vote on the appointment of KPMG as our independent auditor, please do so now. Next item of business was an advisory vote on the compensation of the company's named executive officers. I'd like to call upon Kimberly Rath, Chairperson of the Compensation Committee, to report on this proposal.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The company is required to give its shareholders the opportunity to cast an advisory vote on the compensation of the company's named executive officers. The Compensation Committee is responsible for designing and administering the company's executive compensation program, and the committee values the opinions expressed by the shareholders in their vote on this proposal and considers the shareholders' vote when making the future compensation decisions. We believe the compensation structure for the named executive officers is competitive, equitable, and designed to encourage focus on the long-term performance objectives of the company, and the shareholders have agreed by their approval of the compensation of the named executive officers as disclosed in the company's proxy statement.
For those voting this morning, or those that wish to change their vote on the advisory vote of the compensation of the company's named executive officers, please do so now. As it appears, all votes have been submitted for those voting online this morning. I hereby declare the poll is closed. Thank you to our shareholders for your votes in favor of all items on the agenda. No other agenda items have been introduced, so I'm going to adjourn this meeting, and then Jeffrey Noordhoek and Jim Kruger will provide a brief business and financial update. This meeting is adjourned. I'll now turn things over to Jeffrey Noordhoek to begin the business update.
Thanks, Mike. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining our first virtual shareholder meeting. We hope you're staying safe and healthy. Traditionally, we have provided a business update, which includes a summary of each business and various aspects of what has and is happening within that business. Obviously, with the coronavirus pandemic, these are unusual times. So in light of that, I will spend today talking about Nelnet's response to the pandemic and how our response was a direct reflection of our core values. Across all of Nelnet's locations, most of our company has been working from home for over 10 weeks, and our pandemic response team has been activated for several weeks longer than that. Our focus has been on prioritizing the safety and health of our associates, supporting our customers, and doing our part to help our communities persevere.
Through these unprecedented times, I'm proud of the response of our Nelnet team and our commitment to living our core values, which are one, providing superior customer experiences, two, creating an awesome work environment, three, pursuing opportunities in diversification and growth, four, communicating openly and honestly, and five, giving back to the communities in which we live and work. Today, I'm going to spend a few minutes going through each of our values and touch on a few examples of how we have met them through the health crisis. When I'm done, Jim will give a short financial update. Providing superior customer experiences. Our customers are experiencing disruption and uncertainty because of the pandemic. Through this uncertainty, we are doing everything in our power to assist them with exceptional service and, whenever possible, relief options to support them further.
I will detail just a few of our customer service responses so far. Many of our businesses use a Net Promoter Score as a measure of our customer satisfaction with our products and service. Nelnet Business Services, NBS, is a leader in providing tuition plans, payment processing, and education technology and services to more than 11,500 K-12 schools and 1,300 colleges and universities. Through our transition to working from home, NBS has made a Net Promoter Score of 81. I remind you, anything above 50 is considered exceptional. NBS has also pivoted quickly to support its clients as they closed campuses to provide virtual thought leadership, training, and information on everything from how to teach effectively online to personal data security while working from home. These webinars have included hundreds upon hundreds of attendees.
ALLO provides essential communication services to businesses and homes in 11 Nebraska and Colorado communities. Let's face it, the broader telecommunication industry has a reputation for providing inferior customer service. However, that is not the case for ALLO. ALLO is maintaining an NPS or Net Promoter Score above 70, all the while scrutiny of broadband and internet speeds and reliability have never been more intense. This is a credit to ALLO's superior technology and associates who are local and committed to providing hassle-free service. Since internet service is essential, ALLO has also committed to keeping people connected if they are struggling financially due to the pandemic, and is offering free internet for 60 days to families who didn't already have connectivity. They've announced a new program with the Nebraska Public Service Commission and Lincoln Public Schools to provide discounted internet services to families who qualify for free and reduced lunch.
Finally, ALLO is doing its best to protect its customers during the quarantine by developing virtual and self-installation processes for its video services. Nelnet Diversified Services, or NDS, offers professional services to a number of industries, but is most known for servicing student loans for more than 15 million borrowers. For borrowers with federally owned loans, we have worked to implement the CARES Act efficiently and simply for our customers. This includes quickly communicating through several channels about a forbearance, which goes through September 30th, was placed on more than 9 million borrower accounts, and 0% interest on more than 13 million borrower accounts. While adult and private education loans weren't included in the CARES Act, these borrowers are struggling financially too, and we are glad to provide them some short-term assistance to them.
As we have worked with several states and other lenders to offer consistent financial relief for FFELP and private loan borrowers, including a minimum of 90 days of forbearance, ensuring no borrower is subject to negative credit reporting. Creating an awesome work environment. An awesome place to work takes on different meaning during times like this. Nelnet traditionally has been a company in which associates come into the office every day to work. Associates connected to the network and phone system through a desktop station. At the beginning of March, only 250-300 of our 6,500 associates consistently worked from home or outside of an office.
To help protect our associates, within a week after making the decision to start working from home, excluding associates performing essential roles that could not be performed at home, all of our associates were moved to working from home. Like many organizations that made a similar decision, this required a significant investment in time and resources from many areas of the company to make this happen effectively. Today, we are proud to report around 6,200 associates have been working home for 10 weeks or more. As I mentioned earlier, our customer service metrics and productivity have remained exceptional throughout. In addition, the feedback we received from engagement surveys demonstrates how much of our associates appreciated our response and concern for their well-being.
At the same time, we are very appreciative and supportive of our team members who continue to come to the office, or in the case of ALLO, continue to work our customers, with our customers in the field. As we move ahead, we are always looking for different precautions we can take to prioritize their safety. Like most organizations, we have frequent conversations to determine when we begin returning to the office and how we do this safely and efficiently. Fortunately, we are not in a hurry and can make a decision when the time is right for our associates, customers, and for Nelnet. Whenever we do begin moving back in the office, it will be staggered and cautious. In the future, we'll likely have a much larger percentage of our associates working from home permanently, potentially up to one-third of our workforce.
Pursue opportunities for diversification and growth. Diversification is a consistent message within Nelnet, as we are always seeking new ways to serve customers and further diversify our revenue. Through the pandemic, we are pushing forward our planned diversification strategies and are also finding new ways to utilize our strengths and capabilities to add value to new customers because of the challenge brought on by the pandemic. This month, Nelnet will launch Nelnet Renewable Energy. In our annual report letter, I mentioned our investment commitment in solar projects. These community solar projects will generate more than enough renewable energy to offset the energy consumed by Nelnet and our associates, essentially making Nelnet carbon neutral. Nelnet is now expanding our fee-based offerings to renewable energy to help community solar farms acquire subscribers and provide ongoing servicing solutions. Nelnet can be a reliable, experienced servicing partner for community solar developers.
We are reading the reports, we're all reading reports of millions upon millions filing for unemployment benefits over the last six to eight weeks. With increased unemployment, the state unemployment offices have often been overwhelmed overnight. Unemployment has hit Nebraska hard as well, where tens of thousands of Nebraskans have filed for unemployment. Nelnet was perfectly situated with technology, security, and talented associates to help the state process and adjudicate these employment claims. To this end, we have signed a contract with the Nebraska Department of Labor for 100 associates to help adjudicate unemployment claims. Nebraska is our home state, and it's important for us to be able to assist Nebraska families in need when they need it in the midst of this economic crisis.
Nelnet also has deep roots in Wisconsin that go back more than 50 years through our Great Lakes brand and are pleased to be helping the state of Wisconsin and its families through the unemployment process. In Wisconsin, we will dedicate 300 associates to process and adjudicate unemployment benefit claims. Again, we are pleased to help, and it is meaningful to us and our communities. An important part of our long-term asset generation strategy is Nelnet Bank. We are excited to receive approval for deposit insurance and an industrial bank charter from the FDIC and the Utah Department of Financial Institutions, respectively, in March. We have a lot of work to do before opening Nelnet Bank, but we are pleased to have achieved this significant milestone in our corporate history.
When we announced the acquisition of ALLO late in 2015, we would not have even imagined that ALLO to have been a good diversification strategy for quarantining at home during a pandemic. However, as we all now know, reliable high-speed internet is essential to effectively live, learn, and work from home. ALLO's all-fiber network has performed exceptionally with the increased utilization of broadband throughout the day. As a result, we have seen tremendous demand for ALLO's residential internet services. Right now, it's a must-have. Personally, I have a college student, an eighth-grader, a working spouse, and myself all accessing the internet at the same time at home. I can't imagine weathering this without ALLO in my house. Open communication. Open communication is ingrained within the Nelnet culture.
Since early March, we have had hundreds of internal communications relating to the crisis, including emails, internet portal messages, podcasts, virtual town halls, videos, and many other forms of communication. During this time, I've also been impressed with the many and different and creative ways everyone within Nelnet is staying connected with virtual game nights, scavenger hunts, personal notes, and care packages. Through these messages, we convey what is going well and what we are concerned about, as well as what we know and what we don't know. Our open communication extends beyond our communication with associates to our customers, regulators, shareholders, and stakeholders. We believe this has benefited us throughout our history by building trusting relationships. Giving back to our communities in which we live and work. The pandemic and resulting recession is having a tremendous negative effect on families.
As people are furloughed or laid off, they face new challenges that threaten so many aspects of their lives. They often need assistance with basic needs, such as food and rent, while taking care of children during the school day. Many communities are experiencing a 30%-45% increase in food insecurity. To support these needs, Nelnet has contributed to the community COVID relief funds, schools, and many other nonprofits. Before the pandemic when we had associates working in physical offices, Nelnet had hundreds of pounds of bananas, oranges, and apples delivered each week to our 6,500 associates in those offices. But because we have been working from home since the middle of March, we have diverted these fresh food deliveries to local food banks and similar organizations on the front lines, helping and serving people in need.
I'm so pleased that this is helping families in each of our communities. Whether this is normal times, whether in normal times or global pandemic, we have always and will always follow our core values in everything we do. So our core values will lead our continued sustainable and growing values to our businesses and to our shareholders. Thank you for your support and investment in our company. Now, Jim will provide a summary of our financial results. Jim?
Thanks, Jeff. Good morning, everyone. I'll touch on a few financial highlights from 2019 and also first quarter of 2020. We'll start with our consolidated earnings per share for fiscal year 2019. It was another really strong year for the company. We finished at $4.99 per share of consolidated adjusted EPS, which equates to just under $200 billion of earnings for the company. In terms of our normalized earnings per share, if you exclude the fixed rate floor income, which is the bonus income that we earn when interest rates are very low, which we've experienced recently, we earned $3.28 per share for 2019.
In terms of our fee-based businesses, we continue to grow the operating results from our fee-based businesses, which has been our strategy for several years. We earned about $1.94 per share from our fee-based businesses during the fiscal year. Then lastly, ALLO is not contributing to the earnings of the company, and that was the expectation going into the construction and build process that they have been undergoing for several years. But they are EBITDA positive in fiscal year 2019. Moving on to our results of operations specifically by segment. The Asset Generation and Management portfolio continues to be the dominant earner for the company. We earned $3.64 per share from the portfolio during 2019.
As has been the case for the last several years, the portfolio continues to be the most prominent in terms of operating results. NDS and NBS continue to be strong contributors to our operating results, and we look to grow those businesses as we move forward. And then lastly, as I mentioned, ALLO is EBITDA positive of around $6 million in 2019, and we're looking to grow that as we move forward as well. Looking at Q1 of 2020, we just released our operating results recently, and I want to take a quick look back at Q1. We had two significant charges in the first quarter, as a result, primarily of the COVID-19 pandemic.
First of all, we had an incremental provision for loan loss of around $63 million, which was driven by the pandemic, but also magnified by our adoption of CECL, the new accounting pronouncement for providing for losses on student loans or any loan for that matter, which we adopted in January of 2020. That was the first significant charge in the period. The second charge we took in the period was for impairment of certain investments. And in particular, we had some residual trusts that will be impacted by the pandemic in terms of the defaults in those trusts, or we're anticipating those defaults in the trusts. And so we marked the investment down in Q1 to reflect that increase in default that we're expecting.
Absent the charges that I just talked about, we really had a pretty strong first quarter from an operating results perspective, if you ignore those charges. Looking at our balance sheet, our balance sheet remains very strong. The melting iceberg of the FFELP portfolio is driving our total assets lower. We're sitting at around $23.5 billion of assets at the end of 2019. This is where Nelnet Bank comes into play. Jeff mentioned it. We believe Nelnet Bank will provide the opportunity to grow our asset base in the future as we offer products and from the bank, the new bank charter. We continue to have significant capital in the business. We're in excess of $2.3 billion of capital, or roughly a 10% capital ratio.
And finally, our cash flow from operations continues to be very strong. I'll touch on that on the next slide as we look at future cash flows. In terms of the future cash flow that we expect to generate from our portfolio, this represents all of the federally guaranteed assets, the FFELP loans, that have been term financed. We can predict with some level of certainty how much cash flow is going to come off of that portfolio. Right now, that's in excess of $2.2 billion over the next 27 years. This amount increased significantly in Q1.
We had three FFELP securitizations that we completed in Q1, which helped drive that number higher, as well as lower interest rate environment will also contribute to higher expected future cash flows. I think if you combine our future cash flow that we're going to receive off the portfolio, along with our strong capital position, you can see it puts Nelnet in a very good position to capitalize on opportunities down the road here. With that, I will conclude my remarks on the financials and open it up to Q&A.
We had a few pre-submitted questions. First one was: Any additional details of the Hudl equity raise you can share? David Graff, you want to take that one?
Disclosing the total amount raised or the valuation from this raise, but we are really excited to, in addition to, you know, our current strong team of investors we have, of which Nelnet is one, to have a really strong group in Bain. And we chose Bain Capital primarily because they fit in really well with what we've seen from Nelnet in the past and from others. They support our long-term vision and our mindset for where we want to take Hudl. They're a firm that we think can partner with us to help make us a better company.
We talk a lot about benefiting from others' tuition dollars, and Bain Capital, over the years, has paid a lot of tuition dollars in their portfolio's half. So we're excited to have them dig in really and help make us just operationally a better company. And finally, they fit us culturally. We've got a great board of directors. We've got a great group of investors.
That all fit the core values that we defined, and Bain is another partner that's gonna fit that well. What we're excited to use the capital for is to really lean into how we've seen the way that our teams are using our software change in response to this pandemic. Teams are finding new ways to scout talent and stay digitally connected at this time, and we want to be ready to meet those demands in the best ways that we can.
Thanks, David. The next question that was pre-submitted was status of the bank approval, expected timing. What does the bank look like in one, three, and five years? Tim Tewes, you want to take that one, please?
The process of getting the bank going is up and running. I think it starts with a strong governance structure. We've recruited a board that's been approved by the FDIC. It's composed of five outside directors and three inside directors. Crawford Cragun from Salt Lake City, Utah; Jaime Pack from Park City, Utah; Corinne Clark from Salt Lake City, Utah; Tony Goins from Lincoln, Nebraska, and Connie Edmonds. Mike is on the Board as the Chair. I'm Vice Chair, and our President and CEO, Andrea Moss, is also an inside director on the board. We've recruited a strong team of senior management led by Andrea Moss, a very strong, experienced bank President and CEO. Our Chief Credit Officer, Rob Pederson, has a career in student lending, education finance.
Operations and CRA Officer, Julie Buchholz. Compliance, Lauren Chapman. Chief Technology Officer, Heath Rohrs, and Chief Risk Officer, Jennifer McIntosh. Most of our hires outside of the senior management team are on the tech side. As we prepare to launch the bank, we need a technology platform to be able to interface with our customers. We expect the bank to start in late fall. It'll be a soft launch, followed by a harder launch in the spring of 2021. We would expect to do in-school loans beginning with the summer terms of 2021 and fall, and a bigger impact for education finance in the fall of 2021. Our business plan has been approved by the FDIC. We'll operate with a core capital ratio of 12%.
We expect the bank to grow to about $150 million of total footings by the end of the first full year of operation. In three years, we would expect that to grow to $350 million-$400 million, and then culminating in year five of about $750 million to $1 billion of total footings. So Mike, that's kind of how we see the bank rolling out.
Thanks, Tim. Some of those numbers at the end, there's gonna be a lot of variability there, so, we'll see how things end up. It could grow faster, it could grow slower. The next pre-submitted question was status of EPS protests and the BPO RFP. Jeff Noordhoek, can you please take that one, please?
Yes, Mike. So there were three open procurements. One was the OPS, which has been canceled. There is the EPS, which is Electronic Processing System, and the BPO, which is the work on top of the system. We were notified, as we publicly disclosed on March 30th, that we were eliminated from the competitive range due to technical issues in our response. We have since filed a protest with the Government Accountability Office, GAO, and are waiting for a back and forth, obviously, on that. We expect them to rule sometime by July, you would think. Mid-July. The BPO, there's been no announcements on the BPO. And the other public information news is that there are three bidders on the EPS, and two of them have filed protests for being eliminated. That's kind of what we know today.
Thanks, Jeff. Then the last pre-submitted question was, our plans for capital, particularly, $1 billion+ of excess cash from the portfolio over the next five years. Is it possible to deploy that much cash over that time period? I'll start on that question. First of all, if you look at our history of deploying cash, I think in the last five years, we deployed significantly more than $1 billion. So I think that we will not have a hard time deploying $1 billion over the next five years, to answer the last question there. The different things that we look at, first of all, we want to make sure that we attract and retain the best talent and have competitive pay and benefits for our associates. We look for great bolt-on acquisitions.
We also have done a number of share buybacks and dividends over the years. We're opportunistic. We're gonna invest a decent amount of money in the bank, also in our asset generation area, and then general merger and acquisitions. And then the last thing that we have there is, we always give a percentage of our earnings back to the communities that we work with and work in. The majority of that has been focused in on United Way, which does a great job of weeding out the charities and picking the ones that really make a difference in the community. And we do a lot in the scholarship area, given that we have a very significant investment in education.
With our Nelnet communications group, ALLO, we've also done a lot to provide internet to underprivileged and people that need good internet service, especially in the world we live in today. So, anyway, those are the things that we primarily focus on. Again, bolt-on acquisitions, expanding our core businesses. A decent amount of money is gonna go in the bank. So that's kind of the overview of where our capital is at. Jeff, you wanna add anything to that?
I think you covered it, Mike. I always think that the past is a fairly decent determinant of the future, and every week, we have a meeting on capital allocation, looking at all the things that you listed there, and where we can best deploy it to get the greatest return.
So we have some other questions coming in. The next question is: When do you expect the Nelnet Bank to officially launch or begin originating? And what are your long-term goals for the bank as far as size, borrower type, et cetera, goes? And can you elaborate on any other great opportunities you may be able to take advantage of as a result of the great capital position and predictable cash flows? Back on the timing of the bank, we're hopeful that it's gonna be up by the end of this year or first quarter next year. It's kind of the where the goal is at for the timing of the bank. As far as size goes, I think that in the short term, we see the bank, in the next three to five years, being a billion-dollar bank.
The timing of how it gets there, it's hard, it's hard to say at this point, but that's kind of a short-term goal. And then, can we elaborate on any other great opportunities may be able to take advantage of as a result of the great capital position? In our history as a company, we've always been opportunistic, and I think we'll continue to do that. As an example, in the last couple of months, there's been opportunities to acquire loan assets at great prices and residual loan assets at great prices, and we've taken advantage of that to some degree.
And if you look in the past, we've also had the opportunity to add bolt-on acquisitions to our core businesses. Those would be the kind of core things that we're gonna go after. But as the world unfolds, I think there's gonna be a lot more opportunities, and we're in a very good position going through the situation we're all going through today to try to take advantage of those. Jeff, do you want to add anything to that?
I think obviously, with the recession going on, we're seeing disruption in the capital markets, and so that opens up opportunities for assets as well as companies that originate assets, service assets, that may not have the capital strength that we have to sustain, you know, a prolonged recession. So I think that's where we're seeing a lot of opportunities pop up and, and will in the next few weeks, months.
Just to remind people, you know, we try to focus in on where our strengths are at. And so if it involves servicing, if it involves education, if it involves software as a service, if it involves payments, those are kind of the four main areas of our business. And the more of those things it has involved in the business, the more excited or the more interested we're gonna be in that business. Next question. Can you provide any further color for how you are thinking about the long-term opportunity at ALLO, and how Brad Moline and his team are going about selecting new markets? I believe some of the business is in markets with open access, fiber owned by the city rather than ALLO. Do you expect to see significant competition from new entrants in the city-owned, open-access fiber markets? Terry Heimes, you want to take that one?
Sure. I think, you know, as we look at the long-term opportunity for ALLO, w e've experienced great growth over the past year, with 45% growth in revenue, you know, year over year. Significant continuing to expand market share, and that really is driven not only by the sustainability of the network and the demand for the product, but also by the service level. So as we continue to look, we're gonna continue to look for opportunities to grow, and we're gonna look at markets that have not only the right demographics, but where we can become a dominant player because of the product and the service level.
There are areas out in the Front Range that we are looking where we will enter into partnerships with municipalities, and we think that is a way to really help, not only drive value from our service and the provision of the fiber, but also partner with those communities. So we are always looking for areas to expand and utilize not only Brad's expertise, but the expertise of the team that we've built, and Brad has built at ALLO, and we think that we've got a great opportunity there going forward.
Done. Thanks, Terry. The next question: Are you seeing long-term disruption or perhaps long-term opportunity in the tuition payments business as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic? Tim Tewes, can you take that one, please?
Sure, Mike. Whenever we go through a downturn, it seems like people return to education. We would hope, we would hope that that would be the case for higher education in the United States. I think it all depends on if campuses open for open their campuses and have kids come back to campus in the fall. I think there's some surveys out there that say that kids are planning on coming back to campus in the fall, but if it's all online, they may take a gap year. So we're watching that very closely. In the private faith-based market, we do expect to see some weakness in the fall.
But we're encouraged by some of the early anecdotal sort of commentary that we get from private faith-based school leaders, that families are maybe looking to private faith-based education during this time. So we're optimistic about our business, but we do think K-12 is gonna be weak, at least for the next academic school year. As far as opportunities go, I don't see long-term disruption in either one of those systems, and we would expect to continue to be the leader in the market, in the K-12 market and compete very effectively in the higher ed market.
I would add on to that, Tim. You know, some of our competitors find themselves in situations where they lack capital or have debt issues. There might be opportunities there. It's hard to say. We don't know the details of some of our competitors' capital position, but who knows? Any other questions? All right. That was the last question that was asked, so I'm gonna bring a close to the meeting. I get a motion to finish the meeting off. Guess we're done. Thank you.
Thank you, everyone. Have a great day.
The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.