Premium service, a gold standard. It's face-to-face delivery by experienced trainers, both remotely and in the physical classroom. We're the partner of choice to around 50% of the world's largest 1,000 companies, with a large but focused schedule of vendor-authored and certified courses, utilizing over 700 certified instructors. We are top 3 in each region we operate, and our aim is simply to be the clear global number one. So a little bit more on the strong foundations that will help us drive growth. GK delivers 26% of Skillsoft's revenue, a material part of the business. Turning around GK will have the biggest near-term impact on improving Skillsoft as a whole. We have a nice mix of geographies. We've got a European stronghold, yet the UK and France have very big opportunities to grow.
The Middle East is exciting and growing fast, and North America is clearly sub-optimized, and it's gonna be a major target to grow in the near and to medium terms. We have a strong NPS, but one that we can build upon. We've got a very strong customer, customer base to target enterprise growth, and we have a constant stream of global awards and recognition. So why do organizations demand ILT? What are the drivers for live learning? We know today that learners need live learning to get to the mastery level of these difficult topics. On the left-hand side, I'm showing here, such as cloud, security, AI, and change management, which are taught under the modalities shown on... here on the right-hand side. These are complex subjects which need certifications, such as security and cloud, which work well with instructors managing hands-on labs.
Change management, leadership, and business need interactivity and breakout sessions to embed that learning to the mastery level. COVID accelerated the transformation from classroom to virtual classroom, and learners adapted very fast. Live and virtual is alive more than ever today. I've seen this in my prior roles as a, as a leader of growing organizations. And in a virtual world, the blended offering is compelling for the learner. The instructor can utilize other materials like videos, gamification, on-demand content in live sessions, all helping to drive those light bulb moments for the learners. And the accelerant for our business today is the value of these blended solutions for organizations and learners. The value proposition of GK and Skillsoft is our ability to deliver these journeys. So now I wanna back up my statements on why ILT is special with some market stats.
The digital skills gap has never been greater. That reskilling revolution is upon us, and the data speaks for itself. Live learning is a large and growing market. 52% of corporations' training spend is via ILT, showing the level of demand there is today. ILT is growing faster than the market. Fact. This is all very exciting. This slide summarizes where we play today and where there are adjacent opportunities to grow. This is a summary of the ILT training market by spend in billions. The top left is our focus today. Corporations continually need tech reskilling and certifications, so they prioritize their spending here. We do deliver some services in complementary markets, such as education and government, business and leadership, where we are underoptimized in these areas.
Governments invest in large, multi-year programs for their employees and public sector projects, and for business and leadership, there is clear overlap in digital leadership, project management, change management that are inextricably linked with a successful tech strategy and execution that businesses need. These are huge opportunities for growth. I know what it takes to penetrate these complementary markets. So what is it that makes GK unique? Here are five primary areas that help define our uniqueness in the market. Let's dive into a little bit more detail. Our global scale is a clear differentiator. Most competitors are by sub-region and don't have our global coverage. In my personal experience, GK's global coverage was very difficult to compete with. Our large customers expect us to serve them and deliver to them on a global basis.
The quality and consistency of our trainers, the enviable access to quality content via our partnerships with leading tech businesses, and our AP's Talent Development Solutions business unit are key differentiators. For the blended offering, Ron and AP mentioned Talent Champions that want the ability to deliver training outcomes via live learning or blended solutions through a single provider like Skillsoft at a global scale. These are really strong foundations on a global scale that make me very excited to be here. Competitors do not have this coverage. Just let me jump into premier partners in a little bit more detail. A key attribute to the success of Global Knowledge over the years has been our strong partnerships with the world's leading tech companies. ATP status, Authorized Training Provider status, doesn't come easy.
It is really difficult to maintain and needs plenty of resource, but this coverage is a real differentiator. I love the work we're doing with Microsoft on the Copilot adoption. We can be more strategic with our approach to these leading partners. More than 70% of our revenue comes from our top 10 partners, yet we have a long tail that drags resource. I will be personally working closely with these partners to look at ways to support them launch, grow, and expand their core products. So I've talked you through our differentiators. Let's look at some real-life examples. Here are 3 examples on how we won contracts using that unique coverage. The first is a multi-partner win. It's a large Spanish municipality to upskill and reskill 5,000 learners in cloud. It was our strong relationships with Microsoft and AWS, which were the differentiator.
As a result, we're targeting similar opportunities, multi-million-dollar opportunities across Spain based on its success. The second was for a very large global IT infrastructure services corporation, where we beat a major competitor, and it was all about consolidating the customer's internationally fragmented spend and reducing their cost base. Global coverage was the key differentiator here, opening up the door to their global operations, and already it's opened up the door to driving opportunities into France and India as a result. The third is a great partner collaboration with AWS, the large global telco in Europe. The customer knew that their internal team's training was crucial to bridge the skills, the cloud skills gap, that they had to drive its own digital transformation, so that it, in turn, could better help its customers to do the same.
The AWS partnership that we have in Spain was a differentiator. After 1 year, the company narrowed the skills gap and achieved significant growth in both sales and revenue. So let me get into the plan on going forward. So I've done my assessment. We have a clear plan that specifically addresses the challenges faced today that I mentioned, but working off those very strong foundations to launch from. To remember my key messages, number 2 was fix the basics, and 3 was new expansion opportunities. Well, these top 3 highlighted value drivers will deliver quick results over the next 6-18 months. Around 75% of the planned profitability improvements will come from these top 3 drivers. The top 1, driving productivity improvements, specifically sales, through standardizing our tools, restructuring and focusing our teams with clear commercial KPIs.
Next, evolving the go-to-market strategy by arming our regions with more local marketing resources, enabling them to adapt to customers' needs, partner demands, and competitor movements. And thirdly, as I mentioned, focusing on our top 10 partners to drive a more strategically focused plan to drive mutually agreeable commercial returns. We have some clear new drivers for growth. The key new expansion opportunity, though, is relaunching our own proprietary courses. This is top of our priority list to launch this financial year. Let's get into what that means and how we will do it. We will target key growth markets with our new content play. AI is increasingly vital across various industries. The demand for data science professionals is soaring, and there is a surge in demand for mobile and web app developers, driven by the digital transformation initiatives.
For cyber, there's a significant need for training in areas such as threat detection, incident response, ethical hacking, and compliance. Although we do operate in these markets already, they are via the reseller model, delivered by third parties at low margins. So we've got to change this fast, and we will. We are moving ahead at pace to drive change. Proprietary product delivers much higher returns than via reseller or leased models. It is double reseller margins. 81% of our revenue comes from our top 200 courses. So we will launch 40 new courses targeted in the areas of highest demand. But how will we do this quickly and cost-effectively? We'll do it by utilizing the extensive library of content through AP's Talent Development Solutions business.
And then our mix of courses will transform quickly as we target our sales and marketing channels on ensuring those new 40 courses are all top 200 performers. And I'm planning for proprietary courses to account for more than 20% of our portfolio in the long term. So, thoughts I want to leave you with. Firstly, we have a really strong global foundation to work off with a strong and growing ILT market. Secondly, we understand where the business has made mistakes, and that we have clear and tangible solutions to implement to return to growth. And thirdly, that we have new growth tactics to accelerate our plans at or above the market levels. Don't get me wrong, this needs strong execution, very strong execution, acted upon with the utmost urgency, but it is all very achievable. Thank you very much.
We will now move to a 10-minute break.
Good morning, and thank you all for joining us. I'm Matthew Glitzer, Chief Revenue Officer at Skillsoft. I've been in role for about 15 months and with Skillsoft for almost 2 years. As CRO, I'm responsible for all field-facing teams, including sales, customer success, and professional services. My reason for joining Skillsoft is the same as my reasons for still being here. I believe in the company's mission, I believe in the team that we have, and I believe that with the plan we're putting in place, we will grow at pace and consistently. A little bit more on my background. I have 25+ years in the tech space in sales and business leadership roles. I spent the last 17 years prior to Skillsoft at IBM, working across multiple business units in the Americas, Asia, and Greater China.
Those businesses included high-velocity, transactional software businesses and cybersecurity, as well as IT outsourcing and cybersecurity services, which tended to be more large customer and enterprise-type customers. In those roles and others, I have a track record of driving organizational transformation and growth at the account, regional, and organizational level. Moving forward, I will cover our market opportunity in more detail, examples of where and how we are winning in the market, some of the challenges we're addressing, our strategy, areas of focus, and actions we are taking to drive growth. The learning market is large, growing, and rapidly evolving, driven by technological change and market factors impacting organizations of all sizes.
While we have made progress, we recognize the need, and have a plan to be more effective and efficient in our talent and market approach in order to drive growth within our base and in new customer acquisition. Ultimately, we have confidence that the actions Ron, AP, and Darren have shared, in concert with what I'll discuss, position Skillsoft to deliver above-market growth. Let's start with the market opportunity. The overall market opportunity for learning is quite large and growing. It represents tremendous opportunity for Skillsoft. Ron and AP previously talked about two buyer types: Talent Champions and Buyers of Online Learning. I spent a lot of time with customers across the world, and from my recent conversations, I believe there's a third type that represents a great opportunity for growth: Aspiring Talent Champions, we'll call them. At the top right of the box are the Talent Champions.
These organizations are typically larger enterprises who are already committed to and investing in workforce and skills transformation, with a number of key stakeholders outside of the HR and L&D organizations, and they are also the most likely to leverage blended learning approaches. At the bottom left of the box are the Buyers of Online Learning. These organizations are typically small or medium-sized businesses that recognize the importance of workforce and skills transformation, but are more content delivery-focused. In the middle of the box is a new category that we're calling Aspiring Talent Champions. These organizations typically span across the upper mid-market and enterprise segments. They recognize the need for workforce and skills transformation, but have not yet committed organizationally or from an investment perspective to that journey. Each buyer type has unique characteristics, which is why getting the route to market alignment is so critical.
With these buyer segments in mind, let's take a look at the current construct of our business. Looking at the left side of the chart, we have a tremendous customer relationship longevity, supported by platform and content value. An overall LTM DRR of 101%, with approximately 105% LTM DRR in our large enterprises. On the bottom left, you can see a sample of the esteemed customers we're fortunate to serve and the diverse industries and geographies we cover. I'd like to say a quick thanks to all of our customers, and in particular, the ones whose names and logos we're sharing here today. Moving to the right side of the chart, we have our segment by ARR contribution and customer count. You can see that we currently deliver 80% of our ARR through 25% of our base. Key takeaway?
We have a value proposition that resonates across all segments of the market, and there is an opportunity to unlock more growth through more effective resource allocation and sales execution. Building off the prior chart, our experience and track record, aligned to the buyer segments, has clearly informed our resource and investment priorities for the next 18 months. Looking at the right side of the chart, we will prioritize growing Talent Champions through value selling, engaging, understanding, and meeting the needs of an expanded set of organizational stakeholders, and by proposals that are connected to business outcomes with measurable ROI. We will continue to develop Aspiring Talent Champions through value and business outcome-driven selling, providing thought leadership, and co-creating transformation roadmaps with our customers, and referential and consultative selling.
We will enhance Buyers of Online Learning capture through optimizing our engagement model and effective pricing and packaging, and then we will always maintain our focus in continuing to focus on delivering increased value and an improved experience for the learner. So I've talked so far a bit about our market, our customers, and our priorities. I'd like to go a bit deeper now on how we believe the intersection of market segmentation, route to market, and buyer attributes sharpens our focus on route to market approach and our investment plans. This is critical for how we engage with our customers, what we engage them on, and is central to our growth strategy. On the left side of the chart is our market segmentation, aligned to customer size and spend.
The middle of the chart defines Skillsoft route to market by engagement approach, and on the right is the strategy and outcomes we're driving. In the enterprise segment, we will invest and focus more resource and face-to-face engagement in the form of additional sellers, marketing, and subject matter experts. In the mid-market, focus on hybrid engagement between face-to-face and digital to grow Aspiring Talent Champions. In SMB, we'll leverage a much more digital sales and support model to engage Buyers of Online Learning more effectively. We will continue to activate the learner advocacy flywheel to support both learner development and drive learner support within the organization. I think it's important to note that there's no hard line for how we've defined our buyer segments, but they do generally line up by market segment.
We see examples often of each buying behavior in pockets across all segments, especially Aspiring Talent Champions in the enterprise segment and Buyers of Online Learning across all market segments. I'd like to now focus on the market opportunity with Talent Champions in one segment of the overall global market. Earlier, I described the overall market opportunity for learning between TDS and GK. Skillsoft currently serves approximately 60% of the Fortune 1000, with an overall estimated learning spend within that base of approximately $28 billion. We have a track record of consistently winning here, but there is much more opportunity for growth. I'll now take you through two recent examples of where we have significantly grown in our base globally and in the Fortune 1000. On the left, the first opportunity is with a large foreign ministry.
This opportunity was a classic land and expand motion with an aspiring talent champion. We started with a small cohort to prove our capabilities and value. Then, over an 18-month period, we delivered that value, and through close client engagement across our sales, customer success, and professional teams, we developed a business case with the client that led to an enterprise rollout across their 250,000-person learner base, leading to approximately 4x ARR growth within 3 years. Moving to the right side of the chart, this opportunity was a great example of a talent champion. I was deeply involved with this client. The opportunity began with a COO-led initiative to accelerate organizational capabilities through workforce and skills transformation. One of the key requirements was a 12-month break even and required CEO and CFO approval.
With the support of the COO and the HR and L&D organizations, our technical leadership team engaged with the key executive stakeholders across the company, who worked closely with the global sourcing organization to create a win-win deal structure, and together with our key supporters, we were able to prove Skillsoft's capabilities and a strong ROI that led to approximately 5 times ARR growth within 3 years. So putting it all together, LTM DRR is a key metric for determining the health and growth of a business. We have seen consistent improvement in our LTM DRR, delivering approximately 8 points of growth over the last 4 fiscal years. That growth was driven through a combination of technical innovation in the platform and the broadening of our portfolio, and the shift we made in our go-to-market to value selling starting last year.
Our expectation of go-forward growth will build on the work we've already done in platform, our portfolio expansion and go-to-market improvement, and by continuing to execute at scale with our customers, similar to the examples I shared just before. We have confidence our growth progression will continue based on our broad, loyal, and diverse install base, our route-to-market transformation, and the continued innovation that AP and team and Darren are driving in our platforms and offerings. Effectively growing our install base is a critical element of driving overall above-market growth. Now, let's go talk to the next level, lever: new customer acquisition. Look, the effective acquisition of new customers is critical to driving our top-line growth. I mentioned the global TAM for learning and our penetration in the Fortune 1000 earlier.
I've stayed consistent here, just focusing on talent champion opportunity in the approximately 40% of the Fortune 1000 that we do not currently serve. We estimate there's an approximately $8 billion-dollar opportunity to grow our footprint in the remaining Fortune 1000, in addition to the approximately $28 billion-dollar opportunity in our current install base accounts. Similar to our win stories in the base, I have recent examples of significant new customer wins that span the Fortune 1000 and large enterprises globally. The first one I'd like to highlight is with a large heavy manufacturer in the US. Our winning proposition centered on our integrated global platform, total cost of ownership driven through vendor consolidation, and the quality and breadth of our portfolio, encompassing Business & Leadership, Codecademy for Tech & Dev, and our compliance collection. Result? A multiyear, multi-million-dollar TCV win.
The second win is with a large Asian bank. Why did we win? It was our ability to effectively integrate with the client HR management system, benchmarks and assessments tied to business outcomes that we were able to show quantifiable skills progression with, and the quality and breadth of our content libraries to allow for multiple content vendor consolidation. The result? Another multi-million-dollar TCV multi-year win. The third win at a global financial services company was driven by the combination of TDS and GK offerings in a blended offering. Our ability to drive and measure progression, and our professional services capabilities for design, implementation, and execution. Altogether, this led to another seven-figure, multi-year win. Ron mentioned earlier that our dedicated acquisition motion was relaunched just at the beginning of this fiscal year, and we are starting to see progress.
We've seen good examples of progress like those I shared in the previous chart. But in order to substantiate the directional progress, we took a snapshot of our second half fiscal year 25 pipeline and compared it to fiscal year 24 at the same time. Given the 9-12-month average cycle time for large opportunities, we believe this is an effective comparative example. What the data tells us is that we are creating more opportunities and bigger opportunities in the enterprise talent champion segment of the market. The overall growth in our pipeline and the growth in the size and scale of the opportunities for the second half of this year are another data point that give us confidence that we're making progress.
Ron, AP, and Darren all talked about the importance of the partner ecosystem to our business across demand generation, strategic client and market engagement, and the technical expansion and integration with our partners and customers. We recognize the need to transform both the how we partner and who we partner with. On the left side of the chart, I described the current state. To this point, our approach has been mostly opportunistic and organic, with limited cross-organizational coordination or automation. On the right side of the chart, you can see that we have clarity on what needs to be done, and we are building a plan to redefine how we partner and who we partner with and build the systems, processes, and teams necessary to execute. Bring it all together again.
We know what we need to fix and have a plan to do so for maximum impact on organizational effectiveness and growth. Fixing the basics organizationally and in our sales approach, an active example of this: at the beginning of this year, I drove the realignment of our TDS and GK sales forces. By separating out the ILT sales team, we are refocusing each team on its core business, but we have retained the connective tissue that is central to our blended learning offerings. Our invest to grow priorities support our go-to-market transformation and identify growth vectors. They are: implementing an integrated digital platform, targeted expansion into new geographies, and growing and maturing our partner ecosystem. There is a clear need and appetite for what Skillsoft offers across our TDS and GK business units.
We plan to drive more effective and efficient growth, and the plan to transform our routes to market is expected to drive more effective and efficient growth. We have a long and successful track record of helping our Talent Champions, and a plan to develop more of them. We are focused on evolving and improving our partner ecosystem for customer value and growth and our operational rigor for scale. The actions that I've outlined and the progress we have already made, give me a humble confidence that we can accomplish the goals that I've laid out here today. Thank you for your time and attention. I'd like to now turn the discussion over to our CFO, Rich Walker, to take you through the financials.
Thank you, Matt. So nice to connect with our existing investors and equity research community, and a warm welcome to those of you that are newer to the story. My name's Rich Walker. I've been at Skillsoft since we went public in mid-2021. I've been a public company CFO three times. I've been involved in both turnarounds as well as high-growth companies. The longest tenure was the eight years I spent at IHS, $700 million revenue company that we grew to over $2 billion of revenue. We did that through organic growth and targeted M&A. Importantly, we created greater than $5 billion of equity value for shareholders. Why am I excited to be at Skillsoft? It's very simple.
I believe in the mission, I believe in what we do for customers and their learners, and I believe the significant value we can create for shareholders is still in front of us. I'll focus on four main topics in my presentation. I'll summarize our value creation game plan. I'll update you on FY 25 outlook and a resource reallocation exercise we've completed. I'll drill deeper into the business unit financial profiles, which you'll see are very different, and this is the first time we'll be presenting that level of visibility. And then finally, I'll comment on capital allocation. Our value creation game plan has one simple, clear objective: create long-term shareholder value through an industry-leading financial profile with above market growth and profitability. From a strategic perspective, we validated the market opportunity, not just to grow, but to grow profitably.
We're evolving and repositioning the company to lead in the most attractive and fastest-growing part of that market. This is a very natural evolution for Skillsoft, but a more difficult one for our competitors. From an operational perspective, we're executing across two common tracks: fixing the basics and investing for growth... In Talent Development Solutions, AP articulated several initiatives to accelerate our growth in the B2B segment and return our B2C business to growing consistently. Darren spoke in great detail as to how we're moving swiftly and with urgency to turn around Global Knowledge and pivot that business to growth. Underpinning our execution priorities is a new, rigorous performance management system to improve operational visibility, predictability, and accountability. This has been the consistent drumbeat since Ron's arrival, and it has ignited the organization.
From a financial perspective, following a 90-day review and deep operational inspection, we are resetting our FY 2025 expectations. More on that in a moment. We've completed a comprehensive resource reallocation exercise that identified at least $45 million of spend that will both expand our margin profile and support our forward growth investment initiatives. We've already begun executing on those identified actions. We will then widen the aperture beyond FY 2025 and present our medium- and longer-term financial expectations, both at a business unit level and for the consolidated company. In fact, we will be evolving our BU financial reporting and our external financial statements later this year. We think that's gonna enhance investors' understanding of the two business units. The through line from the strategic opportunity through our operations to deliver on the financial outcomes we expect has never been more clear.
Our financial priorities to deliver on our objectives are also very clear and very simple. It began with a comprehensive inspection of our expense base to identify opportunities for greater efficiency and/or reduce spending. More on that in the next slide. That exercise gave us the resources required to support the growth initiatives AP, Darren, and Matt have articulated. They include go-to-market transformation, AI-centric innovation, expansion into new geographies, and an enhanced partner ecosystem, and even transforming our own workforce. In parallel, AP, Darren, and Matt articulated a series of actions we're taking to improve the respective BU contribution and margin. They include dual BU performance management systems, go-to-market efficiency, developing proprietary content in our GK business, and taking advantage of the inherent operating leverage in each of the two business units. These actions will accelerate free cash flow, which remains our principal financial metric.
There is tremendous operating leverage across our expense base, and when combined with our continued focus on working capital management and moving away from prior restructuring and acquisition-related activities, we expect free cash flow will accelerate going forward. And finally, as Adjusted EBITDA is growing and our free cash flow is growing, the business will, of course, naturally de-lever. Let me talk some more about our resource reallocation exercise, which was an important catalyst in setting these priorities. It was a comprehensive review of our entire expense base. Everything we do was in scope. We looked at our people, our systems, and our third-party spend. When we looked at people, we focused on flattening the organization as we pushed decision-making into the business units, looking to further leverage lower-cost geographies in which we can operate. From a systems perspective, it was very simple: eliminate, simplify, and standardize.
As we looked at third-party vendor spend, our procurement teams are looking across the entire portfolio, identifying opportunities to consolidate spend, and renegotiate for improved discounts and more attractive terms. We also looked at extensively at external benchmarks. We brought in best-in-class operating metrics to inform us on this inspection. Again, we identified at least $45 million of annualized expenses. That represents about 10% of our total annual spend. That will allow us to deliver expanded margins in FY 2025 and self-fund our future prioritized growth investments. In fact, we expect to redeploy as much as 40%-50% of those savings into the future growth initiatives you heard AP, Darren, and Matt articulate. This exercise is now complete, and we're moving immediately into the implementation phase as we begin to operationalize those decisions.
While this exercise was an important step function, the ongoing discipline and rigorous review of every element of our spending will continue into the future. Let me shift now to updating you on our outlook for the year. We are updating our FY 2025 outlook to reaffirm Adjusted EBITDA expectations on lower revenue. We felt it was prudent at this time, following the implementation of our new performance management systems, which Ron articulated, and the continued near-term disruption that remains at Global Knowledge. From a revenue perspective, prior guidance of $530 million-$550 million has been lowered to a range of $510 million-$525 million. Again, primarily due to the continued disruption at GK, but some continuation in sales cycle elongation in the Talent Development Solutions business.
At the midpoint, that will have year-over-year growth for the consolidated company down 6.5%. Adjusted EBITDA, prior guidance range of $105 million-$110 million remains the same. We will get some partial yield benefits from the $45 million dollar resource reallocation exercise, and that will allow margins at our midpoint to approach 21%. From a free cash flow perspective, our prior commentary was simply that we expected cash flow from operations and free cash flow to improve. The update today is we expect free cash flow for the full year to be in line with what we experienced last year. There will be certain one-time costs associated with the resource reallocation exercise, and that will put us at a comparable level to where we were last year.
Continuing our practice, we're only providing annual guidance, but we expect to see improved exit velocity coming out of the fourth quarter in TDS bookings, GK revenue, and across all expense categories. Now let me turn to our two business units and provide more insight into their respective financial profiles. A couple of framing comments that apply both to both of the BUs. We've been doing a lot of work to illuminate the true underlying, fully allocated profitability of each business unit. I'm excited to bring that analysis to you for both TDS and GK. And while we've already moved the sales and marketing directly into the business units, we still have a shared services model, where typically scaled functions like HR, accounting, IT, and legal continue to support both business units.
What we've done in these business unit views, however, is allocate those corporate functions to the BUs to give you a BU contribution and margin profile. We will still have approximately $25-30 million of unallocated expenses sitting at the corporate level. That includes such things as strategy, public company costs like D&O insurance, SEC reporting, internal audit, and SOX compliance. The key actions at the bottom of the page should look very familiar to you at this point, as AP and Matt articulated those in greater detail. For the balance of this year, we're focused on fixing the basics. Moving forward, we're investing to grow. The impact of those key actions from a revenue perspective, we expect our year-over-year growth this year to be flat to down 2%. By the midterm, growing at market, 5%-7% growth.
As we move to the longer term and grow above market, 9%-12% growth. Non-GAAP gross margins, as you would expect in a recurring subscription SaaS business, mid-80% range today. Lots of variable costs in that cost structure, so you can expect gross margin percentage will continue to track the growth in the top line and remain at a very attractive mid-80% level, both in the midterm and the longer term. On a non-GAAP business unit contribution margin, the business contributes today in the low 30% range, moving midterm to the low-to-mid 30% and clipping 30% in the long term. We will report on this basis going forward externally and give you that visibility, but that'll come later in this year. Moving now to our Global Knowledge business unit.
Again, the key actions at the bottom of the page should look very familiar to you, as Darren and Matt spoke to them in great detail. Darren remains focused now on fixing the basics, and moving forward, we're investing to grow. A very similar theme across all parts of our business. The impact of those actions this year is a 15%-20% decline in revenue. That pivots quickly to a growth profile by the midterm, growing at market in the 5%-7% range. That growth continues in the 5%-7% range in the longer term. On a non-GAAP gross margin basis, you have a very different margin profile in this business, about half what you saw in the TDS business.
That's primarily due to two things: all of our instructor costs are in cost of sales, as well as what we pay our authorized partners for their training materials. As Darren migrates over time to create more of our own private label intellectual property that we train on, you can see margins start to expand to the high 40% range in the midterm and getting over 50% in the longer term. From a non-GAAP business unit contribution margin, less than 5% today at GK, we expect that can move to the low teens and ultimately to the mid-teens. Now turning to our consolidated results. In addition to the analysis we've been doing on the individual business units, we've dramatically enhanced our long-range financial modeling. These business tools will bring improved analytical rigor to the business, including in our annual budgeting and our resource allocation planning.
At the revenue line on a consolidated basis, expect to be down between 5% and 8% this year. That pivots in the midterm to a 5%-7% at market growing, and in the long term, greater than 10%, growing above market. On a consolidated gross margin basis, mid-70% range, continuing in the midterm and bumping up towards 70%, high 70% in the long term. That's a function, again, of GK's gross margin improvement. Consolidated non-GAAP business unit contribution margins in the mid-20%, moving to the high 20% and ultimately to the low 30%. Still a lot of operating leverage in the two business unit expense base. At a consolidated Adjusted EBITDA, we're at an industry-leading 20%-21% today.
That expands 300-400 basis points in the midterm and another 400-500 basis points in the long term. From a free cash flow conversion, our ability to convert EBITDA in, into free cash flow, that remains negative today, as I called out in our outlook, but we believe by the midterm, that improves to greater than 30%, and in the long term, greater than 50%. Growing adjusted EBITDA and enhancing our free cash flow generation, our net leverage profile of greater than 4x today, moves to about 3x in the midterm and below 2x in the long term. Given the work that we've completed in the resource reallocation exercise, we expect to be free cash flow positive in FY 2026.
Reminder, we'll be providing you our full year FY 2026 guidance in our normal cadence when we report on our fourth quarter and full year FY 2025. Now turning to capital allocation. Our capital allocation priorities are very straightforward. We will continue to prioritize funding organic growth investments that we believe fuel growth, accelerate innovation, and drive profitable execution of our strategy, what we have consistently described as invest to grow. The left side of this chart recounts the priorities that AP, Darren, and Matt articulated. Those allocations of capital will be grounded in rigorous and disciplined annual strategic budgeting and planning. There is always more demand for investment capital. It always outpaces available resources, so each one will be evaluated and prioritized based on IRR and risk and return profile.
On a monthly and quarterly basis, we'll utilize our integrated performance management system to measure progress, and that'll allow us to course correct as applicable. A quick comment on the share buyback we announced earlier today. It's a $10 million program that will extend over four years. The clear objective here is managing dilution to existing shareholders that comes from the vesting of employee grants in the future. Finally, deleveraging. Again, as both Adjusted EBITDA and free cash flow, the business will, of course, naturally delever. We expect our forward leverage profile creates a tremendous amount of financial flexibility and the optionality in the future. As I wrap up, let me leave you with these key takeaways. Number one, we're taking immediate action.
The resource reallocation exercise we completed, the implementation of a new operational performance management system, those are driving reduced costs, expanding margins, and funding our growth initiatives. As we do that really well, we're building a very strong, fundamental, financially sound business, a recurring revenue model, and a roadmap for strong free cash flow generation. Doing both of those well ultimately is gonna unlock tremendous value for our shareholders. I am confident as we execute on this plan, we'll be recognized, and we'll see multiple expansion and valuation will improve for our shareholders. Thank you very much for your time and attention. We will move now to question and answer session with the entire team.
... really try not to stop. Thank you, everyone. I appreciate you making the investment and time. It did come to my attention that we did have a technical problem at the beginning of our session, so my apologies to everyone. Please go back, we'll have it uploaded in about a half hour. I'd ask you all to go back and look at the beginning sections for any of those of you who, who did miss that. Again, my apologies for that. We're gonna now turn to the Q&A section, and I look forward to answering the questions with the team. Again, thank you for taking the time to join us this morning and spend the time with us learning about the company and the actions we're taking to go forward.
Thank you so much. Our first questions are coming from the line of Ken Wong with Oppenheimer. Please proceed with your questions.
Oh, fantastic! Thanks for taking my question. Maybe to start off, maybe for Ron or Rich, but we really respect the team has laid out areas of improvement, but always very difficult. So we'll talk about things like creating content, storing up PMS, results to the market. I guess my thought would have requires more investment and potentially impacting margins near term. But how should we get comfortable with the fact that you are able to continue to deliver your targets share expansion going forward, you know, without potentially impacting the kind of growth areas as you take the money out?
Yeah, Ken, thank you. It's great to hear from you. It's a really fair question, and the team spent a lot of time looking at what we needed to do, and it really came down to what are the key priorities to driving revenue and taking our expense structure and aligning it to make sure that we're able to deliver on the commitments that we made. And the team is very focused on that, and I would share with you that we've identified the key drivers for each one of these areas. It's well over 20, and we've mapped out what we need to do step by step on that journey.
I feel very confident in the numbers that we gave you in reaffirming the EBITDA, as well as the new methodologies we've put in place around some of the new performance management on the revenue side of it. These are things that I know are part of the journey. I do have confidence in the way we have structured the pieces of it. Rich, I don't know if you want to add more to that.
Mike, Ken, good to hear from you. I would, as I contextualize it, we spend about our entire OpEx is about $450 million, and this was a comprehensive review across all of our spend categories. What we've identified is at least $45 million, which is about 10% of the expense base. We clearly understand the priorities are to continue to drive the business, but redirect and reallocate a lot of that expense base towards growth. While we gave the $45 million statistic, as we step back, we think probably $80 million-$90 million of our entire expense base is pointed at growth, and we're very comfortable with the judgments and investing that we're doing.
Got it. Okay. Really, really appreciate the color there. And then this one maybe for Matt. You know, there was an emphasis on Talent Champions. Any way to kind of help us think through what percent of this Fortune, you know, 60% of the Fortune 1000 you have, you might characterize as a talent champion? What's the headroom to work more of that base talent champion, or should we only think about the incremental talent champion wins going after the remaining 40% of the Fortune 1000 that you don't have?
I'll just comment in here to start. One, when I went through the profile, the new profile, the emerging profile of that buyer, we hit a number of the areas of the attributes of those particular buyers that we want to see in the market. And when we look underneath that, across that Fortune 1000, Matt can comment on what he's seeing emerging in the pipeline and what he sees from an overall % of opportunity. That went into our long-term analysis that we gave you with getting the company growing again by the end of 2026, and growing at and above market in 2027 and beyond. That went into that calculation.
We won't give the numbers, but we'll talk through maybe one or two of the examples that Matt has underway to give you a little more contextualization.
Yep. Thanks, Ron. Thanks, Ken. So when you think about the market, there's growth and headroom across the entire segment. So the examples that I showed during my presentation were examples of Talent Champions, where we grew the ARR approximately 4 and 5 times over a 2- to 3-year period. That runs across both pieces of both segments of that, the talent champion and the aspiring talent champion segment. So from that perspective, I don't think that there's necessarily a cap or a percentage that we look at. We continue to try to grow, and as technological change comes in, and the evolution of workforce transformation and skills transformation, it continues to drive the need for change and evolution across all of those businesses.
... Can we do an initial-
Great. Fantastic.
Yeah, can we do-
Oh, sorry.
Yeah, no, we did an initial piece of research that identified it, that I commented on. Part of our follow-up work will be to get really specific and tie it into our pipeline. Even with that said, I probably won't be sharing that publicly, as we go through that.
Okay.
That's part of the family business. But, we do see that as part of the evolution of it. I feel very comfortable, though, the market shift is absolutely happening out there, given the examples and the 115+ customers that we already have in that cohort from that analysis.
Okay, perfect. Thank you very much. I'll jump back in the queue and pass the mic to one of my peers.
Thanks, Ken.
Thank you. Our next question has come from the line of Sheldon McMeans with Barclays. Please proceed with your question.
Hey, yeah, thanks for taking our questions here. First one for Ron. In your remarks, you talked about how Skill is one of the largest players
[audio distortion]
It's a great question, Sheldon. Great to hear from you. When I really stare at the market, I look at that opportunity and break it into the graph that we showed you, the Talent Champions in the online buyer segment, the online learning segment that we talked about. When you get underneath that, though, the real conversation that you've heard us identify as a team, and Matt really drove it home as part of the conversation, was value-based selling. For us to unlock more of the true value, the intersection has to occur that, A, the customers are now recognizing the importance, the strategic importance of the HR function, helping them do this global transition that's being driven by the technology.
That value-based selling is the unlock that I see, and the fact that we've already proven it, is what gave me the confidence that we can get more pricing. The example that Matt just shared, we were able to see that 2-3x on top of that to get that value, and it came because of, of the value-based selling approach. So that's why you're hearing that so loudly from us, that we wanna drive that through the business and make that our core selling approach to the, to the market. So from my perspective, those are the pieces that I see. I don't know if there's... Rich, go ahead.
Sheldon, good to hear from you. Your question prompted an important trend we're seeing in the marketplace, particularly with larger customers, and that's consolidating their spend. I referenced the exercise we went through looking internally at our spend, and where we have multiple providers and can consolidate that spend, we can drive for better terms and expanding deeper relationships. The same thing is happening with our customers. A number of the customer wins that you heard about, the CFOs, the L&D, chief human resource officers, they're looking across a portfolio of spend and identifying opportunities where they can consolidate that with one provider that meets a comprehensive set of their needs. We're well positioned for that consolidation spend trend that's happening.
It's a really good point that you're raising as a follow-on, and maybe, AP, you could reference back to that large customer and just give us a little feel for what you saw in some of that consolidation that occurred.
Yeah. Thank you, Ron, and thank you, Sheldon, for the question. What we are seeing is multiple buyer types with different interests are actually finding our offering very appealing. The fact that we shared a chart with broad coverage in topical areas. So the CIO, CTO, the CHRO, sometimes the chief revenue officer, are finding our offerings jointly appealing. In the case of the customer that I shared in the net new ARR deal, multimillion ARR deal, that's exactly that consolidation happened across different buying points in the same customer. So when the value is realized across those buying points, we see a natural expansion opportunity for Skillsoft.
Thank you.
Great, thank you. A lot of helpful color there. I kinda wanna ask on Global Knowledge. I believe you mentioned revenue from the top 10 partners is 70%. I could be wrong there, and hardly know a lot about this.
Yeah, one thing I'm just gonna do, everyone, is I'm gonna repeat the questions so that everybody can hear them online. So the question was, could we explain a little bit about one, the rationalization of the number of partners that we have in the GK business specifically, and then, two, some of the forms of subsidies that come from those vendors; could you comment on how you're gonna handle that moving forward? Sheldon, did I capture that properly for you?
Yeah.
... Great. Darren, it'd be great, why don't you take that one?
Thanks, Ron. Yeah, I, I've seen a huge dependency, I would say, on, on our, on our vendors, and it's, as I said, it's a great attribute to have. We spend a huge amount of time across a vast array, of partners without being particularly strategic. I mentioned about Microsoft and what we're doing, there. So there's, there's these two aspects: One, be more strategic with those core partners, to work more closely with them, but also don't have all our eggs in one basket. I'm, I'm not used to being quite so dependent, and not have that ability to control our own content, and by understanding the market, work out at developing our own to sort of fill white space, work with our clients, and actually create and control content.
The wonderful thing about being here at Skillsoft is this incredible content that we have within the group and the ability. We talked a little bit about creating content costs money. We don't have that problem because, for me, GK, from a Global Knowledge perspective, because I've got access to all this fantastic content, which enables us to bring new courses, as I said earlier in my presentation, very much focused on the fastest growing areas of demand, that our clients are seeing in the marketplace. So we've got this ability to focus on our partners, but focus on those top-tier, premium partners, but also start to control our own destiny more by creating courses to complement that and drive up those margins, which are really, really important.
Yeah, when we as a team sat down, the whole leadership team, you know, and literally in Darren's first week, he made a couple of key observations here that he highlighted in his comments that really relate to what you're asking, Sheldon, and it really struck a chord with me in terms of the number of courses, and he mentioned it in his comments, the number of courses that generate the majority of the revenue. So we have this wonderfully broad catalog, but when you look at it from a revenue perspective, there's more focus there.
And then the second observation that he made was really around this piece he was just touching on, which is unbelievably important from a margin expansion perspective, that we're able to take our content, use those assets from TDS, and be able to quickly accelerate the courses that he's committed to get built for us through the rest of this year that we committed to all of you. That's how we're getting this done that fast. That's what gives me the confidence of what we're doing here, why we're gonna be able to get that done. And maybe, Matt, you just add on a smidge more about how you see it unfold at a customer, and why it's important at a customer as well, would be great.
Thanks, Ron. So I talked in one of the examples of our net new wins around the blended learning capabilities. The confluence of what GK can do from a live learning perspective, both virtually and classroom, connected with what TDS offers related to the content, the journeys, the ability to curate and define the learning path, and then added in the professional services capability to bring it all together in a coherent and cohesive way, is really powerful, right? And as we talked about Microsoft and those other partners, bringing those partners in from a content perspective and our own content connected to it, is really a powerful, powerful value proposition.
Great. Thank you. Sheldon, do you have another question?
Great. I'll hop in the back of the queue. Thanks.
Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question has come from the line of Thomas Singlehurst with Citi. Please proceed with your question.
Thank you. Yes, Tom here from Citi. First thing, so thank you very much for the presentation. It's been very valuable. My first question, actually, I guess this is probably for Ron. I know you're coming, obviously, incredibly familiar with the business anyway. I'm just interested as we sort of went through your first 90 days, whether you've got any missing pieces within the portfolio. But I suppose if I'm leading anywhere with this, I'm sort of interested in whether, in particular, the B2B, your sort of your bigger strategic shareholders, whether there's scope from all the third-party partnerships to further increase the offering to your company. And if there are some sort of gaps today. Thank you.
Great. Tom, I'm just gonna repeat the question, so make sure I get it right for you. You had two parts in the question. One was, as you look across the portfolio in the first 90 days, what did you see as a potential gaps in the overall strategy? So strategically, how will you think about those, Ron? And then, two, how does the partner piece play a role in that as we continue to extend out that strategy? I think is what I heard is the two questions, Tom. I just wanna make sure I confirm that.
That is absolutely bang on. Much better than I did it.
All good, brother. All good. The, on the first part of it, as we laid out the portfolio, it really came from a bunch of the market research that we had done. And underpinning that market research was this detailed cohort analysis. And that really crystallized two things that we talked about as the team today, as a team, as we talked to you about it today, and it was really around making the point of what we were doing from an overall business perspective. One is getting ourselves to fill in the key gaps, and in particular, on one of AP's slides, he walked through the multiple steps, the one, two, three, four, and we put partner below that, if you noticed, in several of the sections.
That's because we'll never fill all the gaps in the talent lifecycle, and we have no intention to. We really excel in the skilling space, and that's what we do exceptionally well. So that's where we're gonna stay focused as a company. Inside of that space, there's a lot of great terrain that we've already taken and captured. We're already attacking the interactive blended learning journeys. We do the physical and virtual part of that already as part of it, and technology is at the underpinning of that piece of it. So these pieces were really well aligned for what the team had built, and I'll ask AP to comment on what he sees in a moment. But as you look through the portfolio, what we saw there was the connective tissue that Matt referenced.
Bringing all these pieces together is where we can play an additional role, but we need our partners, and we need them to work with them, to help us, whether it's driving demand, whether it's helping us deliver, as Matt said, some of those professional services, or being key technical partners like Microsoft and the AI work that we've been doing with them and why they chose us. This is all part of that story coming together, and we'll lean on those partners to really help us fill those big gaps and key technology areas, and we'll drive what we do really best and stay in that lane, from my perspective. But AP, you've stared at the portfolio the longest. It'd be great for your insights.
Thank you, Ron, and thank you, Tom, for the question. As I go and sit with our customers all over the world, literally, I see that in this new category, people are looking at transforming talent, which means they look at workforce planning, hiring and placement planning, skilling, on-the-job upskilling, and eventually, career mobility and progression. There is not a single company in the world that should or can fill the whole need, but however, the customer needs it all turnkey and preassembled as much as possible. So Skillsoft, having the enterprise DNA, excels in one area or two areas, but we also want to excel in creating an open API ecosystem whereby we can go and offer turnkey solutions. And that is what we mean by partnerships. That is the unlock, the and velocity and stickiness that we will get by doing that.
Couldn't agree more with what AP just said. That unlock was one of the big identifications. We've been doing these integrations, just need to do them faster and with more partners. That's where we see the acceleration of the revenue growth. Tom, another question?
Yeah. Next question, if it's okay, is off for Rich and I. I think I couldn't work out exactly what you were saying, really. $45 million of gross cost saving, about 10% cost efficiency, and then obviously, there's the degree of reinvestment. Absolutely. I didn't catch whether we should expect the majority of that to be reinvested or around 50%. I wonder if you can, you know, more precisely quantify that. And then I suppose the actual question behind that is, in 2026 as to 2027, presumably we should be expecting absolute positive, adjusted EBITDA progression.
Yeah. So just to repeat the question, "Team, can you explain the $45 million cost reduction, contextualize that with the invest to grow so we make sure we're really clear on the numbers piece of it," referencing the $45 million, in particular. And then a second question was, "Okay, what do we see in the out years as that continues to, as we go into the future?" I'll make one comment that I was very, very focused on, in communicating with all of you. We, as a team, the leadership team, worked on. I specifically said $45 million plus. So our work here and the intensity that we're bringing, and the urgency that we're bringing to the business is just the beginning of what we're trying to get done here.
I'll have Rich walk you through how we're deploying it in 2025 and then to 2026, 'cause we want to be very clear with you, the impact that we see that it has on the business. Again, the highlight is 2026 will return to growth as an overall, and that $45 million will impact the EBITDA and get us back to free cash flow generation, which is a great thing from my perspective, but I want Rich to walk you through the next level.
Perfect. Tom, good to hear from you. The $45 million represents about 10% of our entire spend, and we looked comprehensively across all of the 4 categories of our expense base. We identified about at least $45 million of that spend that we will be taking out of the business. We'll get the benefit this year from some of that expense reallocation, but importantly, it creates the headroom for us to reinvest a portion of that to the roadmap of Invest to Grow initiatives you heard about. Some of that investment begins as early as fourth quarter this year, but the majority of that reinvestment, what we called out to be about 40%-45% of that $45 million, will come back in, in FY 2026.
We expect FY 2026 will grow at the top line, and that investment and reinvestment, as we release that capacity back into the business, creates the financial profile we spoke to.
Yeah. And therefore, you can imagine when we go to give guidance, we'll for 2026, and we consciously are not giving that, we really wanna make sure that you understand how that EBITDA expansion and free cash flow all unfolds, and we'll get you more details on that later.
That's very clear. And one final one.
Please.
The proprietary focus within GK makes a lot of sense. Is that capital investment, or is that the sort of P&L reinvestment that we're talking about in the previous question?
Most of the-
Repeat the question. Just repeat the question. We have a little-
Repeat the question. It broke up a little bit, Tom. With respect to GK and our Invest to Grow initiatives, is that primarily gonna show through our P&L, or is that gonna show up in our CapEx or internally capitalized software costs? Did I get that right, Tom?
Absolutely. Perfect. Thank you.
Most of that reinvestment is gonna come through the P&L. An example would be when we're creating our proprietary content, leveraging the TDS investment, we're gonna leverage our instructors to adapt that into a live learning environment. Very little CapEx, very little systems investment required in the growth initiatives that Darren articulated.
Darren, you may wanna comment, when you looked at the content materials, what you saw and why you felt we could accelerate that, would be insightful as well.
Yes. Thanks, Ron. Yeah, the basis of that we're working upon, sort of, I would say, gets us 60%-70% of the way there. And having that trainer pool to be able to then adapt just means that we can do it so much faster than others in the market. So it's just a great position to be in, to have all this content, but it needs adaptation. We're obviously... You know, we have product specialists within GK and the ILT world that will be very specific around what we need. They'll work very closely with AP's teams, and then adapt that content over the coming months. Yeah.
This is a key catalyst to the growth of the margin expansion, in particular, in the growth of the business that we see, that Darren was just highlighting. It gave us more confidence on why we could move fast. It gave us more confidence when he could get, you know, 10, 10, 10, that he took you through in terms of programs, new content out there for that classroom-style training, physical or virtual. And that's... Those are the kind of things that we got into that level of detail as we looked at just how fast we could turn around GK.
And underneath it, I think my confidence grew more when we just really understood some of the fundamentals that Darren described to us and ways to fix it, and that's why you're seeing us be fairly positive and aggressive on that, because this business does turn quickly. It's a symmetrical experience, is the way I look at it, and that symmetry should help us on the upside as well, and that's what you're hearing from us.
Ron, just to-
Please
... complement that. I've seen and done this from standing start. The ability to have this content is a big, major differentiator-
Yeah
... so it's great to have.
Thank you. Yeah, no, you actually—he actually said that first day he was with us all in a group, a room.
Yeah.
He was stuck with us for four days and came off his holiday that he thought he was having, and was kind enough to come join us. So, it's a really good point.
I'd frame that, finally, Tom, the adaptation that Darren's speaking to can be measured in the $10,000s, not the $100,000s, leveraging the content base that already exists.
Next question?
That's great. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Tom. Great to hear from you.
Thank you. Our next question has come from the line of Sheldon McMeans with Barclays. Please proceed with your questions.
Yeah. Thank you for taking my follow-up. So I wanted to ask if we could get more color on the assumptions around the opportunity within Skillsoft's existing Fortune 1000 customer base. So there you noted there's 29 million employees and about a 28 million opportunity, sort of imply about a 1,000-
... per year per employee. I understand this is for all training-related expenses, more than just software and content, but looking at Skillsoft LTM revenue and the 100 million winners, you're getting about $5.5 per user per year. What share do you think you can get of those $1,000 per year pie or, you know, put differently, what are your thoughts on high drive revenue per employee per year, I guess, if it, that makes sense?
It does. So, just to repeat for the audience, the, the question, was: How high and how much penetration you can get, and more importantly, how high can you grow your learner expense per learner, per employee, of learning on our journey? Let me just start with some of the facts that we have, and then I'll go to you where we're doing some more homework on this one, Sheldon. First and foremost, what we have done is identified the core attributes in the cohorts of this customer base that's underway in this shift. That's the most important piece of it. In terms of the overall expansion, what you're seeing is about a 23% increase in the overall spending that we highlighted, across the learner group.
Now, when you bring that down, the part we're working on right now as part of our research will be to then figure out how many of them, and Matt nailed it when he said there's a group that are the aspiring ones. Those aspiring ones are our future customer. You saw the chart that took us on the DRR journey for the ones that we are able to penetrate, and we have plans to continue to expand it out to that 108%. But what we have to do is identify that next cohort that's ready to go, is where I'm really focused, actually, from a demand gen perspective. The total population long term, we know it's in the Fortune 1000.
It's really a question of timing for us when they become ready to make that shift, when HR becomes strategic. The workforce transformation is happening at the C-suite now at 80%+. It's an imperative, but we have to see that translate through the organization. So I'm actually really focused on the aspiring group because that's where we're gonna get our next chunk of revenue. In terms of the technical analysis you're asking for about how much bigger this all could be, we're doing some more work there to get underneath that at the next level.
Great. And last, last one from me. Can you speak broadly to how the market is evolving in terms of the content and learning providers and the learning management system? And when you talk about forward, like, part of the piece there is that you're no longer competing with the learning management providers, like a Workday, who have a really that you could speak to how that market and the opportunity to partner. I know you had that integration Workday came on last year, how that's an opportunity.
Sure. Yeah, just repeating the question again for the audience. The question was around talking about the LMS market and how it's evolving in the LXP part of the market, the learning experience, and when you divested from SumTotal, you signaled you wanted to do more partnering along the way there. What part of that is also in the Workday and those type of players that are the HCM systems as part of that overall journey?
Just talk through a little more about the partnering piece of the strategy, and I'll frame that with one comment, then I'll ask AP to talk about the transition of the market, and Matt to follow on to we talk to you about the market and the customers, 'cause I think these pieces really, really go together in that value proposition. At the highest order, partnering is the only way that I see that we get to that next level of scale and growth. And what you see with Microsoft that we just announced, what you saw with Workday that we announced and have delivered against, these are the kind of things that actually allow us to drive that talent lifecycle journey and process to help the corporation make that transformation, that help that organization go on that journey.
These are the most critical things that we're gonna have to do on this journey, with the customer, and it takes some time, right? These things didn't happen overnight, and we have to work fast to give them the speed and the tooling to be able to move their organizations quickly, just like we're gonna do the same thing internally. But with that, AP, if you don't mind commenting on the overall market movements you see, and, Matt, maybe you bring it to life as to how you're seeing it out with the customers.
Yeah. Thank you, Ron. Yeah, sure. So I think, Skillsoft has always partnered with, what we used to call learning management systems. Consistently, what we said, it's actually talent management that's becoming more important. People are profiling employees in terms of their skills, matching that against business needs, and seeing what skills gap they need, that's workforce planning, and then what upskilling they need. Now, this is not a simple learning management system. This means companies are using skill profiling systems, workflows planning systems, talent management systems, different parts of HRIS systems. So what we see as an opportunity for us is stay focused on upskilling, measurement, and outcome-focused learning.
... but then open up APIs and ecosystems to partner with, for example, Workday, and there are many other examples like that in the marketplace that we are actively working with. So I see the market becoming a more partner-oriented, integration-oriented market, and that's where we want to excel.
Yeah, and AP, if I would add, just from a customer perspective, the win I talked about from an acquisition perspective in the large Asian bank was specifically around our ability to integrate both forward integration and backwards integration into the HRMS system, right? To creating that circular loop of information and data transfer. We see examples from an LMS perspective, from an HRMS perspective, from an LXP perspective, and our ability to integrate, our ability to share data, and then actually to bring value from our benchmarks and assessments, skills progression, all comes together to provide our customers a better understanding of what they have from a workforce perspective and to measure the progression of their skills.
So I see only increased integration across the technical spectrum and within the talent development life cycle.
Thank you.
Understood. Thank you.
Thank you. There are no further questions via the audio connection. I'm gonna pass it back over to the team to continue the Q&A session.
Okay. Thank you, operator. So Ron, Rich, and team, we've got a number of questions that have come in from the online platform. So first one for you, Rich, a number of questions. With respect to your guidance ranges that you outlined, can you give any more definition around what midterm or long-term means?
Thank you for the question. I think you can break it up this way. We're focused on fixing the basics over the next 18 months. That will take us through the end of our FY 2026. When we talk about the midterm, very typically, that's 2-3 years from today, and the long term is measured more in 4-5 years.
Okay. Thank you, Rich. So follow on to that then, with respect to the free cash flow guidance, does that imply... So you mentioned 30% free cash flow conversion in the midterm, so that's the horizon that people should be expecting?
Absolutely. We in addition to commenting on how that conversion profile expands greater than 30% in the midterm, over 50% in the long term, I am confident with the work we've done around the resource allocation, that we will grow the top line in FY 26, and we expect to be free cash flow positive in FY 26. Our formal guidance will come in April as we close out the fourth quarter and the full year fiscal 25, but comfortable and confident in making that declaration. But stay tuned on our formal guidance that we'll provide as the year closes.
Okay. We've got another one here then, with respect to, with respect to leverage. So you laid out a view for net leverage going forward across the midterm and the long term. Can you give any more color, as you think about gross targets, net targets, and use of cash, and how you think about getting to that point of a lower net leverage that you outlined on your slide?
Appreciate the question. Our principal financial metric is free cash flow. The focus is on accelerating and growing our free cash flow. That starts at the very top of the P&L, with revenue growth and ultimately, EBITDA and profit contribution. So the combination of growing EBITDA and accelerating free cash flow, we did give some indication of that, in the mid and longer term. We're greater than 4x levered today on a net basis. We expect to move to the midterm at about 3x, and in the long term, less than 2x. So I think that, over that period, strengthens our balance sheet, gives us tremendous financial flexibility. We'll always be attuned to the rate environment, the prevailing rate environment.
As our facility matures in July of 2028, importantly, as we execute on this plan, we can make any of those evaluations along the way as to what to do with the cash that we're generating.
Yeah. We've got a two-part question here from an investor, so we'll give the first part to you, Ron. First, thanks for the presentation, Ron and team. Two questions: Are there any specific actions that you need to take to grow the non-America mix? And if so, what are those?
It's a great question, and the answer is, there is a significant opportunity outside the U.S., North America that you're talking about. What Matt's already done there is we've got a new leader inside of our Asia Pacific operations. And what I've seen to date in performance has been very good. I'm pleased with that. We just stepped into Japan, so I feel very confident about that. We've received our first 2 contracts, I guess, by now, that we're seeing there. So I think that opportunity is significant. I also think, and Matt should comment further, really plays to the talent champion that we've identified, that we've been sharing with you all day here. That, that's the anchor we're building everything off of.
Maybe you comment more on it, Matt, 'cause you're living it, and then come back through Europe.
Yeah, that makes a ton of sense. So the... There, there are really two pieces to the non-U.S. market, and we'll talk about Asia Pacific first.
... the talent champion market really focusing on those organizations who are trying to transform their workforce, and the skills within their workforce and their organizations. There's a real opportunity from a vendor consolidation perspective, competing against both the aggregators, the marketplaces, and the segment-specific content providers in Asia. The second piece is the importance of channel and the partner ecosystem. When you talk about getting to Southeast Asia, when you get into North Asia, the ability to work through partners and the ability to work through the channel is really critical for landing the local market. We do see potential expansion there, and we're actively engaged in determining where we're going to go next. Then if you come into Europe and EMEA, there's an opportunity across EMEA.
Well, you've seen some examples that we shared with the foreign ministry, in our base, as well as, at an opportunity at a large global finance, institution in EMEA. There's a real opportunity in EMEA, in the Talent Champions. We see a real opportunity there in growing our Aspiring Talent Champions as well. And ultimately, when you close it out, the work that we're doing around digital platform to make sure we're not ceding any element of the market, right? We're in these markets, we're in all market segments within these markets, and we believe that there's growth potential across all of the market segments.
Yeah, I think the distinction on our journey has been really understanding how to be efficient within the routes to market, and those routes to market that Matt touched on, that I've touched on, we're gonna work on, is really just capturing. 'Cause the online market is still growing 5%, and what we've identified is growing at a higher rate, and that - more of that 7%-10% range, and we have those assets. So it's really just making sure we get the right routes to market to be successful with those, with those assets. And I think when I look at both business units, the opportunity also for more globalization, Darren, you may wanna just comment on what you see. I know you're focused on Fix the Basics.
He's been our number one Fix the Basics person on the team here, and which we're most appreciative of. But he also sees out into the horizon of what else we could do geographically. Maybe a little color there.
Yeah.
I know you and Matt have worked hard on identifying that.
Yeah, and it's a great base to work off. I kept on going on about those foundations, that European stronghold. Yet within Europe, we've got big opportunities, with our Microsoft partnership in France and their EUR 4 billion investment in AI, which we're working closely with. The Middle East is growing rapidly. I spent a lot of time personally in the Middle East, and I'm gonna support very closely on trying to double down and grow there faster. But to our biggest opportunity in the near term is getting North America up to the levels that you'd expect for a company like Global Knowledge. So, that will be we don't wanna I'm certainly pretty focused on the areas that I've got today. There are growth expansion.
You know, we're into India, that's obviously a huge opportunity. Germany's an area that we were strong in before, that we may grow, but I think North America is where I would like to really go after in the early days.
Great.
Thanks, team. And then Ron, I guess this one's for Rich as a second follow-up, from the same investor: What are the key drivers of adjusted EBITDA to free cash flow conversion improvement in fiscal 2026 and beyond?
Big drivers in that conversion profile, first, net working capital. As the business grows, net working capital should be neutral to our cash consumption. Over the last two years, working capital has been a use of cash. Next, we have CapEx. Our CapEx profile over this entire planning horizon is about 3%-4% of revenue, and that will be consistent throughout that horizon. Cash taxes, we generate over $100 million of profit. We're not a U.S. taxpayer, but some of our foreign jurisdictions, we do pay cash taxes, and that's at about 5%-6% range. A big component of our drag and use of cash over the last few years has been the significant number of restructurings and integrations we did related to our portfolio acquisition and divestiture.
That continues to taper down, and we expect that will continue to taper down. And then the final component is our interest expense, our net interest expense.
Thank you, Rich. New question from another one online. "Rich, could you discuss the specific factors that went into cutting the fiscal '25 revenue guide?
I think, we spent the first 90 days, as Ron talked about, we spoke to a new management performance system. That is a more consistent engagement throughout the quarter between all areas of the business. It starts with the GMs. It starts with their sales organization and leadership that is now part of their business unit. It engages with the finance organization and our analytics organization.
... It, it then allows us to make the right judgments on the forecast, and getting surprised at any quarter end is not what we wanna do. So the combination of that rigorous inspection, combination of continued disruption in the GK market, caused us to revisit and set that line at a level we were confident we could achieve.
Anything, Ron?
Yeah, I think the only thing I would add here is, over these last 30 days, very specifically, when I dig down another layer, we as a team spent time putting a much more rigorous methodology in place for forecasting, and that was a contributor to this discussion that Rich just outlined. And we'll get more accurate with it over time, as the model settles out, but there's a new methodology that we absolutely put in place, and we will continue to harden and grow and get stronger at doing this. That contributed and catalyzed the guidance as part of the overall process that we were putting in place.
Okay. Thanks, and I'll probably give this one both to, you, Ron, and Rich, from another investor: "It's good to expand the disclosure with the BU margins. What operational metrics should we expect going forward to be disclosed to the market?
Yeah, stay tuned, is the quick, quick answer to that one. We understand the appetite and the desire for those pieces. Just give us a little more time to harden those pieces up, and then we'll share with you what we think will help you value the business appropriately, both the leading indicators, where appropriate, to help as part of that journey.
Yeah, I would simply reiterate the objective is very clear: to give you improved visibility to the two different business units. They have different financial profiles, they have different near-term and longer-term financial profiles, and allowing the investor to understand those differences is the clear objective.
Thank you, Rich. Darren, question for you that's come in: "With a fairly short period in the role, can you already comment on the outcome of any turnaround actions? Do you see any first signs of recovery as far as growth is concerned?
Question, quick, quick turnaround and opportunities. Yes, I mean, I've... I can see, I think as I explained, none of what I've seen has frightened me too much. I think I used the word easy earlier. I think what I ... This is all around execution and that fantastic client base that we have, all those foundations that I talked about. That's something that's very exciting to work off. I haven't yet managed to get out into the clients quite as much as I have with the partners, but we have such an amazing client base that I'm really looking forward to getting out there and helping grow those accounts quickly. So from what I can see, some great green shoots.
It's just need to turn this organization around.
I think maybe talk a little bit about the marketing and sales structural things-
Yeah
... that you've started. I think that's where I'm getting confidence in Darren's plan, as we reviewed it together as a team, is his speed at which he's moving to address those parts of, of what we wanna get done, more effectively. And this is, again, behind the BU structure, lowering that center of gravity for decision-making closer to the customer and in the market.
Yes, well, thank you. I mean, you're setting me up to succeed by giving me the ability to make those decisions, and getting our marketing assets closer to our sales teams and in the regions is absolutely fundamental. Centralizing those has had a detrimental impact, and the ability for us to do that quickly will enable us to support our regions. It is a very regionally driven business, Global Knowledge, and arming, as I said, our teams across Europe and the Middle East, especially where it's... I think they've been hit the hardest, will have the closest and quickest effects as we do that and push those resources out.
Probably a good time to remind the business model at GK is very different in terms of converting those sales and bookings into realized revenue. That can happen within 90 days, and the impact on the activities Darren's describing, we expect, as we exit this fourth quarter, to have some dramatically improved velocity that gives us that confidence. And the TDS business, multi-year subscription-based, you sell a large deal, that comes into the revenue at a different cadence over the life of that contract. But Darren's team has the opportunity to really impact quicker our revenue and growth profile.
It's very evident. I mean, I managed to get out to the offices very quickly, which was great, and to hear from our staff, who were just crying out for-
... more local support. Marketing will make a massive difference as we push that towards those regions.
Great. Thanks, both. Matt, maybe a question for you that's come in. It says: Rich mentioned today in previous quarters, as part of the guidance, and we've heard the same from some of your peers, that sales cycles are getting longer. Is there anything that, I guess, you or Rich can share about that?
Yeah, so maybe I'll start, Rich, and then throw it over to you. So we, we've talked a lot today, and we've talked in our presentations about how we're selling, what we're selling, and selling through outcome-based and ROI-based cases. We also talked, Rich mentioned earlier, about vendor consolidation. And so we've. The one of the examples I talked about, in the acquisition was around getting to key stakeholders and stakeholders outside of HR and L&D, right? All of these things require more time, more review, their enterprise contracts, and as we sell in the enterprise space, there's more complexity, there are bigger dollars, and, there are typically, higher-level reviews because of the strategic impact, of these decision, right?
There's a difference, and we talk about their online learning buyers versus the Talent Champions. When making a straight content decision, it's a different buying cycle. It's a different buying behavior. It's typically a different review process than when you're talking about enterprise selling.
Yeah, I would add, huge difference between an elongated sales cycle on a very large opportunity and a situation where we, it drops out of the pipeline, we lose to a competitor, or the customer doesn't make a decision. And the elongation for the magnitude and size and complexity of the opportunities is well worth the commitment to that opportunity.
Thank you both, and I know we're wrapping up here in a few minutes. I've got one or two questions still in the queue. So we'll give this one open floor. Maybe Ron, take it to start. Can you please speak to current and projected trends within each of the core subsegments within TDS?
The core subsegments. It's a great question in what we're seeing for some of the trends inside of TDS. I wanna be careful on this one topic because we have presented the content base of what we've been doing as a company. That remains of center of what we're doing and the way we're delivering it. But we're thinking, as you've heard all day, a very holistic view of how to think about the business and the way we're treating content. In that example I shared with you that defined what a talent champion was, I went out of my way to point out to you that that blended learning journey included the customer's content, our premium content, and the external market content all coming together.
That's the future that I see inside that larger segment that our research showed as part of the journey. That said, in the online buying piece, which will continue to happen, we want it to, and the way we address that is part of the overall journey. I do see the trends right now where it's the technology one is obviously one of the, the, the bigger trends inside the overall macro market that continues to grow, and this is where GK plays a critical role as part of that blended learning journey. But I also see the demand at those large Talent Champions also saying, "Give me more business skills." We also hear it from the learner. We see those pieces there, and as you know, compliance is here for good, and that's gonna be part of our journey.
So we're seeing good trends at the macro level across the industry. How we're gonna package and bundle and attack those parts of the market, we're really rethinking as part of this full value-based selling, as we go along, but AP, why don't you comment further on the core trends?
Ron, you captured most of it. I don't really have a lot to add, except that I'll say, there's a lot of value when we put our solutions together, along with all the different types of content we have. So for example, a concrete example would be cybersecurity and compliance. We can put the value together and the measurements around it and actually measure the workforce's transformation from a less cyber- aware to a much more cyber aware and compliant, right? So that is the exponential value that we are able to unlock in the Talent Champions.
Yeah, and I actually think that there's a, Thank you, AP. I think there's an unlock in terms of GK and TDS as well, right? So when you talk about cyber, we have a broad array of virtual and live training around cyber, and being able to connect that with our benchmarks and our assessments and our content journeys, it's really powerful, and that resonates across all of the different buyer types and market segments. And I think it's really important to note, so our attach rate right now is approximately 3%-7% of GK with our TDS business, and there's a real opportunity to expand that as well.
Okay. Thanks, team, and then, Ron, we'll give you this last one and a nice natural, segue then, for you to close us out here at the top of the hour. So the final one is, could you give more of a market view of where the business is performing well versus not, and what's the strategy going forward?
... Sure. Where I see the business performing extremely well is in understanding what the talent champion really wants inside of the macro trends of workforce transformation, that reskilling revolution. That part of the journey we understand, and we really know how to deliver that. You heard examples from myself, AP, Darren, Matt, Rich, all of us have seen that firsthand. We've also seen the company not performing as well in acquiring new customers to the level that we want to as we go on that journey. That's where we're putting another big chunk of focus that Matt referenced in his section. You saw the opportunity within the Fortune 1000, and you also saw the opportunity and our ability to do it. I know we can do it. I've seen it before as being with the company as long as I have.
I know we can deliver that selling of new customers as we go on the journey. I think we just made it a lot clearer to the market, how we go about doing that, and how we'll deliver that to our customers, and that piece of the equation is the part I'm most excited about for where we go and what we can do. So as I look at the opportunity, and I look what's right in front of us, and I will promise you, this team, the whole team here, is really looking right in front of ourselves. We mapped out a very clear 6-month and 18-month horizon to you and fixed the basics, and we did that with great deliberateness as part of what we wanted to communicate to you.
'Cause I believe as we deliver on those pieces there as an overall company, that positions us to really explode the growth for this company and take it to the next level. So as I've stepped into this role, as we wrap up today, I could not be more confident in the team, the core assets that this company has, and our ability to execute and deliver it, because in the last 90 days, I've seen the company rally around the execution of what we want to get done, focus like I've never seen it focus before, and come out the other side with clarity and definition of what we need to do. And that's where you're seeing the team's confidence and comfort in what we have. So I'm excited to continue to communicate our journey. I'm sure we'll have some bumps along the way.
We'll be clear with them, with you, we'll fix them fast, and we'll continue to address this wonderful market that's growing in front of us, that gives Skillsoft its current position and all the heritage that it has, and honor that past, and show what kind of real growth company we can be at that next level. So thank you all very much for joining us today, and I look forward to speaking with you all soon. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Team.