Good afternoon. Welcome back to the IDEAS Conference. I'm Sandy Martin, and next up we've got Universal Technical Institute, Inc., NYSE traded company, UTI is the ticker. And we've got the CEO today, Jerome Grant, and I'll turn it over.
Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone. Hope you had a good lunch. I've got maybe 15 minutes of comments, then I will leave things open for questions and answers. Usually, when my CFO is accompanying me at these sorts of events, he's the guy who will look at this sheet of paper and in a nutshell say, "You got to take every forward-looking statement with a grain of salt, and they are merely projections," et cetera. We'll move on from there. This presentation's pretty much set up for people who don't know a heck of a lot about Universal Technical Institute, and our two brands, UTI and Concorde Career Colleges. So apologies to those of you that are in deeper on the story. We'll try to get through these materials as quickly as we can so we can get to your questions. So who are we?
We're one of the leading workforce solutions providers. We operate 35 campuses nationwide, with somewhere around 35, 36 programs at any given time being run on those campuses. We average students on our campuses around 25,000 active students at any given time. And then the other statistic is, we graduate in the neighborhood of 70% of our enrolled students, which for those of you who know the difference between community colleges, which who tend to be in the same business we are, and as they graduate somewhere in the neighborhood of 35% of the students that are there. And 80% of our graduates get job in market within a first year. So we pride ourselves on those very high outcome statistics. We're in two sectors. Universal Technical Institute is in transportation, skilled trades, and energy, and Concorde Career Colleges is in the healthcare sector.
Think of everybody that surrounds the doctor, whether it's nurses, respiratory techs, pharmacy techs, phlebotomists, medical assistants, et cetera. So, everyone who surrounds a doctor. Our outlook for 2026, and I know people are going to want to talk a bit about the change in our outlook. Still strong outlook of somewhere around $900 million was our guide, $32 million- $36 million in net income and between $100 million- $103 million in EBITDA. We are two years in by the end of 2026 into our phase II of our North Star strategy, and one of the things that we've outlined at the beginning of this phase is that by 2029, we expect to surpass $1.2 billion in annual revenue, and approach $220 million in EBITDA. And we'll talk a little bit about how that happens between now and then.
Investment thesis, proven strategy for driving growth, leading educational background, success and transformation efforts, strong student outcomes. We have a very strong balance sheet and, over the last 10 years, have done a great job of executing on those expectations. There have been hiccups, as you have known, but a great job of executing on those. We are in the space of non-degree programs or non-four-year degree programs, the alternative to going to a four-year school where we all went, et cetera. Examples of those programs would be auto/diesel. That is how UTI started 63 years ago as an auto/diesel technician training program. But we have diversified that platform into the skilled trades, things like welding, energy, aviation maintenance, electronics, and robotics and automations. Then three years ago, we purchased Concorde Career Colleges, which is, as I said, in the healthcare technician space. UTI's last year's revenue were $542 million.
Concorde's is $294 million. So, basically two thirds of our business is in the skilled trades, transportation and energy, and about one third of our business is in healthcare. By the way, this deck is in our investor profile, so if you ever want to download it and take a look at it is there. A lot of people have said to us, "So UTI was around for a long time. What was the story with buying Concorde three years ago?" The commonality between Concorde and UTI is, we will only focus in areas that have a severe imbalance of jobs, supply and demand. There are a lot of tech trades areas and skilled areas where you need a certificate where that supply and imbalance does not exist. So you look at places like hospitality or beauticians, et cetera like that.
Those are all certificate programs where people need to be licensed to be able to do it, and they are fine trades for people to be in, but they do not have the same supply and demand imbalance characteristics of the programs of which we focus. Healthcare , supply and demand issues are actually more acute than in the trades and et cetera. So in order to participate in that larger piece of the market and diversify our product set, we bought Concorde back in 2023. This really addresses the supply and demand issues and where we will only put pieces into our curriculum where there is significant upside in terms of where that supply and demand is. One point on supply and demand. Right now, there is four or five jobs for every graduate of the programs that we have on the market.
Somewhere in the neighborhood of only 20%-25% of the jobs in these areas ever get filled, and the openings are acute and beyond them. When this phase of our North Star strategy is complete in 2029, the problem will be worse. There will be more jobs available and the supply and demand problem will even be bigger. Our aim is to try to blunt that with our growth strategy and our building into it right now, and we will go through what that means as we move forward. UTI is known as a very industry-aligned, high quality. We like to put pictures in here so you can see what our campuses look like. We have built our reputation in the marketplace and with our employers on high outcomes. That is where people thrive, and that is where people really break down.
That 70% graduation rate, 85% employment rate are our employer satisfaction. Our product is a skilled worker. Our employer satisfaction is around 96%, 97%, which we are very proud of that as a company. This North Star strategy, and take it back to sort of the beginning of where we think. In 2018, we were a $317 million company with basically no EBITDA, $6 million in EBITDA. Transformation efforts started in 2018, where we basically changed the way we market, changed the way our product line is delivered, to come in line with sort of a modern view of how people are looking at the trades. For example, if everybody can find a $20 an hour job when they leave high school, the concept of going into the trades wasn't as popular for people who had already left high school.
At the time, we had about 90 high school reps. Now, this year, we are launching with 180. There are 25,000 high schools, 25 million high school students, and if you want to get your message in front of them, you want to put more people in the schools talking to them about it. We changed the way we market. Marketing for this space used to be very much about there is a group of cool people that like sparks and like cars and are the kind of people that in parking lots on a Saturday have their hoods open and are looking at engines. That is great, that affinity marketing is really great, but we are really about jobs. We have angled very much what we do to really be able to talk to people about this is where the jobs are.
They are high paying, they are consistent, they are vital, and the jobs are really there. We altered our curriculum to go to a hybrid learning model so that working adults could come to work with us. Traditionally, the UTI curriculum was six hours a day, five days a week for a year to a year and a half, which basically meant you weren't going to be able to keep your job during that time frame. There wasn't the flexibility. Now that we have gone to hybrid learning, the blended learning model, students are in our building three hours a day. They do the rest of it online at their leisure. They can keep their jobs, they can keep their family life, and that opened up a whole new opportunity for people to come to UTI. This is the journey that has come from that. Excuse me.
North Star phase II is an organic strategy. In the phase I of this plan, we acquired two other institutions. We acquired MIAT College of Technology. We acquired their two campuses, one in Detroit, one in Houston. We acquired them to acquire seven programs that UTI did not have. UTI didn't have aviation or the skilled trades. What it really only had was auto/diesel, motorcycle, and marine, and a little bit of welding on a couple of campuses. We acquired MIAT in order to have the skilled trades programs that would appeal to a broader number of young people who were looking to move into the trades. Program expansions, which is in one of the carts of phase II, is really taking the fruits of that MIAT acquisition and putting it onto the legacy 12 UTI campuses where they only had auto/diesel.
We talked to somewhere in the neighborhood of 600,000 young people a year who have no intention of going on to college. Frankly, a lot of them just didn't want to fix cars. They were thinking about going into other areas, whether it had to be welders or electricians or HVAC techs or aviation or wind energy, et cetera. By broadening the products that we're able to talk to more students that were looking on going into the industry. Then geographic reach. We've moved from building one campus every three or four years to building now we'll build four campuses a year for the next five years, two on the UTI side and two on the Concorde side. This is all in an effort to bring the education closer to where people live, where the people work, and where the jobs are.
Program expansions and new campuses are really at the heart of the phase II of the strategy. This is really meant to show you that there's a lot of greenfield. If you take a look at where our campuses and programs are very much clustered, California, Texas, and Florida, which the demographic proves. As a matter of fact, we've got seven campuses now in Texas. We could have 12 and still not meet the demand of what's going on in Texas. But what this really shows you is there's a lot of greenfield in the United States to try to help solve this problem. Most of what we're doing in terms of campus expansions are in greenfield states. A lot of people have asked us, how do you figure out where you're going to go?
With all that open space, how do you figure out where you're going to go? Well, there are somewhere in the neighborhood of nine or 10 data feeds that go together into a statistical model that we build that look not at where we will be successful, but where we will be successful the fastest. What I mean by that is any city in the United States that has 1 million people could support one UTI campus and likely two Concorde campuses, likely two healthcare campuses. So it isn't about where not to go. It's about where to go first. Population statistics, the partnership potential, return on education forecasts. That gives us basically heat maps of the whole United States that tells us where we think we would grow fastest. Where we've announced campuses are places where the acute need is there as well.
I will tell you that when we finish with this phase of the strategy, both Concorde and UTI will have 25 cities that hit a category of top potential, which means it's an enduring strategy that will move beyond 2029 to continue to move down this path. So phase II, to think about how we get from where we are to where we're going in terms of phase II, you really need to think about three buckets in any given year. One is organic growth. Our projections are in order to achieve aggregate growth rate of 10% over this time period, there are really three buckets. About 2% or 3% of that growth comes out of organic same-store growth, so more butts in seats in programs that we're already running. About 2% or 3% of that growth comes from price. We take about 2% or 3% price increase every year.
That's about 5% of getting yourself to the 10% mark. The other 5% comes from the new campuses and new programs that we're talking about. There's not a lot of building blocks, not a lot of SKUs to look at it. It's really can they generate same-store growth and take 3% in price, and will the new programs and campuses deliver where we are? That's really the phases of it. We can talk about all those as we finish here. Capital allocation is important. In 2025, when we began the strategy, we were at $126 million in EBITDA. You'll see that we're going to be at about $100 million in EBITDA this year.
We've telegraphed for the last five years that there is going to be a place where we're going to be doing significant strategic growth in order to generate the tail in 2028 and 2029 off of the campuses that we're putting into place. We'll spend about $110 million- $120 million a year in capital to build campuses. By the way, in the deck, there are pro formas for each campus type, so you can really do the math yourself. It costs about $25 million- $26 million to build a comprehensive UTI campus. It gets to full run rate by year two or year three and has a payback period of five years. That's all laid out in it. About 1,500 students in the campus. Healthcare campuses are about $10 million to build. If you think about it, there's not as much to build inside of a healthcare campus.
It's rolling in a lot of equipment in medical office space versus building out equipment in industrial space. About $110 million- $120 million a year in capital spent to build the campuses and launch the new programs. Then there's about $45 million- $50 million in launch operating expenses, and we call them launch operating expenses because they're basically pre-opening. One of the uniquenesses of this market is in order to get accredited and approved to start taking financial aid from students, you have to have your entire staff in place before you open your campus. They want to see the credentials of every professor, every teacher, and every person on the campus. If you're teaching EV, which is at the end of the curriculum, students won't get to you for a year. But we have to have you on staff.
We move them around our campus footprint to other places where they can fill in to keep them moving. But it's one of the reasons why you have about $5 million or $6 million in operating expense burn prior to opening a campus. A UTI campus is comprehensive. We'll do about $45 million in revenue, have about 1,500 students in the building at any given time at its run rate, and generate about a 32% contribution margin. A Concorde campus costs about $10 million or $12 million to build. We'll have about 600 or 700 students in the building and generate somewhere right around 29%, 30% contribution margin. Those are the building blocks for what the growth statistics have. Again, these building blocks are repeatable. What we've said is we're going to launch somewhere in the neighborhood of between 10 and 20 programs a year.
That is replicating the programs on existing campuses that are on other programs, and we're going to build, on average, two UTI campuses and two Concorde campuses a year in this timeframe. A lot of people have asked us, with the supply and demand problem the way it is, why don't you go faster? Why don't you build more? Why don't you build six a year or something? It really comes down to maintaining those quality standards, is that if you look around the industry, the people who have fumbled to a place where there was no coming back, it's usually where they're moving too fast, and they let the quality go down. In building two campuses a year on either side, we're still maintaining the 70% graduation rate, 85% employment rate, and over 95% satisfaction of our campus.
If we see in 2028 and 2029 that our execution on doing that is doing well, we may sneak another one in to try to execute it, but it's not one of those things where you can just plow dozens and dozens of campus out there and believe that you're going to be able to hire quality faculty and train them and keep your educational standards high. So that's how the game is played. Finally, the 2026 guidance, and this is something I'm sure people who have been following our stock probably want to talk about. We actually just lowered our guidance at the end of Q3. We had a very good Q3. We're projecting a hole in Q4 in our high school admissions, specifically, and we can talk about where that came from.
There's also a decided shift in the employment population towards skilled trades, which the characteristics of skilled trades programs are is that they're shorter, they're cheaper, and they're slightly less profitable. In our planning for 2026, although we will have near a 12% increase in our student population this year, which 4x of what the public population in higher education is, the shift to skilled trades actually was not what we had planned for this year to be this acute. We can talk about why it's there. Again, still a very, very strong performance. We'll continue to be on track to the $1.2 billion and the $220 million in EBITDA in 2029. But the fourth quarter is not without a hiccup. That's it. So, that can get us into questions and answers. Sir.
Two-part question. What is your price point relative [inaudible] colleges, first? Then second, the markets that you're going into, how are you determining that that market's not being well-served by the community colleges that exist in that market?
Well, straight answer to your question about community colleges, we are 4x as expensive as a community college. Every community college in the country in these programs is full. Auto/diesel. There are 500 community college auto/diesel programs in the United States serving about half the population that get trained. And then the rest of us serve the rest of the population. Average cost of a community college program is about $6,000 a year to go through it. It takes two years, so you are going to pay about $12,000. The same product at [UTI] or Lincoln Tech or any of the other place is $37,000, $38,000, and you are done in 51 weeks.
People who go to community colleges, and I have been urging the U.S. Department of Education in all my trips to Washington to put dramatically more money into the community colleges than they are doing right now, are going because they are free. And an ASE certification from a community college will get you a job in the market. But the difference between a UTI or a Lincoln Tech or someone like that and them is actually the industry alignment. That is not going to get you a job at a Porsche dealership or a Mercedes-Benz dealership or a BMW dealership or et cetera. It is a different product.
Therefore, most of the students who will go to UTI will take 51 weeks in an auto/diesel program, and then they will take 10 weeks in a Mercedes-Benz program and track right into warranty work in Mercedes-Benz, which pays dramatically more than just getting an ASE certification. So, there is a value proposition to where it is. That industry alignment also brings financial support. We have got 6,000 employer partners at UTI and 7,000 employer partners at Concorde Career Colleges. Of those 6,000 employer partners, the characteristic for being able to recruit our students is you have to be able to offer tuition reimbursement. So if you go to work, for instance, for any of the Penske dealerships, 450 auto dealerships around the country, they will give you a $7,000 sign-on and pay $325 a month to pay off your student loans as long as you work there.
Those kind of deals do not exist in the space. Although it looks like a higher ticket price and that people would blister at that, what we are really trying to portray is if you are successful, and we do not guarantee success and cannot guarantee success of a student in the curriculum, if you go to work for any one of those 6,000 employers, your student loans, et cetera, are not your concern. The risk is not there. Was there a second piece to that question? There was the price point.
[inaudible] to do with how well-served the market you are entering now [inaudible]
This is one of the really odd things is that you heard me say that in meetings with the Secretary of Education and Labor, I have said, "You got to put much more money into the community colleges." The first thing out of their mouths were, "Wait a minute, that is your competition." My competition is parents and apathy. The pie is so big that is unserved that it is impossible to saturate a market. That is why I am boldly saying any market with 1 million humans living in that market is a market that we will do very well in. Is that with only 20%-25% of the jobs getting filled in any given year, the game is not how do I beat Maricopa Community College with my Avondale campus? How do we get the pie bigger? How do we get more people to move into these areas?
Five years ago, fewer than 5% of parents polled would say that they would encourage their kids to go into the trades. Now it is up to 32%. That is great progress, right? That 5% was our biggest challenge. Our biggest challenge was a kid would say, "I do not think I want to go to a four-year school. I think I want to go to a two-year school." Their parents would say, "No, that is not what we are doing. You got to get a four-year education in order to do this." I have a four-year education. You all have four-year, five-year, six-year, eight-year educations. I think that is wonderful for a large population of the people, but not for everybody. Our biggest effort is into convincing parents and the like that this is something they want your kids to go into.
I will give you one other example is we moved into Austin, Texas. Two years into it, we have 1,300 kids in our Austin. I say kids, by the way, they are 20 to 25 year olds, but I am 63, and I have 35-year-old kids myself. There was a family business doing about 500 students in Austin at the time. We went to them to try to save capital and said, "We will buy you, rebrand you, and turn you into a UTI." They said, "Absolutely not." Well, now he is doing 750, and I am doing 1,300 because I am in town. I am really looking forward to more participants because it lowers my acquisition cost. I hope that addressed it. Sir.
In general, I know you have the medical, you have more of the traditional mechanical trades. To leave your program, is there a test? Are people passing tests?
Well, just about every program that we have has a mandatory certification exam that you have to take. We don't administer them.
[inaudible]
Yeah. That being said, if you go, and by the way, you really should go to a UTI or Concorde campus. Our campus presidents love to tour investors or people interested in investing, and if you want to do that, you can find us to be able to do it. There are kiosks on our campuses where you can take the ASE certification exam. It's not our kiosk. We do provide entrees for people to take their exams.
For pretty much with few exceptions, almost every one of the courses, it's a third-party external—
Yeah.
—trade group or—
Yeah.
—that's making the decision as to—
Yeah. The [Global Wind Organisation] certification means something to getting a job in wind energy.
[inaudible] or not?
Yep. 70% graduation rate.
[inaudible] people drop out or because they do not pass the test?
Oh, for us?
Yeah.
No. The reason it is 70% is UTI has a start every three weeks. 17 three-week courses is the auto curriculum, 51 weeks. 75% of the students who are going to drop out, drop out within the first three cycles, nine weeks, and they drop out for various reasons. One, I thought I could afford this, but I got to work. Number two, this is dramatically harder than I thought it was going to be. Dramatically harder. I thought it was like fixing lawnmower engines and stuff like that, but an automobile is a server. We have introduction to computer science. We have strength and materials. We have engineering science courses. Online academic courses are half of the curriculum, and then the rest of the curriculum is hands-on.
They're not going to let you stick your hands inside of a car until you figured out how all the circuitry works and how the computers work on it, right? That is a big shock. But once we hit that nine-week mark, our retention rate's like 95%.
People generally end up passing the test.
Yes.
Then one other—
We do not promise that. Again, U.S. Department of Education makes me say these things to you. I cannot promise you will pass the test. But we have a very high pass rate on everything that we do, FAA tests, ASE, et cetera.
One different question is, you are talking about acquisition costs obviously are much higher than probably for community colleges. What portion of your revenue goes to marketing?
About 14%.
[inaudible]
Yeah. On average, it costs me about $8,000 to acquire a student.
And that's pretty consistent?
Yeah. In some of the areas in healthcare, it's a little lower. Medical assisting, et cetera, where the flow is going towards it. Dental is another one where the acquisition cost is very low because the supply and demand is just completely out of control. I have waiting lists, three cycles. Community college waiting list for dental hygienist is three years to get into a program. They come to me because they can't get into the cheaper program, and we have waiting lists as well. Sir.
I'm a big believer in what you're doing. But do you get pushback from some of these educational companies that controlled over the decades [inaudible]
Are you talking about the other players in the market?
[inaudible]
Yeah.
[inaudible]
Yeah, the regulatory environment did a real number of pushing the bad actors out during the Obama administration. I think based on the regulatory environment and the way it's set up, it's very difficult to be a bad actor these days in the things you can and can't do. UTI thrived during that whole period, and people say, "Well, listen, I know you guys are doing well during the Trump administration, but what happens if it goes the other way?" Our first phase of North Star growing from $300 million- $800 million was during the Biden administration. We operated quite well because of our outcomes, and the statistics are along there.
Are federally funded loan programs available?
Yep. We are like every other community college or university, all accredited. Students pay for our education. Most students start with Pell Grants, which is free money. About 75%-80% of our students are qualified for Pell Grants, are fully Pell Grant eligible. For an auto, that's about $13,000. Then federally backed loans, Stafford Loans, parent loans, it's about $20,000-$25,000. There's usually a little bit of gap that we have to work with them on things like private loans or retail installment agreements and things like that, but it's a very small piece of it.
What's generally the overall cost of tuition?
Well, our overall revenue on the UTI side is about $9,000 per quarter per student. Depending on the length of the course, it's pretty close to that. The skilled trades were a little cheaper, but we're moving on that. It's pretty much multiply the students by $9,000 per, and you've got it. On the healthcare side, there are two different kinds of things. The clinical courses like radiology tech, surgical tech, et cetera, they behave like the UTI side, so they're around $9,000 a quarter as well. The medical assisting, medical records, the non-clinical areas, they're around $6,000. Welding is three quarters. It's nine months, nine, three, $27,000. It's pretty straight. Other questions? We have a minute and 35 seconds, and then they're going to kick. Yes, sir.
Are you seeing college graduates [inaudible] years school couldn't get a job?
As much as The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times and everybody wants to write the stories about the throngs of people who graduated from college that are moving themselves into the trades, it is going to take longer than that to move the culture. Right? Yes. I was on CNBC a few weeks ago, and the guy before me said 500,000 people who just graduated are not going to find a job. Then he went on to say that somewhere in the neighborhood of 600,000 trade jobs were just created in the last quarter, too. Drawing a line between those, not so easy. Right? It has taken since the 1980s to build up the culture that you do not want to send your kid to a trade school. It is not going to go overnight. But we are seeing more kids who took their SATs.
We do not ask them if they were going to go to college. Everyone says they were going to go to college, right? But we ask them if they took their SATs. And most of our students five years ago did not. It is growing, the number of people who did, which means they were thinking about it. Any other? Last question. 19 seconds.
So your [inaudible] what are you [inaudible] address that?
What is it there for?
[inaudible]
Oh, yeah. Here's what happened. 40% of UTI's enrollments come right out of high school. We have 162 high school reps that recruit on the high schools and bring in about 8,000 kids into the auto/diesel program at UTI. At five of our 17 campuses, we had an inordinate amount of turnover of those reps. Just those five campuses are accounting for about 1,000 fewer high school students coming into those five campuses in auto/diesel. That's about 70% of the whole. The reason we didn't know about it until July is because students don't go through financial aid until the summer. We had all the contracts, all that we needed to come in here.
But in July, we noticed there weren't enough kids going through financial aid. We've rectified that. We're starting with 181 reps on our campuses this fall. We've changed our management of that channel and our training program so that we aren't going to have that kind of. It was a very odd one-off of losing people. The other 30% was associated with this mix shift to the skilled trades, shorter, cheaper. We budgeted for more people to go into auto/diesel than did, and more people chose the skilled trades, the shorter, cheaper courses. What do you do about that? You got to work on your pricing in there. Also, we're working very quickly to create more capacity in the skilled trades. Those are selling out very quickly.
We've allocated another $10 million in capital next year to quickly expand our skilled trades programs on our legacy campuses. Those are the things that blunt that piece. All right. Thank you.