Coursera - Q2 2023
July 27, 2023
Transcript
Operator (participant)
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by, and welcome to Coursera's Second Quarter 2023 Earnings Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode, and please be advised that this call is being recorded. After the speaker's prepared remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, please press star followed by the number 1 on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, again, press star one. I'd like to turn the call over to Cam Carey, Head of Investor Relations. Mr. Carey, you may begin.
Cam Carey (Head of Investor Relations)
Hi, everyone, and thank you for joining our Q2 Earnings Conference Call. With me today is Jeff Maggioncalda, Coursera's Chief Executive Officer, and Ken Hahn, our Chief Financial Officer. Following their prepared remarks, we will open the call for questions. Our press release, including financial tables, was issued after market close and is posted on our investor relations website, located at investor.coursera.com, where this call is being simultaneously webcast and where versions of our prepared remarks and supplemental slides are available. During this call, we will present both GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures. A reconciliation of non-GAAP measures, which are the most directly comparable GAAP measure, can be found in today's press release and supplemental presentation, which are distributed and available to the public through our investor relations website. Please note, all growth percentages refer to year-over-year change unless otherwise specified.
Additionally, all statements made during this call relating to future results and events are forward-looking statements based on current expectations and beliefs. These forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to, statements regarding the potential impacts of trends affecting our industry and uncertainties in the current economic and educational environment, our ecosystem, platform, content, and partner relationships, our anticipated plans and the anticipated advantages and benefits thereof, our strategy and priorities, our share repurchase program and capital and cash allocation, and our business model, mission, opportunities, outlook, and future intentions. Actual results and events could differ materially from projections due to a number of risks and uncertainties discussed in our press release, SEC filings, and supplemental materials. These forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance or plans, and investors should not place undue reliance on them. We assume no obligation to update our forward-looking statements.
With that, I'd like to turn it over to Jeff.
Jeff Maggioncalda (CEO)
Thanks, Cam. Good afternoon, everyone. We appreciate you joining us today. I'm pleased to share that Coursera had a strong second quarter, with momentum in several key growth initiatives that provide us with confidence as we enter the second half of the year. We grew revenue 23% over the prior year. We delivered double-digit growth in each of our segments. We welcomed 5.7 million new learners to our platform, and today, we're raising our outlook on revenue and Adjusted EBITDA for the year. The macro environment remains dynamic, but one thing that has not changed is our ability to navigate given our diversified platform. Coursera's prominence as a global destination for individuals looking to start, switch, or advance their careers continues to grow. Learners are coming to Coursera from around the world, seeing the skills, branded credentials, and pathways that can transform their lives.
In particular, we continue to see strong demand for our entry-level professional certificates, a strategic asset that has been created in collaboration with the world's best-known companies. Despite challenges in the corporate spending environment, institutions are looking to provide their employees, citizens, and students with job-relevant skills and training that make them more relevant in a rapidly changing workforce. We believe the long-term structural trends driving our business are proving sustainable. For today's call, I discuss our latest views on these trends: digital transformation, skills development, and the transformation of higher education. I'd like to share several key findings from a recent World Economic Forum report as well. In June, the World Economic Forum, or WEF, published the latest edition of their Future of Jobs Report. The report brings together the perspectives of more than 800 companies employing more than 11 million individuals across 45 global economies.
The analysis focuses on the impact of current labor market disruptions and reveals the outlook for technology adoption, jobs, and skills over the next five years. Coursera was a key data contributor alongside companies like Indeed and LinkedIn, due to the scale of our global learner base and skilling data. Let's start with our first trend, digital transformation. The forces of technology, globalization, and automation have been accelerating the transformation of every institution in our society. Compared to the historical adoption of general-purpose technologies, it's clear that what we're experiencing now is an unprecedented rate of change. For example, it took decades for innovations like the telephone, electricity, and the automobile to reach 100 million global users. Today, we're witnessing this time horizon compress dramatically, from several years with the internet and mobile computing to a matter of just months with ChatGPT.
We believe that AI will be a general-purpose technology, representing the next major technological shift that will profoundly change how we live, learn, and work. Not surprisingly, the WEF report reinforces technology adoption as a key driver of business transformation, it also highlights an increased urgency amongst companies looking to address the gap between worker skills and the future needs of their businesses. This leads me to the second major trend, skills development. Several key findings in the report express the skilling challenges faced by companies and governments globally. Employers estimate that 44% of worker skills will be disrupted over the next 5 years. 6 in 10 workers will require training before 2027. The skill sets that companies see increasing in importance the fastest are not always reflected in corporate upskilling strategies or in the skills that individual learners commonly associate with in-demand careers.
For example, cognitive skills like analytical thinking and creative thinking, as well as leadership and social influence, are seen as equally important as technical skills in AI and big data. I hear these challenges directly from our customers. Over the past 9 months, I visited more than 45 cities in more than 25 countries, hearing from business leaders, government officials, and campus presidents. As institutions struggle to navigate change and disruption and take advantage of the opportunities that they create, there's a greater emphasis on building organizational agility into the existing and future workforce. It requires a combination of technical and human skills in order to harness the capabilities of these new technologies. This leads me to the third trend driving our business, the transformation of higher education. We believe the future of education is the collaboration between universities and industry.
Critical thinking, coaching, and community are all hallmarks of the university experience that higher education institutions do exceptionally well. At the pace of digital transformation, many universities and colleges lack a connection to industry, the fast-changing skills landscape, and evolving employer demands. Adapting to this accelerated pace of change will require institutional collaboration between academic institutions, industry leaders, and government to meet the needs and pace of this new digital world. The WEF's findings report that 45% of businesses see funding for skills as an effective intervention available to governments seeking to connect talent to employment. This ranks ahead of traditional methods like flexibility on hiring and firing practices, tax and other incentives, and changes to immigration laws. Last quarter, we highlighted our partnership with the Republic of Kazakhstan, where the Ministry of Higher Education and Science is using Coursera to uplevel its public higher education system.
I wanted to provide an update on the speed and scale of what national implementation can drive when these institutions are working together. Since launching in March, 20,000 students and faculty have signed up, spending nearly 100,000 hours learning, amassing 40,000 enrollments, and completing more than 25,000 courses. The most popular courses include a combination of technical and human skills, like programming and physics, as well as entrepreneurship, leadership, and communication. This is the promise of Coursera's three-sided platform, and examples like these provide a powerful blueprint for the types of innovation that will be required to keep pace with our rapidly changing world. We are able to pursue partnerships like these because of our strategic assets and platform advantages, which include our leading educator partners, who've created a broad catalog of trusted and branded content and credentials.
Our global reach to individuals and institutions, which include businesses, governments, and campuses, as well as our data technology and AI advancements that we leverage across our platform. Now, let's cover our recent progress for each. First, our educator partners. We believe that in a world where machines are increasingly capable of producing content at scale, trusted institutions will play a valuable role in education as learners look for quality and accuracy. Because of our global ecosystem and our platform, we're able to build differentiated value around our catalog with advancements like career pathways using Coursera Hiring Solutions, American Council on Education or ACE credit recommendations, technology solutions like hands-on projects, ID verification, and academic integrity, and performance-based admissions from open content to college degrees.
Our catalog is created by a combination of more than 300 trusted university and industry experts, which are attracted to Coursera for many reasons, including our mission, our global distribution to individuals and institutions, and our record of being a trusted steward of the world's best brands. These partners continue to rapidly expand our catalog, I'd like to start with recent updates on our growing selection of entry-level professional certificates. In Q2, we introduced 11 new entry-level professional certificates from new and existing partners. Roles from new partners include Retail Customer Service from CVS Health, Call Center Customer Service, also from CVS Health, Network Engineering from Akamai, Customer Consulting and Support, also from Akamai, Human Resource Associate from HR Certification Institute, Cybersecurity Analyst from Microsoft, and Power BI Data Analyst, also from Microsoft.
We also launched additional job roles from two of our earliest and most successful partners, including Cybersecurity from Google, as well as Project Manager, IT Project Manager, and Frontend Developer, all from IBM. The entry-level professional certificates on Coursera are able to be leveraged across every segment of our platform. They forge new pathways to well-paying digital jobs in our consumer segment. They allow a student to begin and earn credit towards a college degree in our degree segment, they enable governments and campuses to upgrade entire systems of higher education in our enterprise segment. Now, let's discuss degrees. Last quarter, we announced 10 new programs, many of which take full advantage of the pathway capabilities of Coursera to make these degrees accessible and well-suited for working adults....
Several of these pathway degrees, including programs from the University of Colorado Boulder, Illinois Tech, and Ball State, will welcome their first student cohorts starting this fall. In Q2, we announced two new degree programs in artificial intelligence from international universities, including a bachelor's program from the Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati, a top-tier engineering school in India, as well as a master's program from Universidad de los Andes in Colombia. Finally, in addition to degrees in artificial intelligence, our leading educator partners have been focused on creating new projects, courses, and specializations to meet the demand for generative AI learning content. This includes both industry and university partners like DeepLearning.AI, Google Cloud, and Vanderbilt University. Our new content supplements hundreds of existing courses in skills that help equip learners to work with AI more broadly, like machine learning, linear algebra, Python, and more.
That's an update on our catalog and educator partners. Now, let's move to our second major advantage, the global reach of our platform. In Q2, we added 5.7 million new registered learners, growing our global learner base to 129 million by the end of June. Learner growth continued to be broad-based, with double-digit % increases across all regions. We also grew the number of paid enterprise customers to nearly 1,300, with recent additions driven by momentum in our campus and government verticals. Finally, I'd like to provide some updates on our third advantage, which is the ongoing product innovation across our platform, and I'd like to start with our efforts in generative AI. At Coursera Conference in April, we unveiled Coursera Coach. Coach is a virtual learning partner, powered by generative AI and grounded in our expert content.
It is designed to allow learners to ask questions and receive personalized explanations and answers, get personalized evaluations and feedbacks on their submissions, receive context-relevant examples and practice questions, and discover quick video lecture summaries and resources to better understand a specific concept. We launched a beta version of Coach to millions of Coursera Plus subscribers during the quarter and continue to be excited about the early feedback from these technologies when paired with the trusted, authoritative content from our partners on Coursera. Additionally, we introduced a Coursera ChatGPT plugin for enhanced personalization and discovery across the Coursera catalog. Like an academic counselor, the ChatGPT plugin allows learners using GPT-4 to identify recommended content and credentials based on the subject or career field the learner says they're interested in exploring. It's 1 example of the initiatives we're working on related to generative AI and reimagining the personalized discovery experience.
Finally, we continue to make progress on our machine learning translation initiative. As a reminder, our strategy is to use technology to dramatically reduce the time and cost of producing high-quality, trusted content at scale, including localization. In Q2, we delivered the first milestone with subtitle translation for 2,000 courses in 7 different languages. In the coming quarter, we will begin to roll out the full course translations to learners around the world. We believe that high-quality education from the world's leading experts and brands should be accessible to learners anywhere in the world, no matter what language they speak. To wrap up my opening remarks, let me re-remind you of several key priorities that we are focused on in the years ahead. First, we are broadening our catalog of entry-level professional certificates, including new partners, roles, languages, and credit recommendations to support degree pathways.
Second, we're sourcing and launching new degree programs, especially those tailored to meet the unique needs of working adults, including flexibility, affordability, and clear pathways so that our open content and industry micro-credentials can count as credit towards college degrees. Third, we're focused on growing our enterprise segment across business, government, and campus customers seeking to address their needs in this fast-changing environment. We're deepening our advantages while driving more scale and leverage over time, including the opportunity to use AI technologies for the benefit of our learners, educators, and customers. Now I'd like to turn it over to Ken. Ken, please go ahead.
Ken Hahn (CFO)
Thanks, Jeff, and good afternoon, everyone. Our strong second quarter results demonstrate the differentiated value of our branded job-relevant credentials to millions of learners around the world. As a growth company, we continue to benefit from a diversified platform model, including our ability to deliver high-quality learning through multiple channels. That model is also helping us produce financial leverage while we grow, with the three segments providing each other competitive assets and operational leverage. In Q2, we generated total revenue of $153.7 million, which was up 23% from a year ago. Growth was driven by double-digit increases across all three of our segments, with particular strength in consumer. Please note that for the remainder of the call, as I review our business performance and outlook, I'll discuss our non-GAAP financial measures, unless otherwise noted.
Additionally, I'd like to remind you that our results, particularly the year-over-year comparisons in gross profit and operating expenses, continue to reflect the shift in income statement line items associated with the beginning-of-year contract extension with our largest industry partner, which we have discussed thoroughly in our prior two earnings calls. Cutting through that shift in P&L geography year-over-year, we are driving strong bottom line EBITDA performance. Cost of revenue increased by 11 points as a percentage of revenue, while total OpEx decreased 22 points compared to year-ago results. As we'll discuss in a minute, we are raising our 2023 annual EBITDA margin target. For the second quarter, gross profit was $81.9 million, slightly up on a dollar basis from a year ago, and a 53% gross margin, which was down 11 points from the prior year.
Total operating expense was $88.8 million, or 58% of revenue, down 22 points from 80% in the prior year. Looking at the P&L line item components of OpEx, sales and marketing expense represented 29% of total revenue, down 9 points from 38%. Research and development expense was 18% of revenue, down 8 points from 26%. General and administrative expense was 11% of revenue, down 5 points from 16%. Net loss was approximately $300,000, or 0.2% of revenue, and Adjusted EBITDA was a loss of $2.9 million, or 1.9% of revenue.
Our Adjusted EBITDA performance was better than anticipated due to a combination of factors, including overall revenue strength, operating expense discipline, and a one-time $2.3 million benefit associated with a contract amendment with an educator partner. We have a track record of delivering growth with leverage, including each of the past five years, and I'm pleased with our ability to invest and execute on multiple growth initiatives while also demonstrating scale and leverage in our operating model. Turning to cash performance on the balance sheet. Free cash flow was a use of $11.5 million during the quarter, compared to a use of $3.2 million a year ago. We ended the quarter with approximately $717 million of unrestricted cash, cash equivalents, and marketable securities, with no debt.
With regards to our share repurchase program that we announced last quarter as a direct reflection of our confidence in our business and the value we place on shareholder equity, I'm happy to report that during the second quarter, we bought back 4.5 million shares, an average price of $12.06 per share, for a total repurchase of $54.5 million, including commissions. The program, a $95 million authorization amount, was designed to reduce the impact of dilution from one-time talent grants issued in the prior year. Importantly, our views on capital allocation remain unchanged. In the context of our belief that we have the right assets and market position to win in our early large growth markets, our capital management focuses on both investments in organic growth and the resilience and strategic optionality provided by a strong balance sheet.
We believe our cash, which we hold dear, is a considerable asset that will enable us to execute on our long-term vision for the benefit of our shareholders. Next, let's discuss in more detail the financial results and progress in each of our segments. Consumer revenue was $87 million, up 25% from the prior year on strong demand for our entry-level industry partner professional certificates. As Jeff discussed, we introduced 11 new certificates this quarter, including new job categories from new partners, as well as additional titles from several of our most successful industry brands. We believe we are seeing the benefits of our strategic focus, which emphasizes job-relevant credentials created by world-class brands. It distinguishes our learning platform, the value of our offerings to learners, and ultimately, our consumer performance.
It also enhances our top-of-funnel traffic, with 5.7 million new registered learners coming to Coursera in Q2. Segment gross profit was $45.1 million, or 52% of consumer revenue, compared to 73% a year ago, reflecting the impact of the industry partner contract extension mentioned previously. Moving to enterprise. Enterprise revenue was $54.2 million, up 24% from a year ago on continued growth in our business, government, and campus verticals. Segment gross profit was $38.7 million, or 71% of enterprise revenue, which was slightly higher than expected due to a one-time benefit of a contract amendment with one of our educator partners, which had the effect of increasing our enterprise segment margin by 4 percentage points for the quarter.
The total number of paid enterprise customers increased to 1,291, up 35% from a year ago, and our net retention rate for paid enterprise customers was 97%, with ongoing pressure in our Coursera for Business vertical during the quarter. We continue to see corporate learning customers exercise caution in their spending priorities as they navigate tighter budgets amidst macroeconomic uncertainty. Finally, our degrees segment. Degrees revenue is $12.5 million, up 10% from a year ago on increased student enrollments. The total number of degree students grew 9% from a year ago to 19,068. As a reminder, there's no content cost attributable to the degree segment, so degrees segment gross margin was 100% of revenue.
We remain encouraged by our progress in degrees and the early momentum in programs from partners like the University of Colorado Boulder, that leverage our platform's unique capabilities and scale. In our discussions with current and prospective universities, it is clear a more accessible, affordable, and relevant model of education is required for college degrees. We look forward to welcoming the first student cohorts for several of these newly sourced, pathway-focused programs starting this fall. Now, onto our financial outlook. For Q3, we're expecting revenue to be in the range of $156 million-$160 million, and an Adjusted EBITDA loss in the range of $9 million-$14 million. For full year 2023, we are increasing our outlook for both revenue and Adjusted EBITDA.
We now anticipate revenue to be in the range of $617 million-$623 million, representing approximately 18% growth at the midpoint of the range. Our full-year revenue outlook has increased by $20 million since the start of the year and $15 million since the prior quarter, driven by our increased confidence in the durable demand we continue to see in our consumer segment. For Adjusted EBITDA, we're now expecting a loss of $19 million-$24 million, or -3.5% Adjusted EBITDA margin at the midpoint of the revenue and EBITDA guidance ranges. As you know, our consistent practice, both pre-public and as a public company, is to set an annual EBITDA margin target at the beginning of the year and work within that plan to maximize growth based on the trajectory of the business.
This is a notable change for us, driven by both top-line performance and operating efficiency, for a revised guidance improvement of 150 basis points in full-year Adjusted EBITDA margin. Furthermore, in addition to a higher profitability target for the year, I want to reiterate the comments we made at our Investor Day in March of this year. We expect to be EBITDA breakeven in the fourth quarter of this year and to be EBITDA positive for full year 2024. To summarize, we are operating a diversified growth company with multiple levers across our three-sided platform. We are delivering this growth with increased scale and leverage, and we've built a strong financial foundation that will afford us the resilience and strategic flexibility to lead our large and early markets. I'll now turn the call back to Jeff for closing comments.
Jeff Maggioncalda (CEO)
Thanks, Ken. Our mission is deeply rooted in our business, but this is also the case for many of our customers. To wrap up today's remarks, I'd like to share an example of an exciting partnership with one of our largest Coursera for Business customers. BNP Paribas Cardif, a leading insurance and financial services company, has had a relationship with Coursera since 2019. In June, we expanded our partnership with a multi-year agreement to provide access to online education to all BNP Paribas Cardif employees, as well as over 5 million customers across Latin America. Their insurance policies now include digital education services. BNP Paribas Cardif uses Coursera as a value enhancement for their customers, where insurance not only protects families, but also provides the necessary skills and credentials to help them access new job opportunities, increase their earning potential.
It is another example of how businesses are seeing access to quality education as a key strategy to enhance their offerings and their global brands. The Coursera ecosystem, and our reputation as a trusted steward of their brands, is playing an increasingly prominent role to address the rapidly changing needs of our global economies as employers, as educators, and as enablers of the future workforce. In collaboration with our customers, we are focused on fulfilling our mission so that talent and opportunity can rise from anywhere in the world. Now, let's open the call for questions. Thank you.
Operator (participant)
At this time, if you would like to ask a question, please press star followed by 1 on your telephone keypad. We'll now take our first question from the line of Josh Baer with Morgan Stanley. Your line is open.
Speaker 4
Great, thanks for the question. Was hoping you could really hone in on the strength that you're seeing in consumer in the quarter, and then also in your commentary for the rest of the year. Is it, you know, more driven by new professional certificates launched? Any, any sense for, like, a same-store sales type of look at enrollments for some of the existing certificates? Also wondering if you're able to quantify, in any way, the contribution from AI-related courses and programs?
Jeff Maggioncalda (CEO)
Yeah. Hey, Josh, this is Jeff. It's, it's a number of things on the consumer side, and broadly, I think, in three categories. One is, you know, quantity of new content that came on from, from new partners like Microsoft. They put out their first professional certificates on Coursera, for entry-level jobs in Q2. Also certificates like the cybersecurity analyst certificate from Google that also came in, in Q2. New content is, is definitely a, a part of that. To your point around same-store sales, we do see good growth from existing titles as well. It's not just new content, it's also apparently higher demand for existing content. There's another piece, too, which is effectiveness of paid marketing.
We don't do a ton of paid marketing, but we just seem to see a better return in this-- I think it's in this environment with this product offering, people seem pretty interested in this stuff. I think it's the brands, I think it's the job orientation, I think it's the credentials, I think it's the credit pathways toward degrees, like a plurality of things about these certificates.... including the flexibility, affordability, I mean, it's just a, a lot of the features that we've been building over the last, whatever, 8 years, are resonating in this environment. Then I think finally, to, to that point, the sort of the environment, people often say that college education is countercyclical. I think it might be the case that this as well.
Whether or not countercyclicality means for a college degree, it usually you see more enrollments in college degrees when unemployment goes up. We're not seeing a lot of higher unemployment right now. I do think the opportunity, new job opportunities is going up, and so the way to get into those new opportunities, if you're in a career where you don't have the skills and credentials to do that, I think these professional certificates are just kind of resonating as a pathway to a new career opportunity that otherwise I just couldn't have, I couldn't have had. I, I think it's kind of a, a bunch of different factors, but, but across the board, it's feeling pretty positive. Ken, anything that you'd say about the economics of these things or, or, or how you see it playing out in the future?
Ken Hahn (CFO)
Yeah, I, nothing incremental to add. They look like the others, and the model is pretty well set. It's, it's all about growth in this environment, as you said.
Speaker 4
Great. That was a great summary. If I, if I could sneak in one more: just thinking about your balance sheet, you know, the, it's, it's very strong. I was hoping you could review your M&A philosophy and your strategy, what type of assets, you know, could potentially fit into your platform. Thanks.
Ken Hahn (CFO)
Sure. Historically, Josh, we've had limited M&A activity. We do believe that the opportunity in front of us, you know, as with the right assets and the right markets, and these are huge markets, as, as I know you agree, having that dry powder for strategic flexibility is pretty important. On, on the front end, you know, we've continued to look, assets have been expensive, as people are aware, with the previous environment. Things are coming down. We remain active. We're doing some investments today as a result of some various partnerships within that corporate development group, and we do continue to look at deals. We haven't found anything at the right price for the right asset. In philosophically, we looked at things... We're not looking to bolt on more revenue.
I think as you see us announce deals in the future, I'd expect things that add to the product portfolio, where we actually get leverage on the top line in growth, as, as opposed to just buying revenue.
Jeff Maggioncalda (CEO)
Yeah.
Ken Hahn (CFO)
Philosophically, that's not how we-
Jeff Maggioncalda (CEO)
What I would add to that, Josh, is sometimes talent comes along, and you buy an entity because there's really good talent associated with it. We've done that in the past. We can continue to do that now. Talent is, is extremely valuable. In elements of job placement, where, you know, we do spend a lot of time on the learning. We just launched Coursera Hiring Solutions. We are building that out. I like the way that's going. We might be able to accelerate that with certain assets in-- that have capabilities in job placement. I don't think that we buy content, but we might do something in content engine.
It's not so much the current catalog of content, but if there's a way of bringing content on that is novel and complementary to the way that our content engine works, I think that would be great. On AI, you know, people are talking about M&A and AI. Frankly, we would probably do it more for the talent than the actual technology because these large language models are moving very quickly. We see early-stage companies, whole products get subsumed into the capabilities of a new base language model, so we're, we're kind of holding back on that a little bit. Broadly speaking, technology that makes the content better or the learning experience better is always great, whether that's ID verification, academic integrity, better assessment design, hands-on projects.
You know, we bought a company a few years ago called Rhyme that was a virtual machine technology that enabled hands-on projects using desktop software. It was a technology that supported an enhanced learning experience and enhanced content because of the technology. We're interested in that kind of stuff.
Speaker 4
Great. Thank you very much.
Jeff Maggioncalda (CEO)
Sure.
Operator (participant)
Our next question comes from the line of Tom Singlehurst with Citi. Your line is open.
Speaker 5
Thanks for taking the question. Good evening, congratulations on the results. A couple of questions. Maybe starting with that theme of countercyclicality, I mean, obviously, a number of things going on in consumer, but that's obviously a help. On enterprise, I think it's still really robust in terms of year-over-year, and you've obviously got different parts of it, but I, I'm interested in your take on the continued sort of cyclical pressures on consumer business in particular. I, I think earlier in the year, you sort of targeted 20%-25% growth. Just checking in that you're still happy with that for the... Then I'll follow up after that.
Jeff Maggioncalda (CEO)
Yeah, Tom, I think I caught that. When it comes to cyclicality and countercyclicality, we, we touched on it a little bit with consumer, but as you mentioned in enterprise, when we talk about a diversified revenue model, part of that also is diversified across the enterprise segment. I mean, businesses are different from campuses, are different from governments, and they all have different exposures to economic cycles. We see the greatest, you know, procyclicality in Coursera for Business, mostly in Europe and North America, frankly, where L&D budgets and even teams are being reduced. We don't really see that so much in universities and governments.
You know, blended into that enterprise segment are some, are some differences where we actually see some offsetting of the cyclicality of Coursera for Business with generally, I would say, countercyclicality, or at least neutral, on campuses and governments. As those verticals become a bit bigger, we think it could dampen the exposure to economic cycles of the enterprise segment. That's kind of my thinking on that, Ken. I don't know if you'd add anything to that.
Nope, that's spot on. Thanks.
Speaker 5
A follow-up, is on pricing. I'm just interested whether you have-- well, you clearly do have pricing power, but whether you're exploiting pricing power across particularly the consumer side of the business?
Jeff Maggioncalda (CEO)
Yeah. I would say not, I'd say not really. I mean, there, there's sort of pricing power, if you will, against the learner, which basically requires you to be a different solution than they can get anywhere else. There's a lot of content out there on the internet. We don't think that we are, like, the only game in town. We do think that this career academy with all these professional certificates is pretty unique, but frankly, we're still very much in growth mode. We're, we're not sort of trying to, to flex anything on pricing at this point. When it comes to sort of economic, sharing between us and our partners, we like our arrangements right now. We wanna make sure our partners are super motivated to create more content and credentials.
These are great brands, so we're also not really flexing anything there. We think there might be some opportunities in international markets, not so much on pricing, but on payments and currency, as kind of payment methods and currency, where we think there's still opportunity that we, we believe that we can unlock, probably mostly on the consumer side.
Speaker 5
Okay, great. Thank you.
Jeff Maggioncalda (CEO)
Yeah. Thanks, Tom.
Operator (participant)
Our next question comes from the line of Rishi Jaluria with RBC Capital Markets. Your line is open.
Speaker 6
Hey, this is Rich Poland on for Rishi. Thanks for taking my question. It's great to see the momentum with the Republic of Kazakhstan partnership, as well as the expanded partnership with BNP. Just curious, how should we think about the mechanics of these types of deals and how those new learners get monetized? Are there any other similar partnerships to call out or that you'd highlight here? Thanks.
Jeff Maggioncalda (CEO)
Yeah. Hey, Rishi, this is Jeff. The way that I would categorize this generally, or at least the way I think about it, and we think about it from a modeling perspective, is that, you know, fundamentally in the enterprise segment, we're selling seat licenses. So the question is, well, how. You know, who buys a seat license and for whom? What we're seeing is what I think are the sort of system-wide deals, as with the Republic of Kazakhstan and many other systems, including state Department of Labor workforce development programs, and even university systems, in the United States and other places. Oftentimes, you'll find one institution with an intention to uplevel the educational capabilities of a, of a system of educators.
It could be, you know, a school system, in one country or a school system within a state or a municipality. The, the, the sort of the, the head institution will buy a certain number of licenses and almost do pilot testing with a number of member institutions, if you will. What we are really thinking about here is sort of an NRR sort of approach.
If, if you can get in with someone who can prove out the model, demonstrate use cases on a smaller buy, but to many other institutions, where there's a lot more availability for upsell of licenses, because they're not buying a license for every single person, you know, we think that could be a really leveraged sales model, where it takes a bit more time to win a government, but once you do, you get access to lots and lots of sub-institutions and with upsell opportunities. That's kinda how we think about it. It's a little bit longer sales cycle. We think it's more defensible, and we think it should have positive effects on our NRR over time.
Speaker 6
Thank you. That's very helpful. Then, just to follow up on that, is just, you've highlighted good momentum in that Campus and Government, side of the enterprise business. Just trying to think about, like, is this the kind of situation where maybe those businesses become large enough in, you know, the next economic cycle to, to make a meaningful difference to offset some of the headwinds you're seeing in the corporate side? Just how should we think about the, not only the, the kind of, I guess, near-term dynamics within the enterprise business, but then also just how you think about, like, the TAM, across, like, the three sub-verticals?
Jeff Maggioncalda (CEO)
Great question, and I think it is not unreasonable to expect that in some future time, that's not way out there, they will be big enough, they being Coursera for Campus and Coursera for Government, will be big enough to offset some of the procyclicality of Coursera for Business. I, I will generally say, you know, those two are not more than, together, are not more than Coursera for Business, but they're more than, you know, 25%. I mean, it's, it's, it's becoming, it's becoming a real thing. So it's, it's definitely part of our strategy, is to say: How can you take the same content and credentials, the same technology platform, and all the same product, marketing, sales, et cetera, underneath it, and get leverage across a, a broader TAM? Will those TAMs be bigger than Coursera for Business? I don't know.
It's, it's conceivable. I mean, when you think about all of government workforce development programs, they can be pretty big. The campuses obviously spend a lot of money. I mean, it's, it's basically a $2 trillion market in terms of tuition for all degree-granting institutions in the world. Generally speaking, they're about break even. They spend... I mean, universities worldwide, they spend, you know, well over $1 trillion, clearly, and so that, that could be a, a meaningful TAM, we think.
Speaker 6
Wonderful. Extremely helpful. Thank you.
Jeff Maggioncalda (CEO)
Sure.
Operator (participant)
Our next question comes from the line of Eric Sheridan with Goldman Sachs. Your line is open.
Speaker 7
Thank you so much for taking the question. Maybe coming back to the topic on the enterprise, you know, given the corporate spending environment you mentioned earlier, you know, how would you characterize your visibility into whether you want to think about it in terms of the acquisition funnel or the rate of customer growth or, or NRR going forward, and trying to marry mixtures of sort of visibility into trends versus investing behind the growth you want to achieve in the long term, and how we should possibly think about that as an exit velocity for this year? Thanks so much.
Jeff Maggioncalda (CEO)
Thanks, Eric. Let me I'll give you the very high level, how we think about it. Maybe Ken, you can take the harder part of the question, which is exit velocity, which I usually do to you. Now, clearly, when you look at NRR, you say, all right, you got new bookings, not part of NRR. Well, yeah, bookings of new customers, not part of NRR. You got expansion bookings, and then you got your retention of your existing ARR. You know, we, we don't see the same characteristics among those three, new bookings versus expansion bookings versus retention. You know, the a lot more of the pressure has been in customers who signed bigger deals during COVID, especially in Europe, where budgets were very big.
Companies and government institutions really focused on providing support, including learning support for workers displaced from the office. You know, things aren't in COVID times anymore. The budgets are tighter. The economy is not looking, looking great with, with what's happening there. So there has been more pressure on some of those expansion bookings, as there have, you know, based on the tightening of the, of the budgets across the board. You know, what does that... Yeah, how does that all play into exit velocity? Ken, I'm gonna pump that over to you and just watch your artful answer.
Ken Hahn (CFO)
Yeah, no. Well, I, I think the important thing, and this, this is very much a topic on our minds right now because we're beginning our planning cycle, which is being quite early. As Jeff said, the NRR is the immediate, you know, that's the least laggy, because it affects revenue more quickly, both as it relates to renewals, which is immediate revenue impact, and, and expansion deals. New bookings, and, and Jeff said it, new bookings have remained relatively strong. As we come to the end of the year and we look going forward, the, you know, as we start to do our budgeting for next year, those bookings, those newer bookings will start to flow into revenue.
Then it's a balancing of sales force towards opportunity between C for B, C for G, and C for C, which we'll try to do to optimize towards the best opportunity, considering where we are from an economy standpoint. That's, that's how we think about it.
Jeff Maggioncalda (CEO)
Yeah, I think we kind of already hinted at it a bit, but the big NRR headwinds are in Coursera for Business in Europe and North America.
Speaker 7
That's really helpful. Thanks for the color. Sure.
Operator (participant)
Our next question comes from the line of Ryan MacDonald with Needham & Company. Your line is open.
Speaker 8
Hey, this is Matthew Shea on for Ryan. Thanks for taking the question, and congrats on a nice quarter here. Wanted to start with Degrees. Given your expectation for the segment to grow 25% next year, wondering if you guys could talk about what you're seeing in terms of enrollment trends for the upcoming fall cohorts on those newer programs, and how that's trending relative to your expectations. Then, as those enrollments start to come in, should we see those hit in 3Q or 4Q, or what is kind of your timing expectations around those enrollment numbers?
Jeff Maggioncalda (CEO)
Great. I'll, I'll talk a, a little bit about the, the dynamics of the segment. Ken, maybe you could talk about the timing and impact of the numbers for next year. We're, we're feeling pretty good about this segment. We're feeling good about what we have told you guys, you know, at Investor Day, about the 25% growth in 2024 for the segment. When we, when we look at the opportunity and say, you know, why are we seeing more positive year-on-year improvements in, in degree segment revenue than we did, say, last year this time? Part of it is perhaps the economy, but, but a lot of it is the supply of degrees. We have a broader selection. We can find more matches among the learners on our platform.
We feel good about that, so long as we do a good job with the matching. We really are pushing much harder to a certain kind of new degree. These degrees that are built on pathways, notably pathways from these professional certificates. What we hear from working adults is they want something more affordable, they want something that is more flexible, they want something that is more aligned to a certain job, especially if they want to transition from one career to another. The idea that you can do one of these professional certificates, and while you're earning the certificate from an industry player, have it count as credit towards a college degree that you can also earn online, that's affordable and flexible, people really like that. A lot of our strategy is, is not just like, let's sell more degrees that are now online.
It's let's, let's offer a product, a solution to working adults who are trying to switch careers that frankly isn't really much in the market today. We, we, we sometimes think of them as pathway degrees, these pathways to degrees that are really much better suited. We're in early days. We talked about University of Colorado Boulder. They had that Master of Science in Data Science, continue to see good results there. A number of the new degrees coming on in the fall have these same kind of pathway characteristics. Makes us feel pretty positive, but at the same time, it's hard to estimate before something really hits the market and you see the learner demand for it, exactly what the numbers will be. Ken, in terms of expectations for Q3 and kind of impact on that 20-
Ken Hahn (CFO)
Sure. You've already set this up with the right highlight, of course, around the, the change in strategy or the emphasis in strategy on these new pathway degrees, which are at higher volume. We've introduced and we've announced those new degree programs, you know, this quarter, the last couple of quarters, and we've been building that capacity to fulfill those new student cohorts. The fall quarter is when you will see... That'll be the first indication of how well we fulfill, we're looking forward to talking about those numbers as we work very hard in fulfilling those student cohorts. You will see that this coming quarter. It will be a fairly immediate feedback loop on how well we're doing.
you know, we expect that we gave the 25% guidance for next year back at our Investor Day because we have great visibility on the revenue side. So, you know, it, it's, it's a look forward into next year, which we'll provide an update on as, as we do our planning going into next year as well. But, once again, I'd, I'd look to the student adds and some more color this coming quarter, which we're pretty excited about.
Speaker 8
Got it. That is super helpful. Wanted to touch on one of your newer initiatives. You recently began to launch more vertical-specific industry certifications, like in healthcare with MedCerts. Curious on the strategy there. How do you guys increase your exposure to learners in the healthcare segment that might not have previously been engaged with Coursera? Given the workforce challenges in the healthcare market, how large of an opportunity do you think this vertical could be for Coursera over time? Thanks.
Jeff Maggioncalda (CEO)
Well, yeah, Matt, great question, and I appreciate it because it will allow us to maybe articulate our strategy with respect to labor markets. I mean, a really simple thing, if it's not obvious, of what we're trying to do, is find out where there are, either on the learner side, big job opportunities, or on the employer side, acute job shortages. Then say, how can you help people move into those opportunities if that's not what they'd already been educationally, you know, trained and credentialized to do? Well, clearly, healthcare is a very, very large market with acute labor shortages, a very high requirement for credentialing that has to come from trusted institutions. You noticed that we are putting more of these healthcare-related professional certificates. It's not the full degree, but you can imagine kind of, we talk about pathway degrees.
We're putting out these professional certificates in health. You can imagine where we might be going. You know, report after report is showing that the number of job opportunities in healthcare globally is gonna grow because the demographics and the aging of the global workforce, and technology is gonna change the nature of those jobs, and those types of jobs will be some of the least impacted by AI. We think it's a really attractive market, especially for Coursera, given the branded credentials, given the whole degree pathways, the value of a degree, the global acute shortage, and the general resilience in the face of AI.
I think a lot of people are gonna be wanting to go and change their career, start going after healthcare-related jobs, because I think there's gonna be a pretty attractive set of opportunities there.
Operator (participant)
Our next question comes from the line of Taylor McGinnis with UBS. Your line is open.
Speaker 9
Yeah, hi. Thanks, so much for taking my question. Ken, maybe one for you. You raised the full year, rev guide this year by more than the 2Q beat, which I think is a little bit different of approach, than you took last quarter, being, you know, a little bit more conservative. I guess, what happened in the quarter or in the environment that's giving you greater confidence in the back half of the year? You know, is there a chance that you maybe have a little bit greater visibility? Is there a certain segment you'd call out, something in the pipeline? Would love to get a little color there.
Ken Hahn (CFO)
Yeah, sure. Thanks, Taylor. Of course, as the year progresses, we get better visibility on, on the revenue for the year. But we have really seen some firming up, particularly on the consumer segment, which is. That, that business is really nicely dialed in. We think we have a handle on how we're doing on these professional certs. The, you know, the machine from a metric standpoint is working, so we have greater operational visibility than we did before. We've, e have some better certainty in some of our marketing programs, which Jeff mentioned previously. So the ability to dial that in and, and react to changes in the environment gives us more confidence as we move forward.
As we get closer to the end of the year, both on the enterprise side, you know, the, the visibility and degrees particularly, you know, degrees, we can give forecasts 1 year out that are reasonably reliable, and then they can increase over time, of course, as we build student cohorts and get more confident. It, you know, as we get closer to year-end, there's just the models provide better visibility, and so we're more comfortable. You know, we seek to hit our commitments always, of course, as a public company. We try not to be too conservative, to be very clear. That's, that's let us recognize more of the, the overachievement, if you will.
Speaker 9
Got it. Thanks so much. My last question is just on the enterprise side, so the en- on the enterprise for business, I'd love to hear, you know, now that we're into, like, July, what you're seeing in terms of trends. You talked about, you know, you're seeing a little bit of more pressure to, to expansion. Any, you know, changes on churn that you'd call out and how those, you know, have progressed throughout the quarter to, to today?
Jeff Maggioncalda (CEO)
I, I would, I would characterize it very broadly, Taylor, as, you know, compression on budgets and layoffs of teams, of L&D teams. I mean, it's... What's, what's interesting about this, and I, I wonder what is gonna be the sort of response when, you know, clearly everybody agrees that we are entering a time of increasing employment change. Jobs will be changing, generative AI... I mean, publish after publish after publication after publication, they're all saying almost everybody's jobs are gonna change.
Part of me says, "Well, who's gonna teach people all these new jobs?" I mean, I get it that historically, L&D is one of the first discretionary budget cuts, but I personally, as the CEO of Coursera, we are planning on retraining a lot of people in a lot of jobs because McKinsey just put out a study a few weeks ago. They suggest, McKinsey suggests that globally, generative AI alone, generative AI, could unlock $4.4 trillion of productivity gains. Well, what's it gonna take? What investment needs to be made to get the $4 trillion return? some kind of skilling. Obviously, the tools and systems have to be upgraded, but people have to learn how to use those.
I don't know, like, from a first principles point of view, there is a little bit of a incoherence between companies cutting L&D in a time where people are gonna need to be retrained in order to unlock productivity gains.
Speaker 9
Awesome. Thanks so much for taking my question.
Jeff Maggioncalda (CEO)
Sure.
Operator (participant)
Our next question comes from the line of Robert Simmons with D.A. Davidson. Your line is open.
Speaker 10
Hey, thanks for taking the question. I was wondering if you could go a little deeper on the net retention number. How much of that decline has come from various factors? In particular, I'm thinking about gross logo churn and pricing pressure, and then also kind of what your expectations are for the metric from here, when it might turn back up.
Jeff Maggioncalda (CEO)
Yeah, thanks, Robert. If you, if you sort of if you did a variance analysis of NRR by segment and region, like, hypothetically, if you did that and tried to attribute where is the change in NRR really coming from, you know, in, in that matrix, what you would find is it really jumps off the page. Coursera for Business in Europe and North America. I mean, that really explains an awful lot of this.
Ken Hahn (CFO)
That grid would be C for G, C for C-
Jeff Maggioncalda (CEO)
Yeah
Ken Hahn (CFO)
... C for C for B-
Jeff Maggioncalda (CEO)
Yep
Ken Hahn (CFO)
and then the different regions.
Jeff Maggioncalda (CEO)
Yep.
Ken Hahn (CFO)
You're highlighting the two.
Jeff Maggioncalda (CEO)
Yeah. Then, and then, and that helps me answer, okay, well, when's this gonna turn around? At least without giving you... unfortunately, probably not giving you very helpful clarity, I can say it will likely be related to the macroeconomic conditions for businesses in Europe and businesses in North America. In particular, how do companies view and fund learning and development initiatives?
Speaker 10
Got it. I guess, within your metrics though, how are you seeing that show up? Is it, is it customers turning it off? Are they cutting their usage? Is there pricing pressure on renewals?
Jeff Maggioncalda (CEO)
It looks-
Speaker 10
What's actually driving it down?
Jeff Maggioncalda (CEO)
It looks mostly like pricing pressure on renewals.
Speaker 10
Got it. Got it. Perfect. Thank you very much.
Jeff Maggioncalda (CEO)
Yep. Sure, sure.
Operator (participant)
Our next question comes from the line of Jason Celino with KeyBanc Capital Markets. Your line is open.
Speaker 11
Hey, thanks for fitting me in. Just a couple. Similar to a question that was asked earlier. Ken, you're raising the EBITDA margin guide, you know, definitely nice to see. I guess, what gives you the confidence to improve the path to breakeven? 'Cause I think in the past, you haven't really guided up on the margin intra-year.
Ken Hahn (CFO)
That's exactly right, Jason. We've, we've never done that, it's because we intentionally spend to invest because we're a growth company, we believe the markets are big, there's the opportunity to do that. Frankly, the overachievement on the top line, there's, there's not the opportunity to spend that quick. We're already moving towards profitability. At the Investor Day back in March, we'd committed to profitability for Q4 and to EBITDA positive for 2024. We've been on that trajectory. We've done that each of the last 5 years. It's just a matter of pace of improvement is, is the conversation. We were outpacing our ability to spend productively in year, we're not gonna waste money, that's for sure, we, we are simply just seeing more leverage in the model.
We've been very focused on doing that and creating leverage within the operating model, within the departments, and it's at the point where we needed to raise guidance to be realistic about it.
Jeff Maggioncalda (CEO)
Jason, one of the things I'll just add is, it's probably obvious, but in every previous year, we did not put any Q4 constraints into that. We said, "Look, we're gonna manage to Adjusted EBITDA margin for the year." Well, in 2023, we added that one constraint. We said: We're gonna manage to this Adjusted EBITDA margin, and we're going to be Adjusted EBITDA positive in Q4. When you put the constraints on there, the natural answer that comes out is, you know, higher than what we were planning. You know, that's where... We thought, "Oh, you know, let's honor the commitment on the Q4. It'll set us up nicely for next year." We feel, by the way, that we could still fund growth initiatives at an appropriate level. I mean, we would not-
Ken Hahn (CFO)
That's step 1.
Jeff Maggioncalda (CEO)
Yeah, we would not-
Speaker 11
Sacrifice
Jeff Maggioncalda (CEO)
... growth, in order to post higher profit if, if we thought that we were really starving the growth opportunities for the company.
Speaker 11
Okay. Perfect. No, good stuff. Really quickly on the enterprise side, just competitively, I know it's a tough environment for everybody, but I guess, how do you feel you're doing versus everyone else? I know, you know, one of your private competitors announced some layoffs, but, you know, curious on, you know, how you think the market as a whole is doing.
Jeff Maggioncalda (CEO)
Well, I don't know for sure, and the, and the information is a bit hard to get. Clearly, I would expect that as, as I said to Robert, you know, pricing pressure on renewals, that's, you know, is, is one of the things that we're seeing. I would be surprised if that were, like, sort of specific to Coursera and others weren't seeing it. Then when I think, well, who would suffer the most from that? Well, we have pretty distinctive premium, you know, quality and branded credentials. So arguably, from sort of an economist perspective, we have a more differentiated product than others, so you'd expect we could resist pricing pressure better than others.
I don't know what they're really experiencing, but it feels like we should be relatively in a better position there. We also see, as you can imagine, that when people are cutting budgets, they're also often rationalizing providers. If you are a smaller niche player, it might be harder. I can't speak directly to our competitors, but what I can say is, in a tough environment, I think we have some, relatively speaking, attractive features that help us weather it relatively better. Again, I, I'm not sure exactly what's happening with the competitors.
Speaker 11
Okay. Perfect. Thank you.
Jeff Maggioncalda (CEO)
Sure. Thanks, Jason.
Operator (participant)
Our last question comes from the line of Brett Knoblauch with Cantor Fitzgerald. Your line is open.
Speaker 12
Hi, guys. Thanks for taking my question. Maybe first, just on the guide, you know, it implies kind of in the back half of the year, you know, call it, you know, 15%-16% growth in the third quarter and 13-ish% growth in the fourth quarter. This is coming after we've just seen kind of revenue growth accelerate from Q1 in Q2. I guess, what assumptions are you factoring in where we would see, call it, a 10-point decel in total revenue growth over the back half?
Ken Hahn (CFO)
Yeah. We're pretty happy. We've increased the revenue guide by $20 million since the beginning of the year, and just increased it $15 million this, this current period, along with an increase in profitability for the first time ever in year. You know, we see continued strength in consumer. I think we see trends along the same paths we're seeing right now. We don't provide specific segment guidance during the year. We provide a general guide at the beginning of the year, just to help people get their models right. Yeah, that's firsthand. We're pretty excited that we're announcing the level of growth that we are. We thank the investors.
Speaker 12
Got it. Kind of similar question on Adjusted EBITDA. I know you guys have sent that to the street on for the fourth quarter. But we've seen, call it, research or R&D, sales and marketing, G&A, all decline in absolute from 1Q levels into 2Q. What should we think about OpEx growth for the remainder of the year? You know, is there a shot we hit positive Adjusted EBITDA in the third quarter? I know you guided.
Ken Hahn (CFO)
Um, no-
Speaker 12
for that, but.
Ken Hahn (CFO)
We, we provided a, a specific guide, of course, for the for the third quarter, and we expect we'll be within that range, of course, 'cause it's the guidance we've provided. There, you know, it, it's harder for us to spend, to invest. There's some very real investments around translation that we have the opportunity to do now with AI and some other things we do that we think will lend a hand towards next year. Again, primarily, we're a growth company, so this is. A lot of this is a focus on setting us up for 2024, and increased leverage and growth in 2024. No, I, I think, doing in Q3 would almost be pointless and damaging to the company. I'm not sure people would appreciate it if we did that.
We're, you know, we committed back in, in March. We will hit that EBITDA positive in Q4. The important thing is we're setting up for both growth and leverage, you know, on an ongoing basis, which is something we've delivered for the last five years. You know, that, that's our model. I think the investors are used to it. You know, the notable difference, I would say, is we've increased the profitability target in the year instead of trying to, you know, invest. You know, it's kind of, as Jeff described before, a natural outcome of picking a point in Q4 and driving towards that, because we think it's important for the street to get that, and profitability is important to us. You know, making progress there with the change environment is something we're, we're really excited about.
Speaker 12
Understood. Appreciate it. Congrats on the quarter, guys. Have a good one.
Cam Carey (Head of Investor Relations)
Thanks, Brett. Thank you, everyone. That wraps the Q&A. A replay of this webcast will be available on our investor relations website, along with the transcript, in the next 24 hours.
Operator (participant)
This concludes today's conference call. You may now disconnect.