Benzinga | May 18, 2021 08:08AM EDT

Aspen Group Announces Q4 Student Enrollments Increased By 23% YoY, Bookings Grew By 21% To $32.2M

spen Group, Inc. ("Aspen Group" or "AGI") (NASDAQ:ASPU), an education technology holding company, today announced that for the fourth-quarter fiscal year 2021, ending April 30, 2021, new student enrollments increased by 23% year-over-year to 2,182. Aspen Group's rising enrollment in the higher LTV USU MSN-Family Nurse Practitioner ("FNP") degree program and the Aspen University ("AU") Doctoral unit lifted bookings in the quarter, which increased 21% year-over-year to $32.2 million. Total nursing students comprised 87% of the active student body, up from 85% in the prior-year period. For the full-year fiscal 2021, bookings rose to $143.4 million from $111.3 million in the prior year.

"Fourth quarter enrollments finished strong as COVID-19 infection rates rapidly declined during the quarter. As in the prior quarter, we saw solid gains in the USU FNP and the AU online doctoral programs, despite the challenges these students were facing in their work environments," said Chairman & CEO Michael Mathews. "On the last quarter earnings call, I stated that we expected the RN student course starts to return to historical levels by the end of our fourth fiscal quarter. Course starts began improving in late February and returned to normal in March and April, ahead of expectations. Phoenix is a great market for our Aspen University Pre-licensure (PL)-BSN program, where we have experienced high demand for our unique and affordable program. For the second quarter in a row, we made a deliberate decision to avoid future waitlisting of students at our Phoenix campuses, which have full pipelines of first-year online students. This P-L business unit is expected to return to enrollment growth during the upcoming fiscal year given the anticipated enrollment ramp in our three recently launched PL-BSN campuses in Tampa, Austin, and Nashville."

"In the fourth quarter, we closely managed operating expenses, thereby materially reducing our cash burn from the level seen in the prior quarter. As a result, we ended the fiscal year with unrestricted cash and cash equivalents of $8.5 million and total liquidity of $13.5 million, including our undrawn $5 million credit facility. Our Phoenix pre-licensure campuses, launched in 2018 and 2019, delivered EBITDA of $1.8 million or a 52% margin in the prior quarter. This business unit is expected to continue to be our highest margin business unit for the foreseeable future and is why we continue to prioritize the majority of our growth capital to our pre-licensure business." stated Mathews.

Aspen University generated 1,593 new student enrollments in the fourth quarter, up 19% year-over-year, attributable to strength in its Doctoral unit. United States University ("USU") delivered 589 new student enrollments, a 36% increase year-over-year, primarily from FNP enrollments. Fourth quarter FNP enrollments grew nicely despite the work demands on the FNP students, who are nearly all full-time nursing professionals.