D2L Inc

TSX:DTOL

Q1-2026 Earnings Call

[Operator]

Good morning, and thank you for attending today's D2L Inc. Q1 Fiscal Financial Results Conference Call. My name is [ Brika], and I will be your moderator for today. [Operator Instructions] This morning's call is being recorded on June 11, 2025, at 8:30 a.m. Eastern Time. I would now like to pass the conference over to your host, Craig Armitage. Thank you. You may proceed.

[Craig Armitage, executive]

Thank you, and good morning, everyone. Listeners are reminded that portions of today's discussion will include statements that contain forward-looking information. Any such statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from a conclusion, forecast or projection in the forward-looking information.

Further, certain material factors or assumptions were applied in drawing a conclusion or making a forward forecast or projection as reflected in the forward-looking information. For identification and discussion of such risks, uncertainties, factors and assumptions as well as further information concerning forward-looking statements, please refer to the company's annual and interim management's discussion and analysis and the most recently filed annual information form in each case as filed under the company's profile on SEDAR+ at www.sedarplus.com.

In addition, during this call, reference will be made to various non-IFRS financial measures including constant currency revenue, adjusted EBITDA, adjusted EBITDA margin, adjusted gross margin and free cash flow. These non-IFRS measures do not have a standardized meaning prescribed by IFRS and may not be comparable to similar measures presented by other companies.

Please refer to the company's MD&A for the 3 months ended April 30, 2025 and 2024, for more information about these and certain other non-IFRS financial measures including where applicable, a reconciliation of historical non-IFRS financial measures to the most directly comparable IFRS financial measures from our financial statements. I'd now like to turn the call over to Mr. John Baker, Chief Executive Officer, D2L. Please go ahead.

[John Baker, executive]

Thank you, Craig, and thank you, everyone, for joining us for our Q1 earnings call. We released financial results after the market closed yesterday, which you can find on the Investor Relations section of our website at d2l.com.

Please note that the results we're discussing today are in U.S. dollars. I'm joined this morning by Josh Huff, our CFO, and I'm pleased to report a solid start to fiscal '26 with our team executing successfully in the current macro environment. delivering efficient growth and strengthening our fundamentals.

The Q1 highlights include total revenue growth of 9% to $52.8 million. Subscription and support revenue rose 11% to $47.7 million. Adjusted gross margins were up 360 basis points to 71%. Annual recurring revenue was up 9% over last year's Q1 to $206.8 million on a constant currency basis. And adjusted EBITDA grew to $9.3 million with adjusted EBITDA margin at 17.6%, more than double the 8.3% we reported in last year's Q1.

As we shared in April, with our year-end results, the macroeconomic environment continues to present short-term challenges. This is most apparent in U.S. higher education where we've seen heightened levels of uncertainty leading to the delays in evaluations and decision making. This remained consistent in Q1 with a slight increase in market activity in the last month or so.

As you know, a learning platform is a mission-critical part of an institution's technology stack. And increasingly, leaders I speak with appreciate that a modern AI first learning platform can be an important solution to enhance learner engagement, drive student retention and therefore, revenue retention and enabling new learning modalities with greater efficiency.

And despite the current market dynamics in U.S. higher education, our sales pipeline continues to build. Our competitive position is getting stronger, and we're winning more than 50% of the available opportunities in North America at higher education.

In Q1, these wins include LCI Education, a group of 12 institutions on 5 continents indicating over 20,000 learners. This innovative institution is widely known for its leadership in technology-based learning. And Knox College, a leader in theological education is transitioning its students to Brightspace shifting from a legacy vendor.

Internationally we continue to grow our footprint, adding great new customers. In Q1, these included the University of Otago, New Zealand's oldest university with more than 20,000 students. Universidad de la Sabana, a top private university in Colombia, where Brightspace now powers 6 of the top 10 private universities by ranking. And we also welcomed HOGENT University, one of the largest applied sciences and arts universities in Belgium with more than 17,000 students. Our win rates are strong across our core markets as well.

In Q1, we continued to expand the customer base, adding the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, often known as the IEEE Computer Society and also Pantheon Academy, among others. In addition to new customer expansion, we're leaning into our existing relationships, providing additional value to customers and growing our net revenue retention. Our upsell and cross-sell motion is improving, and we're seeing healthy pipeline generation for new products led by our AI offering, D12 Lumi and Creator+.

As an example, towards the end of the quarter, we landed a system-wide Lumi expansion for a large U.S. higher education system. In general, the future of AI continues to be top of mind in my conversations with customers and prospects. D12 recently partnered with the online learning consortium to study how students in higher education perceive and use generative AI technologies.

The report shows that students are embracing and unlocking the power of AI and they want their faculty and institutions to meet where they are in their learning journey. This highlights the need for investments in AI tools, they can boost engagement and facilitate important personal learning interactions.

D2L Lumi is well positioned to improve the students' experience with AI, while at the same time, increasing the efficiency for educators. Building on the strong foundation that we've built over the last 25 years, we are leaning into our AI first learning platform strategy. We believe that AI will act as a catalyst for new investments to improve the learning experience and outcomes. And this is a chapter that we believe will be more impactful for our clients than the move to the cloud.

We have a robust innovation road map for D2L Lumi across all of our products and we continue to look forward to sharing more at our Fusion Users Conference next month. We're pleased that our commitment to innovation and product design continues to be recognized and awarded. In Q1, Brightspace was named one of the best education software products by D2 and G12 was named one of the best software companies in Canada and one of the world's top ed tech companies in 2025 by time.

Looking ahead, we remain focused on balancing near-term performance with strategic investments as we work to become the #1 in targeted education markets globally and establish ourselves as the next-generation learning platform for corporate upskilling. With that, I'll turn the call over to Josh. Over to you.

[Josh Huff, executive]

Thanks, John, and good morning. The Q1 results show a strong balance of top line growth, combined with further improvements in gross margin and operating leverage. Total revenue for Q1 was $52.8 million, a 9% increase over the same period last year and constant currency revenue increased 10.5% to $53.6 million.

Subscription and support revenue increased 11% to $47.7 million. Constant currency annual recurring revenue grew by 9% from $190.3 million to $206.8 million. From a new bookings perspective, Q1 is typically our seasonally lowest quarter of the year. Professional services and other revenue decreased 8% in Q1 to $5.1 million.

In the current macroeconomic conditions, there has been a slight reduction in customer propensity to commit to and consume larger professional services engagements. The Q1 results showed material gross margin improvement. Adjusted gross margin came in at 71.3%, up from 67.7% last year.

Subscription and support gross margin rose to 75.2% compared to 72.2% in Q1 of prior year, reflecting ongoing engineered optimizations in our cloud technology delivery and the positive flow-through of increasing revenues from high-margin software add-ons. And gross margin for Professional Services was 22.3% in Q1 versus 30.1% in the comparable period last year.

We delivered these results while continuing to manage operating expenses. Operating expenses for the first quarter were $33.5 million, up less than 1% year-over-year. As a percentage of revenue, total OpEx was 64% this quarter versus 69% of revenue in last year's Q1, a roughly 500 basis point improvement in operating scale.

R&D was 22% of revenue compared to 25% of revenue in last year's Q1, in large part due to efficiency improvements and lower head count post the SkillsWave spin-out. Sales and marketing expenses were up 6% over the same period of the prior year in Q1. As a reminder, as we look ahead to Q2, results will include expenses for our annual user conference, Fusion. We're excited to welcome more than a 1,000 of our customers, prospects, partners and employees to this important annual event.

And while G&A expenses increased, this was mainly due to nonrecurring post-combination compensation from the acquisition of H5P last year. Excluding the impact of these costs, G&A increased by $300,000 year-over-year. As we shared in April, we will be investing prudently this year in product innovation and market expansion and therefore, expect operating expenses to increase modestly as reflected in our guidance.

The combination of revenue growth, improved gross margins and operating leverage drove a substantial year-over-year improvement in profitability. We reported Q1 adjusted EBITDA of $9.3 million or 17.6% margin, an increase from 8.3% margin in the same period of the prior year. And income for the period improved to $3.3 million compared with $0.6 million for the same period in the prior year.

Free cash flow improved significantly to negative $1.8 million in Q1 compared to negative $15 million in the same period in the prior year, driven by our improved profitability and in part benefiting from timing of working capital. Cash flows typically have a seasonal low in the first quarter each year and a seasonal high in the second quarter of each year.

At quarter end, we had no debt and $92.5 million in cash, providing us the financial flexibility to invest in growth opportunities as we move forward. In terms of capital allocation, we bought back over 168,000 shares under the NCIB program in the quarter. This largely offset any dilution from equity grants. As a result, the weighted average diluted shares outstanding increased less than 1% over the past 12 months. We will continue to make use of the NCIB within our capital allocation plans.

With our Q1 results, we reiterated our annual guidance. For fiscal 2026, we plan to continue making measured investments in growth while scaling the operations towards increasing levels of profitability. And while we are navigating tougher macro conditions currently, we continue to see strong growth drivers over the medium term, which we expect will lead to higher revenue growth along with further adjusted EBITDA margin expansion as reflected in our medium-term outlook shared in April. And at this time, I will now pass it back to the operator for Q&A.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] First question we have comes from Gavin Fairweather with Cormark.

[Gavin Fairweather, analyst]

Congrats on the strong results. Maybe just to start on the [ Fusion ] registrations. I think you talked about 1,000 registrations. Maybe can you discuss how those are tracking versus previous years, if you've noticed an uptick in the number of prospects there as a leading indicator.

[John Baker, executive]

Yes. Gavin, Fusion is tracking fairly well. So if you look at comparing it to 2023, we're tracking above the attendance that we saw at that event. We saw certainly a lot of folks come to our Toronto event last year. Today, we're tracking close to about 1,000 -- just over 1,000 registrations. We're hoping to see at least a 1,000 people in person, maybe as many as 1,200 in Georgia. That said, demand for attending the event for some of our clients is down in markets outside of the U.S.

That said, our U.S. demand for the event is going very well. We're working hard to make sure that we're incentivizing our clients from Canada or other markets globally to make the trip, and we're hopeful that we'll see many more of them in person and if not will catch some few virtual attendants.

[Gavin Fairweather, analyst]

Great. I appreciate that. And then maybe just on international, nice to see the strength this quarter, John, maybe you can discuss kind of how the pipeline KPIs are shaping up. How deal momentum is progressing in some of your core international markets? Also curious if there's any kind of particular markets that you call out as being particularly exciting at the moment.

[John Baker, executive]

Yes. We're seeing good wins internationally. So the pipeline is strong. We're seeing each of the different regions, putting up great wins on the board. I think last quarter was a good quarter for our international team. I think the pipeline for the rest of the year looks very strong and we continue to execute really well globally. Very impressed with what the team is accomplishing.

[Gavin Fairweather, analyst]

And then maybe for Josh and lastly for me, just on the sales gross margins, obviously surprising strength that came through on that line this quarter. If you look at the SaaS cost of goods sold was basically flat despite a 9% revenue growth. Maybe you can discuss in a bit more detail the drivers behind that strength and to what extent you would view these as being sustainable for the business?

[Josh Huff, executive]

Sorry, Gavin, do you mind just repeating? It was a little muffled.

[Gavin Fairweather, analyst]

Yes. Just on the SaaS gross margins, obviously, surprising strength this quarter. Can you just discuss in a bit more detail the drivers behind the lift in SaaS gross margins? And to what extent they're sustainable?

[Josh Huff, executive]

Yes, certainly. So we were pleased with Q1's gross margin, a significant increase year-over-year. It continues to be really a story of optimizing our delivery. So both from a cloud optimization perspective, again, sort of an engineered road map of improvements that the team has done a really good job executing against.

We've also started to infuse AI into our support operations, which has been helping as well. And I will say like Q1 was sort of pleasantly above what maybe we would consider to be sort of the durable run rate where we are right now to the effect of about 100 basis points. So as you look forward to the rest of the year, I would just keep that in mind. But certainly, as we look back 24 months ago, we had aspired to get to these levels over this period of time and certainly look forward to advancing even further over the medium term.

[Operator]

Your next question comes from Doug Taylor with Canaccord Genuity.

[Doug Taylor, analyst]

I'll follow along a similar line of questioning around the gross margin profile, which jumped off the page this quarter. Part of that being efficiencies on your infrastructure, you also referenced some of the mix of higher margin products. And presumably, these are some of the add-ons that you're selling through.

So I guess my question here was just to take a step back and maybe refresh us. On the penetration rates you've got of some of those add-ons and just so we can imagine what the gross margin profile upside there is from these levels as you get those to the desired penetration rates?

[John Baker, executive]

Yes. So in terms of the attach rates, we're seeing good attach rates for the additional products with new clients. So north of 50% of new clients are adopting at least one, and in many cases, all of the additional packages that we've got to offer. And then with existing clients, we're still seeing a nice ramp.

So quarter-over-quarter, seeing good philosophy in terms of growth, but nowhere near the full potential of adoption of these technologies into the base. So a long runway ahead of us in terms of driving that revenue expansion. And as new clients embrace these new technologies, it does improve our gross margin. So the gross margin on these additional products is nice.

But the core improvements that we've been making have been largely engineering-driven. So continuing to make multiple projects have an impact on optimizing a cloud impairment. And as Josh pointed out, there's a long road map of additional improvements that we continue to want to make in the years ahead. So very excited about where we are today, but it up more to be done.

[Josh Huff, executive]

Yes. Maybe I'll just add to that as well. I think when you look at the overall product portfolio expansion sort of approach we've taken recently, I think one of the benefits is differentiated value to our customers on the overall solution set. And certainly, we've been vocal on the net revenue retention expansion benefit. But I think probably what we're highlighting here is these are high gross margin software products. And so as the attach rate continues to climb, we will see kind of flow through from a gross margin perspective.

[Doug Taylor, analyst]

Okay. Well, that's useful data on that subject. The other question I wanted to ask here, when you initially set your annual guidance a couple of months back, the noise related to the Department of Education changes was pretty fresh. You've reiterated that guidance today. Looks like you're tracking well to it. I guess what I'm -- I'll ask now is that with the benefit of a couple of more months, which is a lifetime in these markets, has that impact played out as you anticipated? Is it better or worse? Any additional thoughts there would be useful.

[John Baker, executive]

Yes. Good question, Doug. So it's playing out as we anticipated so far, it certainly have had an impact with a number of clients. That said, we have seen in the last month or so, a slight increase in the volume of activity that we're seeing in the market. So that's a good sign. But I would say it's too early to say we're out of the fog yet.

The team is executing really well. So our win rates continue to be north of 50%. We're doing well with pipeline generation, probably the best we've seen in over a very long time and now it's about driving good execution through that pipeline as people work through these issues that they're grappling with in the broader macro. I have every confidence in our team's ability to execute, and it's really up to us to now drive that execution Q2, Q3, Q4 to get this growth engine fired up in a bigger way.

[Josh Huff, executive]

Maybe one other point just to add. In the conversations with clients, it's not just modernizing the learning platform that's at the heart of the conversation. It's also leveraging like some of the new technologies that we've built, whether it's Creator+ with H5P or Lumi to really provide a better educational experience for students as they're going through moments of austerity as well too. So how do we drive efficiency and productivity gains for our faculty while at the same time improving educational outcomes that seems to be why our pipeline is building so quickly.

[Operator]

We have Erin Kyle with CIBC.

[Erin Kyle, analyst]

Maybe just a question on AI and kind of in response to your last comment there. There was a headline last week with Ohio State University launched an AI [ fluency ] initiative to embed AI into core undergrad requirements. So have you seen other AI mandates like this coming out across your customer base or new prospects? And do you see something like this has been driving demand for products like Lumi?

[John Baker, executive]

Yes. I think we have. I actually sat on an AI task for us at the State University of New York around driving it changes to the curriculum, workforce upskilling and a number of other different initiatives very similar to what you saw an onset of Ohio State. I think you'll see, hopefully, all universities and colleges embrace the same type of thinking in terms of embedding AI skill sets into every discipline across all the programs that they're offering. And that will lead to AI being embraced as a core part of the workflow for building these learning experiences, assessing tutoring and you name it.

So we're very excited about this potential. Lumi is well positioned to support our clients in that endeavor. And the efficacy studies that we're seeing now come back from working with clients to test this technology and to see what the impact is, has been nothing short of breathtaking. Dramatically reducing costs in the development of courses, while at the same time, lifting retention, lifting engagement and lifting outcomes for students, it's a winning combination.

[Erin Kyle, analyst]

And then I just want to switch gears and go back to the profitability. So very strong in the quarter 17.6% adjusted EBITDA margin and other questions touched on that gross margin profile, which was great to see. You maintained your guidance for the year at 15% adjusted EBITDA. So maybe if you could just dig into some of those investments that you're making throughout the year and maybe give us a little bit of additional color on the cadence of the margin profile for the rest of the year, that would be great.

[Josh Huff, executive]

Yes, certainly, Erin, good question. We're pleased with Q1, specifically the gross margin highlight. And as mentioned, there's about 100 basis points there sort of beyond what we would consider to be the run rate rest of year. Also, just a reminder, we have Fusion in Q2. It's a really strong event. A big event that requires investment for us typically about $1.5 million to $2 million.

And then I think the last point probably stating the obvious a bit here, but it's a dynamic macro specifically foreign exchange rates have been moving around quite a bit. If we look at Q1 bottom to top, there was a 500 basis point swing within the 90 days. And for us, we know foreign exchange can have an impact on our reported performance. And so for us, evaluating those various factors, we decided to maintain our guidance for the rest of the year and certainly pleased with our progress so far against that plan.

[Operator]

Your next question comes from Paul Treiber with RBC Capital Market.

[Paul Treiber, analyst]

Just a question on the pipeline, your comment about the pipeline build. Is the mix skewed to either the U.S. or international? And then just given the lower conversion rates in the U.S. over the last quarter or so, are you getting feedback from clients when they do come into the pipeline if they do anticipate going ahead with deployments even in this environment?

[John Baker, executive]

Great questions, Paul. So first of all, I would say we're not seeing less conversion rate. We're just seeing elongated process. So I have every expectation that the folks that are coming into the pipeline will convert. I don't see that going away. I think it's just -- they've got to grapple with how to tackle all these other changes that are happening on the campuses before they put in place the system. But the desire to put in place a modern learning platform is AI first is very strong.

And so when you look at the details underneath our pipeline, we're seeing almost every region/market that we're competing in, outperforming right now. There's a -- I've not seen this in a long time. In terms of the pipe generation, overperforming for this number of quarters. We now need to start to translate that to your point, into on deals, and it's just going to take some time to actually go through that execution given the current macro.

We're still seeing RFP volume still muted. But if you look at the last month or so, we've seen a slight uptick year-over-year. And we're tracking relatively well to plan. So I don't anticipate much of a challenge as we work at converting these folks that are in the pipeline to becoming very successful clients over the course of the next few quarters.

[Paul Treiber, analyst]

That's helpful. And then in terms of the deals in the pipeline, the rationale that you're getting from customers, is it primarily on upgrading legacy systems to the cloud? Is it about the AI opportunity to improve learning? Or is it also related to like AI improving productivity that's driving some of the interest in the pipeline?

[John Baker, executive]

Right now, it's just traditional upgrading of legacy vendors to a more modern learning platform. We're only really now leaning into our AI narrative. And I think clearly, we're having some of those conversations with folks, but the broad pipeline has been generated based upon traditional messages that have gone out. I do think AI first -- that leads to better educational outcomes and a better experience for faculty, we'll continue to accelerate pipeline generation, which will continue to help us accelerate growth.

I personally think it isn't showing up yet in RFPs, but I personally think it will have a huge impact bigger than cloud in terms of a disruptive force in our space, not to drive change. I can't imagine you're going to want to be at a university that's not using an AI-first experience to help you generate questions automatically, to help you build content, help you translate that content, to help you close, capture the content. It's just such a big productivity lift for anyone that's creating learning experiences.

And then if you look at the student experiences that are coming next, it's going to be a very compelling offering to our clients to make the student experience as good as it possibly can be. So I do think this is going to be a big replacement wave for legacy vendors that have not embraced AI.

[Paul Treiber, analyst]

And just lastly, just in light of the current environment, have you seen M&A valuations decline? And would you consider taking advantage in making acquisitions at this time?

[John Baker, executive]

We're certainly seeing a mix. Some companies valuations are -- have not seen any declines, if anything we've seen in the push up. And in other cases, we've seen companies facing bankruptcy, because no one is really looking to take on the risk of taking them on as an acquisition. So it seems to be a bit more binary. Either folks are doing very well, and they're commanding a bigger premium and folks that are not doing well, hitting a wall.

So that said, we're sticking to our plans in terms of trying to find the ones that have great value high impact in terms of our ability to grow faster, solve really important problems for our clients, contribute to our gross margin, profitability profile things that fit our strategy, if you will. And we're seeing a good healthy pipeline for the companies that look like that as well to you at this stage.

[Operator]

We now have a question from Thanos Moschopoulos with the BMO Capital Markets.

[Thanos Moschopoulos, analyst]

Just the comment on the FX, obviously, you've got some big swings. Just to clarify, does FX influence the software gross margin line or not materially?

[John Baker, executive]

It has a bit of an impact. But no, not materially, not a driver as much as the other themes I mentioned.

[Thanos Moschopoulos, analyst]

Okay. John, on corporate specifically, your commentary regarding the pipeline, does that apply for corporate as well? How has that market sort of evolved in recent weeks with all the macro uncertainty?

[John Baker, executive]

Yes. No. I think corporates followed a similar macro trend. We're still seeing great pipeline generation, especially in our core market around training organizations. We're pushing harder into employee learning through the course of this year. We expect that to continue to build in terms of the pipeline. But many companies went through a similar quick reset heading into this new macro environment.

But as they've gone through that, they're now looking for a better learning platform to deliver improved experiences and results for their company or for their membership, if you will. And we're definitely well positioned to help them save money as they're building these high-quality learning experiences, provide a better learning experience at the core that delivers better retention, better completion rates, better outcomes. And that's compelling for most companies today.

[Thanos Moschopoulos, analyst]

Great. And H5P, you're approaching the 1-year anniversary. So maybe just an update in terms of how that integration has progressed. And you've also acquired some new customer relationships as part of that. Any comments on whether that's contributed to some of the pipeline as well for cross-sell?

[John Baker, executive]

Yes. It's helpful. We're working hard to actually put together an H5P-mini event at our Fusion Conference. We've seen now we're -- we've done calls with H5P's clients, then expressing interest post call in looking at Brightspace and vice versa. And I do think that cross-sell motion is something that's relatively new for us. But we'll continue to lean into it to drive faster growth for both H5P and for D2L. And we're certainly selling more H5P.

I think one of the nice things that we saw as H5P came on as a continued acceleration of growth for H5P. It also became part of our Creator+ package, which has allowed us to drive better adoption of Creator+ and that cross-sell motion of being able to drag along the learning platform, if you will, the H5P users is starting to show early progress in building pipeline for us.

You have to remember, when you have a learning platform that builds more engaging learning experiences, it really helps students learn in a more efficient way, so they spend less time having to learn. They're able to retain that knowledge for longer, they're able to score higher on exams, get better grades, and that persistence that them completing those courses enables the universities and colleges or schools or even companies to retain that revenue that they would normally otherwise be vaporized as they drop out. And so it's very important for us to make sure that we continue to lean in on Creator+ in H5P to continue to build a world-class interactive learning experience.

[Operator]

We have John Shao with National Bank.

[Meng Shao, analyst]

Maybe start with your notable IEEE win, given this is a global organization, could you maybe talk about your client's scale, the deployment. Maybe their selection process and criteria. .

[John Baker, executive]

Yes. No, we're hoping that, that one grows significantly over time. But like many other training organizations that support our membership. The key is building a great learning experience for their members, because in many cases, they're paying for these courses of significant membership fee and you want to create as much value as you possibly can.

And so there are going to be some that start off small and grow over time and others that might start off with a few hundred thousand members and continue to expand with a good learning experience. You also see things like, of course, merchants playing a role here, we're having a catalog to make it easy for them to sell these courses to their members is also important.

You're seeing competency-based education, which was very popular with a lot of professional schools also playing very well into corporate, where they define here are the learning outcomes. They demonstrate mastery of those outcomes. That really covers off a lot of CIPD or basically you're tracking every professional credits for professional memberships like engineering in particular or maybe accountants in another case.

And so these types of learning experiences are made very easy in our platform and Lumi is making it easier to create those experiences. So instead of having to tag all of these competencies or expectations or skills yourself, we now have AI recommending how to link these things together, such that you can automatically create that knowledge map very quickly and very easily. Those are some of the many things that these organizations are looking at.

[Meng Shao, analyst]

I appreciate the color. John, could you also talk about your clients' exposure to the international students going to the U.S. given their visa situation, I assume it's still part of your commentary on the market volatility, right?

[John Baker, executive]

Yes. No, very much so, not just in the U.S., but we've seen international student impacts in Canada, Australia and other markets globally. And so we're mindful of that. Now typically, we're pricing these things as an FTE model or full-time equivalency. So on a percentage basis for the individual clients is not usually that big of an impact. And on the whole, we're seeing usage going up for clients year-over-year. And so while it is having an impact for clients, it's not having as big of an impact, probably folks would imagine.

[Meng Shao, analyst]

Okay. That makes sense. And maybe one last question to Josh. Could you help us quantify your user conference costs this year on your OpEx? Is this a bit higher this year given that last year was in Toronto?

[Josh Huff, executive]

Yes. I wouldn't suggest that sort of year-over-year drastic change. I'd say it's more in line with what we've communicated in the past, which I think was something in the range of $1.5 million to $2 million.

[Operator]

We have Brian Peterson with Raymond James.

[Brian Peterson, analyst]

Just one for me. John, I know you mentioned that there's some elongated sales cycles in North America. You mentioned that few quarters now. I'm curious, have customers indicated that they're looking to make decisions in that typical decision period over this summer? Or is it possible that these decisions could get pushed into 2026. Any color there? .

[John Baker, executive]

That's a good question. I'm sure some of the decisions will get pushed into next year. But the folks that I'm engaging with, which may be a little bit further down the pipeline, are looking to make decisions this summer, some in the fall, some shortly. So I don't -- what would have been like a decision that would have been made in Q1 is maybe being made in Q2 or Q3. I don't see a lot of them slipping from the Q1 period into Q4, at least not at this stage. And I think folks just really needed to get through that budget cycle with what -- July 1 is a typical start to budget year for many of our clients.

And so I hope -- but it's not proven as yet that post July 1, things start to return a little bit more towards normal, but we'll see as we get to our Fusion conference this year.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] And we have Suthan Sukumar with Stifel now.

[Suthan Sukumar, analyst]

I wanted to touch on the U.S. higher ed market down with respect to the new business versus expansion motion. Is -- curious, this a slowdown impacting both or might expansions be progressing better than expected here?

[John Baker, executive]

I think the macro is impacting both the new logos as well as expansion, because I can imagine if you're, I don't know, a university or a school or a company having to deal with a change, you first of all deal with the change and then you can progress the projects that you need as a priority. I'll underscore that. Our learning platform has never mattered more to these clients because as they go through a challenge, they need to continue to invest in things that are going to improve the student outcomes, while at the same time, they may be making on the cuts elsewhere.

And so we're kind of in that nice zone where we can help them find new growth vectors with upskilling or workforce development. At the same time, is helping them drive efficiency with things like artificial intelligence to improve [indiscernible]. Just take the number of hours it takes to build the course and cut it by half in some cases. And so if we can drive efficiency and improved outcomes, it's a good solution for a better ROI for our clients.

[Josh Huff, executive]

I just think there's a little bit more scrutiny going into reviewing the systems, just making sure that they're going to be well done over the course of the next few months.

[Suthan Sukumar, analyst]

Got it. That's helpful. And on the competitive landscape, how are you seeing peers respond to the slowdown, especially the big ones under private equity ownership. Anything notable there to call out?

[John Baker, executive]

I think just -- there's a number of public statements from one of our private equity-backed corporate -- or sorry, education competitors that's been struggling with transition largely due to the increased interest rates attached to debt. But I'd say we're still learning how all of our private equity competitors are going to react to this new market where this is the one challenge without being private is that they don't report publicly every quarter.

[Suthan Sukumar, analyst]

Yes. Makes sense. I also want to touch on corporate learning. You guys are obviously still making continued progress on this front. Could you remind us on what some of your priorities are on the product innovation front? And given that you're -- it sounds like your ideal customer profile is evolving to that more of a corporate learning customer, how is your go-to-market evolving here is on the back of that? Is there going to be -- does that mean a bigger push on direct sales? Or might partners play a more important role here?

[John Baker, executive]

So you're seeing us push on a number of different key growth levers. So the first one being continuing to double down on differentiation in our core markets with AI and Creator+ and other things that are going to really drive an improved educational experience, improves that ROI is adopting our learning platform, a very clear strategy for a lot of universities, colleges, companies around the world that see an AI-first learning platform is the next evolution of our learning experience pretty similar to how cloud was a replacement wave in the past.

So that's a primary focus for us, and you'll see us continue to double down on that strategy in the months and year ahead. And then beyond that, we're also -- as you alluded to, very focused on international growth as another key lever for us. There's no reason why in many markets around the world, we can become the #1 player like we've become in the Netherlands or Singapore or Canada or other markets, Columbia now, where we have 6 of the top 10 private universities now running on our platform.

So we want to continue to drive that both with the direct motion, where we've got sales reps themselves, building these relationships, but also continuing to add the right channel partners where we work together to go after the opportunities in markets like South Africa or India or other markets globally.

And then the third is really around that corporate use case. So we've -- I think we've done a very good job on making sure that we meet the needs of training organizations. We'll continue to add new features to support them. But opening up that employee learning experiences has been a little longer journey for us, but I'm actually quite excited about the road map that we have in the year ahead.

In terms of both integrating our learning platform into dozens, if not hundreds of other different HR and other systems that companies are using today, making that very easy and almost out of the box, as well as tackling a few other use cases that we needed to just make it easier for us to support these companies embracing the best possible learning experience.

I think given the strength that we have in terms of the content creation, the learning experience itself, better skills tracking with our outcomes module, all of these things create a really amazing learning experience once you're onboarded. We now need to just get rid of all the hurdles in terms of getting people through that initial integration and onboarding, and that's where the focus is right now in terms of driving that corporate lever for our growth engine for the future.

[Operator]

I can confirm that does conclude the Q&A session. And I would like to hand it back to John for some final closing comments.

[John Baker, executive]

Thank you for joining us on our call today. We're looking forward to updating you following our Fusion Users Conference with our Q2 results. I hope to see some of you at the conference in Georgia this year. Thank you again for the support and have a great day, everyone.

[Operator]

Thank you all for joining. I can confirm that does conclude today's call. Thank you all for your participation. You may now disconnect your lines.