Earnings Call Transcript - CHGG Q2 2020

Operator, Operator

Greetings and welcome to Chegg, Inc. Second Quarter 2020 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Tracey Ford, Vice President of Investor Relations for Chegg. Thank you. You may begin.

Tracey Ford, Vice President of Investor Relations

Good afternoon. Thank you for joining Chegg's second quarter 2020 conference call. On today's call are Dan Rosensweig, Co-Chairperson and CEO; and Andy Brown, Chief Financial Officer. A copy of our earnings press release along with our investor presentation is available at our Investor Relations website, investor.chegg.com. A replay of this call will also be available on our website. We routinely post information on our website and intend to make important announcements on our media center website at chegg.com/mediacenter. We encourage you to make use of these resources. Before we begin, I would like to point out that during the course of this call, we will make forward-looking statements regarding future events, including the future financial and operating performance of the company. These forward-looking statements are subject to material risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those forward-looking statements. We caution you to consider the important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements. In particular, we refer you to the cautionary language included in today's earnings release and the risk factors described in Chegg's quarterly report and Form 10-K filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on May 04, 2020, as well as our other filings with the SEC. Any forward-looking statements that we make today are based on assumptions that we believe to be reasonable as of this date. We undertake no obligation to update these statements as a result of new information or future events. During this call, we will present both GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures. Our GAAP results and GAAP to non-GAAP reconciliations can be found in our earnings press release in the investor slide deck found on our IR website, investor.chegg.com. We also recommend you review the investor data sheet, which is also posted in our IR website. Now, I will turn the call over to Dan.

Dan Rosensweig, Co-Chairperson and CEO

Thank you, Tracey, and welcome everyone to Chegg's second quarter earnings call. First, we hope that you and your families are all healthy and safe. As we continue to navigate the pandemic and the rising social issues, we're grateful that our employees are healthy and our business is stronger than ever, and that we have been able to support our employees, our communities, and our students through this challenging time. I am proud to work with our Chegg team as they continue to make meaningful and positive impacts wherever possible. While students' lives were disrupted, the one constant was that Chegg was there to provide high-quality, expert on-demand support from any device, in any location, which resulted in accelerated growth across our circle. Students turned to Chegg in record numbers and we experienced unprecedented engagement with subscriber growth of 67% year-over-year, including our Mathway subscribers reaching a record 3.7 million students. This yielded net revenue growth of 63% year-over-year in Q2 alone. To put that in perspective, we had more subscribers in Q2 of this year than we had in all of 2018. As schools and millions of students wrestle with how best to handle a return to campus, we know that some are supporting a full in-person return while others are offering a fully online experience, and others are planning a hybrid version of online and offline. Regardless of which experience the student has, Chegg will be there to support students this fall and beyond. In fact, students are increasingly turning to Chegg for support to navigate these uncertain times and we expect this trend to continue post-pandemic. Regardless of where or how someone learns, Chegg will be there for them. From day one, Chegg was built on the inevitability that people would need to learn more often increasingly online and need greater support. Long before the global pandemic, we believed the digital transition was coming and education would have to fundamentally change. In fact, in 2013 at the Annual ASU-GSV Summit Education Technology Conference, we addressed the need to leverage data to personalize the learning experience that better serves students. Three years later, our Class of 2020 predicted that higher education was the next bubble to burst and that institutions would experience irreversible decline if they continued to raise prices while delivering an antiquated product. We made impassioned and specific recommendations to aggressively transition to a model of higher education online, leveraging technology to make learning available to students 24/7 and to expand and modernize content to be more relevant to the modern workforce. Our research shows that the majority of students now feel online learning to be as legitimate, effective, and rigorous as in-person instruction. In fact, half of the students surveyed who had no prior online learning experience now want the option of hybrid or fully online education and 72% of students who had already had online experience expect the same. We remain optimistic that this pandemic will end soon and when it does, one of the legacy will be that the door is permanently open to the promise of online learning: affordable, scalable, on-demand, and designed to support whatever the student's primary goals are, whether it's academic learning, professional development, or both. If anything surprised us, it was the speed at which students outside the United States came to embrace Chegg with the same passion as those in Europe. Similar to the United States, colleges and universities around the world are forced to shut down and like scalable, on-demand, high-quality support for students, as a result, more international students have discovered Chegg. In addition to meeting online support for academic needs, we're also seeing a global trend for adult learning and alternative pathways for students to gain the skills they need to compete in the global economy. We believe that the services we offer are so universal in nature, and this is in large part why we're seeing record demand and engagement outside the United States. It's always been clear to us that realigning education with its most important constituent – the students – is a massive opportunity, and we feel our brands, scale, service offering, and balance sheet give Chegg a great opportunity to make a positive impact on global education. We continue to believe that platform companies that have a direct relationship with their customers on the transaction, data, channel of distribution, and own their content will create disproportionate value for their customers and their investors. That is why we have fast-tracked investments in several key initiatives in the second half of the year. First, we're increasing our investments in international growth and development. Second, we continue to invest in the Chegg Study Pack with future enhancements like the addition of Mathway to provide overwhelming value to our subscribers. Third, we are implementing systems to address account sharing and investing in device management control. Fourth, we have increased our investment in skill-based learning by expanding the curriculum to cover more in-demand skills and by significantly reducing the price because we know skills-based learning needs to map to the most in-demand job and be affordable and accessible to students. With all the uncertainty facing students over the next year, the one thing that they can count on is the high-quality, affordable, personalized, adaptive, and on-demand services that Chegg provides. That is why Chegg is becoming even more critical to students' success, both academically and increasingly professionally, and our team has never been more enthusiastic about the opportunities ahead of us. On that note, I want to thank our incredible Chegg employees who continue to be relentless in providing world-class learning products and services to support students around the globe. I want to thank our Board of Directors who have been so supportive of our work over the last decade to be in this position at this moment to have a profound impact on the future of learning, and I want to thank the millions of students who invite us on their learning journey and hope that even with all the unknowns in the year ahead, they know that the Chegg team is always here cheering for their success and building a company that has always and will always put them first. With that, I will turn it over to Andy.

Andy Brown, Chief Financial Officer

Thanks, Dan, and good afternoon, everyone. As Dan mentioned, we hope you and your family are doing well during this difficult time. While many traditional companies are unfortunately being hurt as a result of the global pandemic, direct-to-consumer companies like Chegg that are digital and serve an essential need are seeing increased levels of growth. As such, Q2 was a fantastic quarter for Chegg. We experienced unprecedented growth in our subscription services as students around the globe turned to Chegg to help them master their subject matter and get better grades. During the quarter, we also accelerated investment for our future growth and we acquired a leading math company, Mathway. Let me give you some color. Mobile Chegg services subscribers grew 67% during the quarter, including the addition of Mathway subscribers. Chegg services subscribers' organic growth was 58%, an acceleration of 23 points from Q1, far exceeding our expectations, and we expect this momentum to continue into the fall semester. While Mathway contributed to our subscribers' growth, it had little revenue impact as it occurred late in the quarter, but we do expect it to contribute approximately 9 million for the year, which is included in our guidance. The momentum we are seeing in the business, accentuated by the pandemic, is likely to continue for the foreseeable future and we expect to be a high-growth, high-margin company for years to come. As such, we've decided this is a moment in time where we need to lean in and reach more students globally with our high-quality, low-cost services. Thus, we have decided to celebrate incremental investment to build for our future. These include investing in international growth and development, the Chegg study pack, device management technology, and our skills-based learning service Thinkful, along with additional infrastructure and resiliency investments that will allow us to scale rapidly. It's important to note that we expect to be able to make these investments in future growth opportunities while still delivering stellar bottom-line results. With that said, let me summarize our Q2 performance and then update our guidance for the remainder of the year. For the second quarter, total revenue was $153 million, a 63% increase year-over-year with both Chegg Services and required materials exceeding our expectations. This strong revenue performance drove a 79% increase in adjusted EBITDA to $55 million. While gross margin moderated slightly as a result of the change in textbook ownership and its over-performance. Looking at the balance sheet, we ended the quarter with cash and investments of approximately $1 billion and we continue to believe that the strength of our operating model, balance sheet, and capital structure are the strongest in the education industry and put us in the best position to grow organically and should opportunities become available like Mathway through acquisition. Moving to the second half of the year, the strength we saw in Q2 has continued into Q3. As a result, we are substantially increasing our revenue and adjusted EBITDA guidance for the remainder of the year. For the full year 2020, we now expect total revenue to be between $605 million and $615 million, with Chegg Services revenue between $490 million and $500 million. Gross margin is expected to be between 68% and 69%, and adjusted EBITDA between $190 million and $195 million. Before I get into the Q3 guidance, as a reminder, the seasonality of both gross margin and adjusted EBITDA margin have changed as a result of owning textbooks. Therefore, we expect seasonally stronger margins in Q2 and Q4 and lower margins in Q1 and Q3. Looking specifically at Q3, we now expect total revenue to be between $140 million and $145 million with Chegg Services revenue between $110 million and $115 million. Gross margin is expected to be between 56% and 57%, and adjusted EBITDA between $21 million and $23 million. In closing, the Chegg team continues to deliver at the high end of our expectations under difficult circumstances, giving us the confidence to both provide and increase full year guidance, all while taking the opportunity to increase our investments in future growth across the globe. With that, I'll turn the call over to the operator for your questions.

Operator, Operator

Our first question comes from Jason Celino with Keybanc Capital Markets. Please go ahead with your question.

Jason Celino, Analyst

One for you, Dan. Thanks for the comments about Chegg being there, no matter what model we have in the fall, but there's been a lot of focus on enrollment. If students do decide to wait the semester out to stay sharp and productive, could you see some of those students scaling up using Thinkful?

Dan Rosensweig, Co-Chairperson and CEO

Great question and thank you. I think what we're likely to see, and I think we've been seeing it, which is what gives us the confidence to raise our guidance, is that whether or not they go to the school they were originally intended to go to in the fall, one way or another they're going to be going to school, and whether it's their school in-person, their school of partially in-person, or their school online, or in the case of the folks you're talking about, more likely to be people that will take a local online class and a local commute to college. So they're going to be going to school because there is really no gap here. There is no place in travel, there is no job or internship to have. So they're going to be taking something, and Thinkful could be one of those things. Thinkful is very early days with us; we only closed it in October and now last September, but it is running in the past that we were hoping for. So our plan to increase the curriculum, lower the cost, and create greater support using chat-based tutoring inside it, which differentiates it from any other competitor, we think those things are already starting to pay off. So I wouldn't be surprised if we were somewhat a beneficiary of that trend.

Jason Celino, Analyst

Great. Thank you. And then one quick follow-up for Andy. Even when you back up the Mathway contribution in the third quarter, subscriber guidance is still very impressive. Maybe you can talk about the visibility and the confidence you have on the subscriber trends you're seeing, maybe towards the end of July. What you’ve been seeing so far?

Andy Brown, Chief Financial Officer

When we gave guidance 90 days ago, we had limited visibility as to the impact of COVID. On 90 days further on, we see much greater visibility. We continue to see the strong new subscriber trends all the way through the summer schools. So yes, we feel very confident that we're seeing the momentum will continue into the fall, and that's contemplated in our guidance.

Operator, Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Stephen Sheldon with William Blair. Please proceed with your question.

Stephen Sheldon, Analyst

First, any way you can quantify how much your plan for strategic investments have been increased relative to the plan you had entering the year? And then beyond the areas you discussed, I wanted to ask about your plan to invest back into core content for Chegg Study. How are you thinking about using the momentum you have and an opportunity to expand the breadth and depth of content there, including areas like videos or other study resources and that increase the value of the core subscription?

Dan Rosensweig, Co-Chairperson and CEO

This is Dan; I'll hand it over to Andy. The good news is that everything we're doing is on track, and we've accelerated our plans. This will benefit us in both the short term and long term concerning revenue growth and profitability, and we’re excited about this opportunity. We have always been and will continue to invest in content specifically. Our investment in content is increasing, and our Q&A network has seen significant growth. We've achieved record numbers domestically, with nearly 30% of new questions coming from international sources, indicating real growth in that area. We are focusing our content investments in three areas that Andy will discuss. When he mentions our international investments, we are not only enhancing translation capabilities to reach beyond English speakers but also developing local content to address locally asked questions, which will strengthen our international presence. The acquisition of Mathway has bolstered our core products within the Chegg Study Pack, which continues to grow faster than we anticipated, evident in our results. Domestically, we are targeting growth sectors like online colleges, specializing our content for them. In fact, large not-for-profit colleges and universities in the U.S. are enhancing their offerings or moving online, with some, like Western Governors University, serving over 130,000 students. We're also significantly improving content discoverability and investing in community colleges since many are offering online courses. We're making it easier for users to find our support content. For example, California community colleges alone have over 2 million users, representing 10% of the entire college audience. We're making substantial investments in content and will continue to do so. Andy, do you want to discuss the extent of the cost acceleration?

Andy Brown, Chief Financial Officer

Yes, so when I look at this, I look at it over the next 18 months, and we're literally talking about tens of millions of dollars between adding capabilities like Dan has said. Things like either the device technology that we talked about, the infrastructure improvements we're doing, going international and then the incremental content that we're investing in, a combination of accelerating classes to Thinkful, accelerating content types that we can use both in the US and internationally. So yeah, it's a fairly significant acceleration, like I said, in the tens of millions of dollars range, but we think it's the right thing to do and it's been a while providing significant leverage in our model as I mentioned earlier. We anticipate that we're going to be a high growth, high margin company for years to come and we want to lean in and invest in that future growth. So yeah, it's been fairly significant but it's coming with a significant probability at the same time.

Dan Rosensweig, Co-Chairperson and CEO

It's hard to notice because our profitability is so high and continues to improve, including the ratio of EBITDA to the cash flow; we just have one of those great models that allows us to do both right there.

Stephen Sheldon, Analyst

Quick follow-up, just wanted to ask on the guidance how you're incorporating changing university timelines, since the guidance is including summer starting the year earlier and potentially ending the semester center. So anything to call out there in terms of Q3 and Q4 seasonal dynamics?

Andy Brown, Chief Financial Officer

No, not really, that's all incorporated into our guidance. We're seeing the same things that you're seeing. Some schools are starting a little bit earlier, some schools are a little likely finished by Thanksgiving and it varies between school, and some are online, some are going to be partial. So that's all incorporated into our guidance.

Operator, Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Jeff Silber with BMO Capital Markets. Please proceed with your question.

Jeff Silber, Analyst

You mentioned a few times your focus internationally. Can we get a little bit more color? Can you quantify how large your international student market is and clarify if these are folks that live overseas and are studying overseas, not necessarily folks that are coming to the US or studying online at US universities?

Dan Rosensweig, Co-Chairperson and CEO

I'll start and I'll let Andy talk about how we want to think about international growth. International growth is stellar right now, and to your very specific question, only 1% of our international customers actually went to school in the US. So these are all new customers to us. I know there has been some speculation as to whether or not these were international customers that went home and then subscribe at home, but we obviously monitor those things, and frankly, we are picking up brand new customers around the world, and over 99% of them are brand new to Chegg. What's fascinating about this is that it's not in any one specific country. It's really a global phenomenon, and as a result of colleges having to close down, new schools historically have not had a service to go to actually discovered us the way we were discovered originally in the United States, which is through research and then word of mouth. So United States is word of mouth and search now, and then internationally, it's search and then word-of-mouth, but it's been really wonderful to see, and it really shows that the content that we have, our focus on salary and our business courses really does translate – no pun intended – on a global scale. So we're seeing countries that you would imagine carry us to Australia, UK, but we're also seeing great growth in places like Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and South Korea. So it's universal right now and we expect that to continue to grow for years to come.

Jeff Silber, Analyst

Shifting gears a bit, you talked a bit about what you're doing to mitigate password sharing. Obviously, a lot of students having to leave their campus going online probably made it a little bit more difficult, but can you talk about once we get past the pandemic any students come back to campus, what changes will be made to mitigate this issue?

Dan Rosensweig, Co-Chairperson and CEO

Well, I appreciate the forecast that you're giving that we're actually going to get past the pandemic; I think that would be not to scale up. But in Andy's prepared remarks, we focused as one of the four major areas of accelerating our work, we had on our roadmap to do device blocking and so we moved that up, and we wanted it in August. So students going back on to the degree that they would try to go back to the normal habit, it just won't be available for them anymore. So step one will be to limit the number of devices for our education, and then there is a step two and step three, and we'll continue to do that. We feel very good about having moved that way up, and we'll be launching that up.

Operator, Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Doug Anmuth with JPMorgan. Please proceed with your question.

Doug Anmuth, Analyst

I guess just given the various scenarios in the fall, can you talk about your marketing strategy changes? And then how do you replicate some of the word-of-mouth benefits that you would normally get on campus? And secondly, can you just give us an update on the study pack in terms of the rollout, how broad it is, and what kind of benefits you're seeing thus far?

Dan Rosensweig, Co-Chairperson and CEO

In terms of marketing, it's sort of fascinating because in the United States, we don't actually spend much money on marketing anymore. In fact, I don't think we've increased our marketing budget in over five years, not just as a percentage of overall revenue, which would have made it very large, but just in general because we have an 87% brand recognition. Where we don't have strong brand recognition in the United States really focuses on two areas: one our community colleges, which we're seeing extraordinary growth now and a lot of that has to do with some of the things that we did to get more visible active variety in people or things of those natures, which let families and other people know that we exist for what they do. And then in online schools, and so we've started to test a number of things which enhance the university because it's easier with online schools to go directly through the school as opposed to a regular school; we have to go to professors. So I'd say we're doing exactly what we've been doing in the United States but with an increased emphasis on community colleges and online. And then outside the United States, it really is the best way to get to word of mouth is to index globally and get more content locally, which is why we're going to translation and why such a large percentage of the questions were answered now comes from outside the United States. Then that's going to turn into work, and so when we actually watched them go, we were getting it not only by country, but by subject, but by actual school itself, and so you can see it in each school. But once people start to using, they tell people that are just those like crazy. Look, we experienced 58% organic growth on top of a number that's already huge. So I think for us right now is just making sure that we direct the investments, and to your point about the study pack, what we've seen is that the study pack is behaving very similarly to what Chegg study did just a few years ago, which is people using, they're signing up for numbers that were better than we expected. Their renewal rates are very high, their usage is very high, and it's not only domestically, but outside the United States. So we will have an even greater rollout in the second half of the year, but they're finding it before we expected them to. So we're seeing upgrades from existing customers. Remember, all we really were doing was focusing on new customers, but we did a test in March because of COVID, allowing us to give a free upgrade, and so we expect that to help us even transition more. So we're really in phenomenal shape, and I think the thing that we're most excited about is, on a global scale, just the engagement, the usage, the discovery, the value that we're creating for students, and the fact that it just sustains well past COVID because Chegg has just become a way of life for studying and going to college right now.

Operator, Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Ryan MacDonald with Needham & Company. Please proceed with your question.

Ryan MacDonald, Analyst

Would like to touch on Mathway a bit and just understand the opportunity there better. It seems like they get great penetration both domestically with high school students and internationally. So what sort of investments can you make quickly to sort of really capture that opportunity in a relatively new segment, particularly as we look into the fall and more K-12 schools moving online? Thanks.

Dan Rosensweig, Co-Chairperson and CEO

No, it's a great question. What did we see in Mathway that got us started was, one, a company Chegg's scale and size. When we acquire something, we want to acquire something that's just the traditional thing we said, which is, when we accelerated, can we make more money out of it? Can we improve the product and we extend it? Plus, Mathway was number one in category by far. They spent 20 years investing in it, and it's just a brilliant product. Having said that, they built it up through the budget. They took no outside capital. So we've been accelerating the investment in the Math category and extending it outside and more categories of high school, which will attract students younger, which will make the transition into college for us even better. So all those things are critical to its success, but it's only been really a short period of time, but it's already showing, experiencing similar things to what we're experiencing, which is greater discovery and usage. Its biggest benefit, however, is going to be putting it inside the bundling because this solidifies the Chegg bundle as having the number one homework product, the number one writing product, and then number one math product, all of that for $19.95 a month. As we start integrating it in, that's going to improve the conversion, improve retention and awareness. So we're unbelievably excited about it and really grateful that of all the people that could have sold to each other.

Operator, Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Mike Grondahl with Northland Securities. Please proceed with your question.

Mike Grondahl, Analyst

Yeah Dan, congrats on the quarter. It seems like there are four big tailwinds kind of online learning and support, what you're doing with passwords, the bundle, and international. Which one of those kind of surprised you the most in the quarter?

Dan Rosensweig, Co-Chairperson and CEO

Well, the fact that all of them did well did not surprise us. It's rare to operate a company that has everything do well in the quarter and that did in fact. What surprised us, as we were virtually in our prepared remarks, really it's international, which is the diversity of the countries which are relevant this soon and the fact that it's not concentrated on one or two countries across the board. Every one of them is seeing substantial growth and great retention and take rates, and the bundle that are greater than we had anticipated. I would say that all the things that surprised us; everything surprised us to be good. The concept that it surprised us, but I just think just the willingness of people outside the United States that discovered Chegg and really use it is such a pleasant surprise that happened this quickly.

Operator, Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Aaron Kessler with Raymond James. Please proceed with your question.

Aaron Kessler, Analyst

A question on with increasingly students obviously moving towards more online learning, how are you thinking about maybe additional online learning solutions, what you're in today to either call it or kind of the younger grade as well, especially younger to be more and more online solutions? Thank you.

Dan Rosensweig, Co-Chairperson and CEO

I have been in this industry for quite some time, and it's uncommon to find numerous options for growth. As I approach my eleventh year here, we are discovering more significant opportunities for expansion, which is a unique situation that typically occurs with well-established platform companies like Netflix, Microsoft, Adobe, or Facebook. Once a platform establishes a category, as Chegg has in education, the benefits begin to compound rapidly. We believe the best approach for Chegg is to focus directly on students. This indicates a shift toward older demographics, as the average college student in the U.S. is actually around 25 years old, not the traditional 18 to 22 age range. Many of these students are already employed. The trend toward online education is increasing, with many learners even older than 25, including those looking to change careers or finish incomplete degrees. Thus, our strategy will involve expanding the number of schools we serve, broadening our international reach, and delving into not just academic areas but also specific industries like nursing and engineering. There is ample opportunity for supportive work in these fields, and our investment in Thinkful reflects this, as the demand for skilled professionals continues to rise. The expectation for high-quality education that is affordable and relevant to students' careers is surging, and our objective is for Thinkful to achieve a similar market presence as Chegg. We see multiple avenues for growth, which is quite a fortunate situation, and I am appreciative of that.

Operator, Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Eric Martinuzzi with Lake Street Capital Markets. Please proceed with your question.

Eric Martinuzzi, Analyst

Wanted to dive a little deeper on the content use. So the $375 million is obviously a huge number and sequentially up versus Q1. I was just wondering if you can help me and pick that apart: what your normal seasonality Q1 to Q2 and then what was specifically going on in Q2 that was new with COVID-19?

Dan Rosensweig, Co-Chairperson and CEO

The seasonality I think Andy can address in terms of cost structures in the quarter because of textbooks, but the seasonality of usage, I think the way we would think about it is the real full year for Chegg, the real business year we're going into now. We just finished a quarter where people make their bottles are done in May and June at the latest, and so those seasons we're going into Q3, but starting actually already, but really end of August, September, October, November, phenomenal, and then it rolls into next year. This full year is actually August until say mid-May or June. So the calendar year isn’t that Chegg's use. The Chegg there is that period of time, and we're entering a big growth season coming up ahead of us. The fact is more students need more help than they ever needed before. They have no support from their campuses, even if they go on to the campuses. The things that historically they had, which weren’t very good and were not 24/7 and we're not across all subjects, won't even be funded because schools are having to cut their budgets, and they're going to cut their support budget before they cut the class. So the need for Chegg is only increasing, plus the fact that we're adding more subjects, we're adding more formats. Somebody mentioned earlier video, but we're also adding the factors, which we never added before, which is one of the most popular categories people can have. In writing, we're improving everything from writing style, writing structure, and checker, and stating with Mathway. Everything just got a lot bigger and Chegg has not gotten a new base that is much higher, and we're going to continue to see great growth from a higher base because we've not gotten anywhere near the penetration into our market.

Operator, Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Brent Thill with Jefferies. Please proceed with your question.

Brent Thill, Analyst

Thanks, Dan. You called out international as a top priority in the back half of the year. I guess it seems like you already have a lot of investment in place. If you could just articulate what's left there to show increased adoption. It seems like you already have a lot of the rails built, if you will, for the foundation. Just curious if you dive in there or not. And I think the follow-up to that is just some concern of saturation in the US that doesn't feel like that's the case. Just speak to the international push versus what the opportunities left in the US?

Dan Rosensweig, Co-Chairperson and CEO

I’ll begin with our international efforts. Even if we exclude China, the potential outside the US is actually greater than in the US overall. The three major English-speaking countries together are about half the size of the US college market. When we include all other countries, the opportunity expands significantly. These markets show a greater likelihood of coming online and an interest in studying STEM. As we've discussed, we’ve built foundational systems, which now allow us to facilitate commerce and accept credit cards in these regions. This advancement also means we can tailor our offerings more effectively between different countries. We're focusing on creating more localized content starting with the largest markets for translation software. Our aim is to attract STEM students who speak English in those countries, as their numbers will be substantial. We also plan to develop similar strategies for non-English-speaking students. In the US, we see plenty of growth potential remaining. Although we aren’t deeply penetrated in the market, we've observed interesting trends. Over the past three years, the number of students pursuing STEM degrees in the US has increased by 50%, while business majors remain steady at around 21%, and those in social sciences have dropped by 50%. Chegg serves all of these students, but our strongest area is undoubtedly STEM. We're benefiting from shifts in student interests and college retention strategies. We're also reaching an older demographic as more individuals return to finish their degrees. Institutions like Southern University are now accepting more credits from previous courses, making it easier for students to complete their education. Conversations around these changes are happening frequently, including with Thinkful. There are numerous growth avenues available. Consider fields like accounting, finance, engineering, nursing, law, and medicine. Each of these requires both academic knowledge and practical learning. Our diverse content formats—video, expert Q&A, and tutoring—apply to every subject area. The breadth of our intellectual property gives us a competitive edge, and we will continue to build on our successes through diligent execution. We’re very enthusiastic about our progress.

Operator, Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Josh Baer with Morgan Stanley. Please proceed with your question.

Josh Baer, Analyst

I was hoping to get some more insight on skills-based learning. Wondering how many courses you're looking to add. If you could talk a little bit about how much that costs to create a course, how long does it take? Are the expanded offerings going to be in place to benefit from the uptick in demand this semester? And any update on just the growth or the size of Thinkful at this time?

Dan Rosensweig, Co-Chairperson and CEO

I'm not sure we'll break that out right now. I think I'll let Andy speak to that, but let me just say that when we acquired Thinkful it had five classes; now it has seven. When you expect to add seven to ten classes a year at a minimum, there are a lot more classes, subclasses. There are a lot more categories here. I won't share the cost of doing them for competitive reasons, but suffice it to say that we've all accounted for that. We've accounted for the next seven classes and the numbers we've already given you. As it relates to the timing of it, it should be interesting in things we're learning. Obviously, there is a bump in the short term in that people are losing their jobs and they're looking for skills in much more affordable areas. One of the things that we learn now that we own Thinkful is their infrastructure could not handle the demand they already have. Chegg, there is already more demand than we can handle, not because we can't scale, but because it takes admissions, technology, reporting, and financial reporting, things that they didn’t have the capital to build. We're going to see a great pipeline for a long time now. We're not out there begging for demand at this moment; it's quite the other way around. This is a great business, and I'm thrilled that we bought it because the timing is right as you point out, but also the need for people to get skilled or re-skilled to jobs that will be around. The beautiful thing is, unlike the college, you may or may not change their curriculum, we can always have the most relevant curriculum for the most in-demand jobs, and that's what Thinkful is all about. So we're super excited about the future of Thinkful right now.

Operator, Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Brett Knoblauch with Berenberg Capital Markets. Please proceed with your question.

Brett Knoblauch, Analyst

As you look at the Q3 gross margin guide, I was wondering if you can just break down that impact maybe compared to last year? It looks like the guide is a thousand basis points lower. I guess to weigh down between the impact from the textbook business and maybe what other impact from the incremental investments you guys are making?

Dan Rosensweig, Co-Chairperson and CEO

The changes we're seeing are entirely related to textbooks. Starting January 1 of this year, we began owning textbooks and recording the gross revenue, which has altered the seasonality. This results in higher gross margins in Q2 and Q4 and slightly lower margins in Q1 and Q3. The good news is that textbooks are performing well, and we believe we are gaining market share in that area. This explains the seasonality and the gross margin changes.

Operator, Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Alex Fuhrman with Craig-Hallum Capital Group. Please proceed with your question.

Alex Fuhrman, Analyst

Hey guys. Thanks for taking my question. And congratulations on a nice start to the quarter. I wanted to ask about I guess follow-up on the international business. In your experience with international so far, do you see similar patterns, the rush at the beginning of the semester, and then the final exam schedule? Can you kind of just give us a sense of how that pace of business might play out over the balance of the year? And then just in terms of pricing, should we expect that pricing will generally be about the same internationally as in the US going forward? Or are there maybe opportunities to reconfigure bundles and tweak prices in individual markets?

Dan Rosensweig, Co-Chairperson and CEO

I'll start, and I'll see if Andy, so it's premature to know all the answers to your very good question. The international growth is substantial enough now where we'll be able to track the patterns in a way to things that we do know is the engagement they have is very similar to the US. The way they discover it is very similar to the US. Their renewal rates are very similar to the US a couple of years ago and continue to grow every day as we more localize the content and they get more familiar with it. They also came on at the end of the semester. So that's the big opportunity ahead of us but it's already well ahead of where it was when we started Chegg Study in the United States. Their interest in the bundle is even higher than that of the United States and that's the big deal. That bundle we're going to use really well, similar to that of CS. So that's a large deal. Seasonality is a little bit different depending on which countries get large wins. For example, Australia's season is a different season, and so it's just a little premature for us to be able to break that out. Now, as to your other question about pricing, at the moment, and we expect for the near term, the pricing will be identical to what it is in the US. It will just be put in local currency now, which is new. We didn’t have that capability before and we do now. So it's the equivalent $14.95 in the US to $19.95, whatever the local currency takes it to. That’s been helpful and improved converting once in local currency because they began to feel like a local product, but to your other question, it’s really interesting and thing that we’re going to start to play with, which is we will be able to technologically starting probably early next year to be able to change what's in a bundling country A versus country B, and it could be as simple as countries where we want more questions asked, we can say you can ask 20 questions instead of 10, or 10 instead of five. We have ways to accelerate the creation of contact, relevant, local language content. We can do things like you can have access for an hour rather than subscribe for months. So technologically, we're going to be in a position to experiment a lot, and faith and internationally is getting big enough where we're going to want to do those experiments, but right now, it has just been a fabulous upside project.

Operator, Operator

There are no further questions in the queue. I'd like to hand the call back to Mr. Rosensweig for closing remarks.

Dan Rosensweig, Co-Chairperson and CEO

Okay. So first of all, like we said at the beginning, we hope everybody is safe. The pandemic is much more difficult than people thought, and we're trying to communicate with our students to help them do better and smarter things as it relates to their lives. Obviously, Chegg has seen unprecedented growth on top of a much higher number, and the opportunities that we have are just increasing and we're really enthusiastic about what we do. We, like everybody else, wish it wasn't the pandemic that accelerated the inevitable, but it has, and so we feel an obligation to improve the quality of our content, improve our services to localize it internationally, to focus on Thinkful to make it more available, more affordable, attract more diverse audiences. We're in a position of strength to do so, which is we're seeing more customers, better renewals, better engagement, more diversity across our product line than we've ever seen. In addition to both Mathway and Thinkful, are very upsizing and just continue to establish Chegg as the number one student-first company. We're going direct to the students and we're benefitting from that. It is a high-growth, high-margin business where we can afford to make significant pull-forward investments and still have our margins, our net margins increase. We're really excited about our future, and we look forward to November for an update for not just the fourth quarter but for the future because things are getting very exciting for Chegg. So stay healthy. Thank you very much for listening in and we'll talk to you in the next quarter.

Operator, Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, this does conclude today's teleconference. Thank you for your participation. You may disconnect your lines at this time and have a wonderful day.