Ghost Stories #114: The STADIO growth formula

So I think let's dig into some of the recent financial results then.

So that's for the six months to June.

And one of the slides in that deck, which I think was pretty good, shows that over the past five years, your student numbers were up roughly 60%, but revenue was up 97%.

Now that's obviously not per year.

That's in total.

But some of that would be pricing increases over and above volumes.

So, I mean, just to be clear, you know, student numbers would be your volumes growth for anyone who's just thinking about Stardew like they would think about any other business.

And then the other levers you can pull would be pricing and mix.

So, you know, if a student comes in and does a more expensive course than a cheaper course, that's net positive for revenue without you having to have done pricing increases.

That's what we mean by mix.

So, Ishak, this one's probably for you, I would imagine.

These levers as part of your planning for the next few years, you've got student numbers, you've got pricing, you've got mix effects.

How do you think about these things when you're doing target setting, when you're wondering where the business might go, when you're explaining this to your institutional shareholders? Maybe you can also just speak to, as part of this, some of the pressure that you've seen in the higher priced qualifications, which I know have had a bit of a struggle lately.

First, I think if I didn't know any better, I would have said you're an accountant.

You gave your listeners quite a good view there.

You're outing me here.

You're outing me.

I'm just a podcaster.

What are you talking about?

You've done well there.

Yeah, I think to maybe give that a bit more color.

Yeah, we've seen fairly good growth over the last couple of years.

And maybe for the listeners, again, it's important to understand contextually, I think strategically as a group, We've always said that we want to accommodate 80% of our students to study via the distance learning mode of delivery and 20% via contact learning.

At the half year, we were around about 87% of our students studying in the distance mode of delivery and 13% via contact learning.

I think over the last two to three years, and particularly post-COVID, we've really seen that more students want to have a contact learning experience, particularly those school leavers want to have an experience with fellow students.