Bright Horizons Family Solutions report steady growth in 2018

Bright Horizons Family Solutions, a US based provider of child care, early education and other services has released its financial results for 2018 in which it reports a 9 per cent increase in revenues and 16 per cent increase in income from operations.

(Please note that all figures quoted are in USD, with current USD to ASD conversion being 1:1.40 at time of press)

Revenues of $1.9 billion and income from operations of $239 million were in line with company guidance and market expectations.  

Net income increased 1 per cent to $158 million and diluted earnings per common share increased 3 per cent to $2.66. The relatively muted year on year improvement in net income and earnings per share is due to a large US tax change related credit in 2017 not being offset by the reduction in the corporate tax rate in 2018.

The company saw margins expand in the period at both the income from operations and EBITDA level from 11.7 per cent to 12.6 per cent and 17.2 per cent to 17.8 per cent respectively.

Bright Horizons, which operates 1,082 child care and early education centres with the capacity to serve approximately 120,000 children and families, has three divisions all of which saw growth in 2018.

The centre based child care division saw revenues grow 8.8 per cent to $1,586 million over the year due to enrolment gains in mature and ramping centres and newly opened centres combined with fee increases.

The back up care division saw revenues increase by 9.4 per cent to $245 million over the year and the educational advisory division, which provides expert advice to families on education pathways generally and college applications specifically, saw revenues increase by 21.2 per cent to $71.4 million.

Results were also impacted by continuing cost management programs which more than offset ongoing investments in marketing and technology to support our customer user experience, service delivery and operating efficiency as well as initiatives such as the companies Teacher Degree Program.

Stephen Kramer, Chief Executive Officer, noted “Our solid financial results in 2018 reflect the positive momentum across our entire suite of solutions, and we are proud to continue to lead our field in developing and delivering solutions to working families and our client partners that address the challenges for today’s workforce.”

Further details of the results including replays of the conference call can be found on the Bright Horizons website in the Investor Relations section.