Specialist
Former Chief Learning & Innovation Officer at Blackboard Inc
Agenda
- Blackboard's operating environment and secular trends
- Impact of announced Anthology merger on Blackboard's competitive positioning vs Instructure (NYSE: INST), Desire2Learn and others
- Ability to realise business and product synergies
- Company outlook for Q4 2021 and beyond – customer reach, product expansion and growth trajectory
Questions
1.
Could you outline Blackboard’s operating environment and any key trends you think investors should monitor? What are the key industry headwinds and tailwinds?
2.
How sustainable do you think the coronavirus-driven increase in adoption levels is in the aggregate? How do you expect LMS [learning management system] demand to trend over the next 6-18 months?
3.
What do you think about Blackboard’s TAM and overall market opportunity? How have penetration rates been trending?
4.
What are the competitive dynamics between Blackboard and the rest of the higher education market, considering its competition with Canvas and Brightspace, D2L’s offering?
5.
Blackboard has lost a significant amount of market share to Canvas and other disruptors. How has Blackboard addressed these losses and what is your outlook on its ability to win business in future?
6.
When does Blackboard win out over its peers or vice versa? Does it come down to price, given the parity of offerings, or is there anything else that stands out to customers?
7.
How sticky is business once it’s won? Are the switching costs fairly prohibitive when universities want to make the change?
8.
What is Blackboard’s rough market share in the US, UK and Australia? You said low 20s in the US. How about in those international markets? How do you expect that to shift over the next year or so?
9.
Who has Blackboard mostly been losing market share to in international markets?
10.
Do you think Blackboard can stabilise its market share in the US, now that almost 75% of its customer base has migrated to the Learn SaaS platform?
11.
Why do you think more customers haven’t migrated from SaaS to the full Ultra experience? What does this signal for a potential churn risk?
12.
How does Blackboard’s investment in the product front with the SaaS offering and the Ultra experience compare to its peer set? Are things differentiated on the LMS front? How will this factor into its ability to win and retain business?
13.
What impact could Zoom have on Blackboard’s Collaborate business?
14.
How can Blackboard effectively compete with Zoom? Do you think it will be more on pricing or the breadth of the offering?
15.
Blackboard recently announced a merger with Anthology, a higher education-focused student information system with a combined entity value of roughly USD 3bn. What is your outlook on the combined aspects of the two and how it will impact the company’s competitiveness?
16.
Do you expect any cultural issues from merging the two companies? Considering that Anthology senior management will be running the business, how will that culture and management impact trickle down through the rest of the company?
17.
How do you expect technological integration efforts to play out? Do you think that poses a long-term hurdle, considering the use of different hosts for the services?
18.
What might an integrated company portfolio be like? How will the two companies play on each other’s strengths and drive cross-sell motions?
19.
What are the weak points or areas for improvement within the aggregate product offering? How might the merger help fill any gaps? Do you expect lasting gaps in the product offering vs those of its peers?
20.
You mentioned how Anthology’s focus on the higher education market might distance Blackboard’s clients on the K12 and corporate side. Do you think this is a net opportunity or a net risk for Blackboard’s other customer segments? Do you think it will take focus away from K12 and corporate end markets, or is there potential for product expansion and cross-sell into these segments as well?
21.
Do you think the combined entity will continue to target all the different end markets, or could it concentrate purely on higher education?
22.
Is the corporate end market small enough for Blackboard that it can be taken care of later?
23.
What stands out about Blackboard’s go-to-market strategy and ability to effectively market its ecosystem play within the higher education sector? How do you expect this to evolve post-merger? Could the company go all in on that playbook? Do you expect things to evolve differently to penetrate these institutions?
24.
How do you expect the use of direct vs channel partner sales to play into overall customer acquisition once the two companies merge? How might the sales mix of those two different avenues trend to minimise customer acquisition cost and drive adoption?
25.
What is your outlook on Blackboard’s ability to cross-sell Anthology’s offering into the international markets where it has a presence? What kind of competition will the combined entity face?
26.
Which markets do you think the combined entity will have the most success in, outside of the Middle East? Are there any other regions that you think will be relatively easier wins vs ones where it will be an uphill battle?
27.
What is your outlook on Blackboard and Anthology together and how this will impact customer retention and the ability to attract new customers? What are your thoughts on the combined assets’ sales competitiveness and ability to minimise churn?
28.
What do you think is the rough split among the customers who are already using Blackboard and Anthology and pose minimal churn risk vs ones who are using and Blackboard with Ellucian or Oracle? How many customers might be at churn risk if they don’t want to be locked into any system?
29.
Blackboard has around 150 million users in 80 countries. How will the overall customer count trend over the next few years, excluding accretive gains from Anthology? What organic growth can the company build up? What is your outlook for combined growth as well?
30.
In 2020 Blackboard reported USD 475m in revenue, down from USD 488m in 2019. How do you expect organic revenue to trend over the next few years? How could the company reignite gains on that front? Will it be from winning new logos with the combined offering, or through driving upsell, cross-sell and expansion of existing accounts?
31.
What tends to happen to the ACV [annual contract value] when a customer migrates to Learn SaaS from the self-managed on-prem version? Could we expect a meaningful expansion on that end?
32.
Let’s assume Blackboard can minimise some of the churn risk and stabilise the situation. Will there be a larger opportunity longer term from expansions within its existing customer base or adding new logo growth? How might that play out over the next 3-5 years?
33.
Do you think Blackboard would be more likely to buy or partner on the product front vs build it up internally?
34.
Blackboard has historically had a sizeable debt burden and Anthology secured more debt to finance this merger itself. How much of a risk do you think that will pose to the new entity longer term? Is that something we should monitor?
35.
What do you think are the biggest risks and opportunities for Blackboard and Anthology as a combined entity?
36.
How will the existing risks and opportunities factor into the best- and worst-case scenarios for Blackboard- Anthology?
37.
What would you be most worried about if you were at Blackboard-Anthology?
38.
Is there anything else you would like to highlight?
