Wey Education PLC (LON:WEY) Chairman David Massie caught up with DirectorsTalk for an exclusive interview to discuss how the school year went, their recent private investor evening, the launch of their online language school, ambitions for the year ahead and news to expect
Q1: Now David, the school year has ended, how were things at Wey Education?
A1: Well, really excellent, it was a real year of progress for us.
On a financial level, we’ve already said that this year will be much better than the last year and those that follow our results would have seen that we posted a maiden profit for the first half.
Within the school, we completed the development of our new IT platform and all students will be using it from the beginning of September. The important thing is not just about our existing students in school but it gives us the ability to really scale the business, both in the UK and internationally. It can absorb almost an infinite number of students onto it and its proven technology in other sectors.
We also had our first students attend their exams at our approved examination centre. I think a number of people failed to note the progress we’d made, not only do we run course courses, mainly by Cambridge, but we’re approved by all of the major examination boards now to actually run exams in our own examination centre.
Q2: I saw that you held a private investor evening last week, what was the background behind that?
A2: Since most shareholders have moved into using nominee accounts and with online dealing, it’s very difficult for private investors to get a direct link to companies, there’s no longer the old-fashioned brokers lunch where they might turn up and meet management so we though that we would try and do something about that. Wey Education have a small following of private investors and we thought that what we would do was to run a function whereby they could come along and meet not only the directors but some of our management staff. They could really understand how the business operated take away one or two misconceptions about online education and explain about how the group is now longer just an online school but is an online education platform and all the different initiatives we’re taking and where they might lead us over the next few years.
Q3: So, what was the reaction like from those attending?
A3: I think, well I suppose I hope, it was very positive, a number of the attendees have been kind enough to email me and thank us for both the initiative and for the evening. There were about 20 investors there in total, I note the share price has picked up a tiny bit since so they must have liked what they heard.
Q4: Does this mean that you’re going to plan more or repeat the event?
A4: I very much hope so, we appreciate the feedback we had from those who came. Either after our results, which are due the end of October, or possibly after the AGM in January, we hope to repeat a similar function.
Q5: Wed Education made an announcement about opening a new online language school, isn’t there a lot of online language schools already?
A5: No, in that none of them are interactive teaching schools as we are. You might find somebody who teaches a little bit by Skype, you might find a lot of video or distance learning courses but none of them are quite what we have. You know from our previous conversations that our teaching is live and interactive, you come to a classroom, you join other students and so that’s what will come from this. We believe that this will be a superior product to anything available in the market, priced extremely competitively and we expect to see that there will be significant overseas interest. We’re planning to start it in September, of course it will take a little while to build pup momentum but even on the initial reaction we’ve had from potential customers and buyers, we’re excited by its possibilities.
Q6: So, where do you see the target market?
A6: Well, I think it’s mainly across border markets, there is of course a big industry in this country where people have to come and stay in the UK to learn to speak English and this is a very cost-effective approach that we can offer. I’m always hopeful that the Asian market will one day become to be our biggest market but I can also see possibilities anywhere where people want to learn English, which after all is now the world’s one international and business language
Q7: Your year-end is 31st August, what are your ambitions for the coming year?
A7: I think there are possibly five different things that Wey Education need to do next year:
First is to grow on the success and the progress we’ve made in 2016/2017 and just do more of that, bigger, using the new IT platform.
The second is to have the launch of our new school, Infinity Education, our new premium brand. We expect to do that slowly to build it but this is obviously an important year for us to get it going.
The third thing is that we see a significant expansion in our B2B business whereby instead of teaching individual students, we have contracts with other educational providers, whether they be local authorities, county councils and other schools who bring us their students.
The fourth is, as we just talked about the launch of the online language school.
The fifth is a general expansion internationally across all of our business areas so we think it’ll be a busy year for us.
Q8: So, when can we expect more updates on trading news from Wey Education?
A8: The preliminary announcement for the year will come out at the end of October but I would expect that we would do a pre-close announcement just before our year-end on the 31st August. I hope there’s somebody around, that everybody’s not on holiday and somebody gets to read it.
