Capella's profit rises solidly, but company signals leveling enrollment growth

Capella Education Co. said its se­cond-quar­ter prof­it rose 14 percent as en­roll­ment in its on­line u­ni­ver­si­ty cours­es rose sol­id­ly.

Exec­utives cau­tioned, how­ever, that they ex­pect­ed en­roll­ment growth to level a bit in the cur­rent quar­ter, and investors re­spond­ed by send­ing the com­pany's shares down 5 percent in Tues­day trad­ing.

The Minneapolis-based firm said prof­it was $10.3 mil­lion, or 83 cents a di­lut­ed share, up from $9 mil­lion, or 72 cents a share, a year ago.

Ana­lysts ex­pect­ed a prof­it of 81 cents a share.

Revenue was $108 mil­lion, up 3 percent from $104.8 ­mil­lion a year ago.

The com­pany's total ac­tive en­roll­ment in­creased 4.3 percent to 37,346 and new ­en­roll­ment was up 2.9 percent from the year-ago pe­riod.

In its out­look, Capella said total en­roll­ment for the third quar­ter will be 3 to 4 percent high­er than a year ago and new en­roll­ment flat to slight­ly down from last year's level.

"Our third quar­ter 2015 out­look re­flects the var­i­a­bil­i­ty in the cur­rent mar­ket en­vi­ron­ment," Steve Polacek, the com­pany's chief fi­nan­cial of­fi­cer, said in a state­ment.