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Skillsoft Corp

For the period ended Jan 31, 2024. Filed Apr 15, 2024.

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A company's yearly report to the SEC, with audited financial statements. It is the fullest account a company gives of its business, its finances and the risks it sees.

FY2024 · Filed Apr 15, 2024

SKIL$3.35-0.3%Stored close · as of Nov 9, 2026

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Contents

Item 1. Business

ABOUT SKILLSOFT

At Skillsoft, we propel organizations and people to grow together through transformative learning experiences. We drive continuous growth and performance for employees and their organizations by helping them overcome critical skills gaps, unlock human potential, and transform the workforce to meet today’s challenges and tomorrow’s opportunities.

We do this through a holistic, enterprise-wide approach to skills development that delivers measurable outcomes. At Skillsoft, we:

●Offer a framework and methodology to benchmark current skills profiles across the enterprise and track outcomes of new skills initiatives over time;
●Provide transformative learning experiences across knowledge domains, in modalities ranging from video and audio to instructor-led training, coaching, and practice labs; and,
●Deliver personalized skill pathways tailored to the unique needs of every learner across the organization — from leaders to frontline workers.

Skillsoft serves as a trusted partner to approximately 60% of the Fortune 1000, supporting today's sought-after competencies: leadership and business skills, technology skills, and essential safety and risk management compliance. We address the full continuum of market needs, from functional and tactical learning initiatives to enterprise-wide strategic skills transformations. We leverage various learning modalities adaptable to different employee preferences, schedules, and learning styles. Our content is continuously updated with the latest expert insights, information, and training methods.

Today's learners want the right learning experience, delivered when, where, and how they want it. That's why our approach is mobile-first, and our expert-curated, cloud-based content is served on an open platform that reaches learners wherever they are.

Additionally, we utilize modern and innovative technologies - including generative Artificial Intelligence ("GenAI") - across our solutions to address new and emerging customer needs and to differentiate ourselves in the market.

Our community of more than 90 million learners in more than 150 countries around the globe learn in more than 30 languages. As often as they need or want to, learners turn to Skillsoft to acquire critical job skills in the flow of work, and grow as leaders, employees, and people. We've helped fuel performance and career growth for more than 25 years.

TRANSFORMATIVE LEARNING EXPERIENCES

There is a distinct Skillsoft experience that we create, one that we believe from our research and work with customers leads to workforce transformation and growth. The experience is designed around four foundational pillars:

●Absorbing — Skillsoft learning experiences draw people in and become a daily habit.
●Trusted — Organizations trust that we curate experiences from vetted experts, creating high-quality, skill-building journeys that help employees become experts in their given field.
●Connected — Learning alongside peers, anytime, anywhere, through a blend of individual and shared experiences, creates a more cohesive company culture and builds cohorts of learners that advance together.
●Exponential — We measure success not in terms of consumption or adoption, but rather in terms of outsized Return on Investment ("ROI") — driven by workforce transformations that increase productivity and retention and drive continuous growth.

Our transformative learning experiences are designed to help learners strengthen current skills and embrace new ones so they can stay in-demand and grow. Our more than 1,250 skill-based learning paths are frequently updated with the latest insights and knowledge. Our aim is to continually refresh and add to courses, so that our customers and learners benefit from the most current trends and thought leadership.

We deliver robust, cloud-based, turnkey, and fully customizable learning solutions for enterprise-wide knowledge and up-to-date, mission-critical skills training. As an organization, we’re committed to the advancement of human potential through learning and development. We strive to make sure both individuals and organizations have exactly what they need to unleash that potential. Learning with Skillsoft is designed to help organizations grow a cross-skilled, more capable, adaptive, and engaged workforce — a workforce that performs. We believe that when organizations and their people grow together, it leads to greater employee engagement, stronger retention, and a more competitive workforce.

WHAT WE OFFER

Massive shifts and skills disruption in the business landscape have made skills transformation a critical element for business success. The world is rapidly and constantly changing, which necessitates rapidly, constantly — and effectively — skilling and reskilling the workforce. Talent leaders are focused on enabling their current workforce while also preparing for the future workforce.

Organizations are recognizing that hiring to fill skills and talent gaps is time-consuming, expensive, and unsustainable. Meaningful enterprise transformation – and the workforce transformation that underpins it – requires an approach to skills development that must include a combination of:

●Technology skills that equip learners to take full advantage of the opportunities and advantages of technology innovations;
●Leadership and business skills that enable leaders to know how to manage teams through change while staying focused on execution; and
●Compliance and risk management skills that empower every worker to understand how their behavior affects enterprise safety and risks.

Much of the corporate learning market is fragmented, disjointed, and comprised of many point solutions, making it difficult and complex for organizations to build effective learning programs, let alone ones that are transformative. Skillsoft offers a single-source, holistic, enterprise-wide approach to skills development that enables customers to (i) benchmark and track current skill needs and progress, individually and enterprise-wide, (ii) identify skills gaps and rapidly deploy personalized skill pathways with a trusted and experienced partner, and (iii) leverage a true end-to-end solution that we believe can effectively drive large-scale transformation across the organization.

LEADERSHIP AND BUSINESS SKILLS

Today’s challenges — and opportunities — require a new generation of leaders who are agile, resilient, and digitally fluent.

Developing leaders requires behavior change, and the confidence in their ability to effect that change. By giving leaders knowledge and the ability to use this understanding in their daily jobs, we help our customers empower their leaders to successfully deliver on strategic initiatives, drive results, and achieve their personal goals. Skillsoft’s transformative leadership development programs bring together curated content and coaching that can be scaled and delivered to every level of leadership throughout an organization, and tools like Skillsoft Aspire Journeys to reinforce key concepts.

Skillsoft has designed its Leadership Program to be scalable to reach all levels across a global audience, aligned to an organization’s own leadership competency models, customizable to achieve each organization’s objectives, personalized to drive demonstrable behavior change, and measurable to help prove value.

Skillsoft Coaching

As businesses look to retain top talent and fill the talent pipeline, developing talent that drives measurable outcomes is an integral part of skilling at every level, across organizations. To succeed in today’s climate of digital transformation and hybrid workforces, businesses must prepare all employees to be leaders, not only in their roles, but also at their company. And in a world that has become rapidly virtualized, one-to-one coaching plays a critical role in driving behavior change throughout the employee lifecycle. Through Skillsoft Coaching (formerly Pluma), companies can pair professionals at all levels, from individual contributors to C-level executives, with International Coaching Federation ("ICF") accredited executive-quality coaches who focus on developing behaviors and skills needed to lead successfully. Our approximately 400 qualified coaches span six continents and cover nearly 30 languages.

Skillsoft CAISY™ Conversation AI Simulator

Effective, empathetic conversational skills are critical for managers at all levels. Skillsoft CAISY™, an innovative GenAI-based coaching solution, makes crucial conversations easier through experiential, active learning so organizations can prepare employees across the business to achieve sustainable change through behaviors and actions. Scenario-based practice is designed to mimic real-life situations, making communication more natural. From providing constructive feedback to a direct report to resolving customer concerns, CAISY helps people build confidence along with conversational skills.

CAISY transforms power skills development, enabling learners to create a safe practice environment, choose relevant, engaging learning experiences, build agility, and receive real-time feedback.

TECHNOLOGY SKILLS THROUGH CODECADEMY

According to Skillsoft’s 2023-2024 IT Skills & Salary Report, 66% of Information Technology ("IT") decision-makers experience critical skills gaps on their teams, and nearly 10% are not sure whether they have gaps or not.

The need for technology skills building is both real and urgent. As businesses have accelerated the move to cloud-based applications, the rapid transition has come with vulnerabilities and on-going Development Operations ("DevOps") requirements not enough people can fill. Business transformation is impeded by a workforce lacking the necessary skills to execute mission-critical projects. Meanwhile, disruptive technologies like GenAI continue to emerge and evolve, meaning that organizational leaders need to frequently catch up where skilling is concerned.

Leaders across industries need increased confidence in their organization’s ability to respond to new threats and opportunities as they arise.

To address this pressing need, Skillsoft is building on the brand equity of Codecademy (acquired in April 2022), to offer an immersive, self-paced, interactive learning environment. Interactive, hands-on courses in 14 programming languages across multiple domains such as web development and data science, including HTML & CSS, Python, JavaScript, Java, SQL, Bash/Shell, Ruby, C++, R, C#, PHP, Go, Swift, and Kotlin, and emerging AI technologies, enable organizations and individual learners to build skills throughout the employee lifecycle. As the momentum behind GenAI continues to accelerate, these offerings will support technology learners at all levels and across functions.

There are myriad resources available for technology classes. However, technical teams need more than classes — they need practice applying new skills in real-time. That is why learning programs that close the gap between a course and applying knowledge on the job are a high priority. Skillsoft’s integrated Tech Skills curriculum spans multiple forms of learning, from practice labs, live instructor training, on-demand courses, and bootcamps, to certificate preparation and coding practice. Our hands-on coding environment is designed to build confidence quickly. Using spaced repetition principles, we create personalized coding practice experiences so learners can retain more and gain immediate gratification and corrective feedback.

COMPLIANCE

At Skillsoft, we believe an effective online compliance training program is not just about rules — it is about people and their behavior. Compliance training courses for employees can protect them and communicate a company’s values and principles so leaders can focus on improving safety outcomes, growing revenue, and reducing risk. Skillsoft’s compliance training helps organizations empower employees to make the right decisions and transform corporate culture.

Skillsoft offers compliance training across industries and for multiple risk areas. Each is designed to help enable customers to execute a mature compliance training program — one that supports a culture of compliance that goes beyond mitigating risk and becomes a competitive advantage — guided by the latest best practices for employee development. Skillsoft combines a continuously updated library of customizable legal and safety compliance content with purpose-built technology and value-added services for total compliance coverage. Customers can add company-specific policy documents and their own custom videos with self-service course configuration tools.

Skillsoft Compliance offers scalability to reach a global audience, subject matter expertise, and continuously added and updated content that is available anytime, anywhere.

SKILL BENCHMARKS

The ability to benchmark an organization’s overall skills, as well as any given individual on a team, is critical to an organization’s transformational success. Our proprietary Skill Benchmark Assessments provides a starting point on the current state of skills as an overall enterprise, as well as the specific skill levels of each individual. This baseline enables customers to continually measure the impact skills transformation is having on both business and team.

Skill Benchmark Assessments take an innovative, criterion-based approach to assessing skill proficiency. While traditional, normative-based assessments compare learners’ knowledge to the average of other learners, this may not match the level of proficiency each organization requires to be successful. Skillsoft’s tests measure capabilities against specific objectives defined by leading subject matter experts. This allows organizations and learners to determine if they are objectively proficient in certain skill areas and successfully retaining and applying gained knowledge in the workplace.

SKILLSOFT PERCIPIO PLATFORM

Skillsoft’s advanced learning platform, Percipio, is designed to facilitate deeper learning through better experiences using the power of AI. The platform is built to be open, personal, and connected, creating a unified experience across organizations, but one that is personalized to both customer and employee needs. For example, central to the Skillsoft learning experience are microlearning videos, optimized for mobile and designed for the way people learn online.

The platform offers more than 1,250 customizable Aspire Journeys, a pre-curated set of role-based and skill-based learning paths, that lead employees on their own path. With its modern, intuitive design, customers can easily configure the platform to add custom, third-party content, allowing learners to access the best of Skillsoft, their organization, and other providers.

Because it's mobile-first and cloud-based, it's available anytime, anywhere, on any device. With AI-driven recommendations, learners can watch, read, listen, and practice anytime, even in the flow of work, while celebrating their accomplishments along the way. We believe our platform helps customers build a culture of future-fit, self-motivated, capable learners, ready to add exponential value to their organization.

INSTRUCTOR-LED TRAINING

Instructor-led training (“ILT”), also known as Skillsoft Global Knowledge, helps customers create a unique blended learning approach designed to allow them to reach strategic business goals. Combining digital learning content with an instructor-led course can take the mastery of a topic to a higher level.

Live courses, whether delivered in-person or via digital channels, enable discussions and role-playing, offer more engagement and focus, encourage peer-to-peer learning, easily adapt to the needs of each class, and create networking opportunities.

The addition of instructor-led training to the Skillsoft platform offers learners a centralized portal to register and access live courses alongside their other assignments.

CODECADEMY FOR CONSUMERS

Designed to help individuals unlock the power of technology training, Codecademy delivers the most hands-on and comprehensive technology skilling solution for proactive transformation. Codecademy allows learners to learn, practice, and apply new in-demand technology skills across AI, Machine Learning, Cloud, Cybersecurity, DevOps, Programming, and more, in a unified interactive learning environment.

With Codecademy, Skillsoft supports one of the largest global communities of digital learners. We offer an industry-leading suite of learning solutions for consumers to quickly acquire new programming languages and technical skills, including expertise in 14 programming languages across multiple domains. The immersive learning platform with interactive, self-paced courses and hands-on learning drive learner engagement and retention. Customers also have access to additional high-quality content that builds on Skillsoft’s robust and diverse library.

PROFESSIONAL SERVICES

At Skillsoft, we strive to help customers unlock the full value of their skilling strategy — so they can focus on creating a future-fit workforce. Our Professional Services team is available for expanded engagements to help customers build and connect transformative learning experiences to their specific business needs and goals.

The team combines deep expertise, implementation services, learning and development program design, and custom content development to help customers increase employee engagement, create a culture of learning and recognition, and cultivate effective leaders.

DELIVERING TRANSFORMATIVE LEARNING EXPERIENCES

SERVING ORGANIZATIONS

In today’s talent management paradigm, many employees are reassessing their relationship to work — and to their employer. Organizations are being asked to demonstrate value in new ways, with new metrics, and for more employees. In fact, employers have identified talent retention and acquisition as a primary risk factor. Employees seek personal growth — in their abilities, in their careers, and ultimately in their fulfillment at work. Employers require business growth — not only financially, but growth that prepares the organization to meet new challenges, head-on.

At Skillsoft, we propel organizations and people to grow together through transformative learning experiences. And we’re here to help customers retain those critical team members by offering continuous learning and development opportunities.

We serve thousands of organizations, including approximately 60% of the Fortune 1000. With Skillsoft, these customers don't just accelerate learning — they invest in their employees in a way that inspires them to invest their energy and time in-kind. Learning with Skillsoft grows a cross-skilled, more capable, adaptive, and engaged workforce — a workforce that we believe performs.

To survive and thrive in a time of massive skills disruption, we believe virtually every organization needs to commit not just to skilling, but to skills transformation. But, we recognize that organizations may be at different stages of their skills transformation journey and work with them to develop a more strategic, unified, and outcome-driven approach to skill building — a critical element for business success.

SERVING LEARNERS

The nature of work is changing and many employees have found themselves on unfamiliar ground. A sweeping moment of re-evaluation has caused workers to redefine life paths and reassess their relationship to work. But one thing that both employees and employers are looking for today is growth.

Through transformative journeys personalized to individual goals, Skillsoft helps catalyze career growth, on-the-job readiness, and deeper engagement with work. We strive to empower learners all around the world. Our extensive library of multimodal content combined with our advanced learning platform, Percipio, makes it easy to find exactly what they’re looking for now — from technology skills to power skills — and what they’ll need to know to grow, both personally and professionally.

At Skillsoft, we serve more than 90 million learners, either through their organization’s contractual relationship with Skillsoft or direct-to-consumer through Codecademy. Learners have access to quality content from trusted experts, career mentoring and coaching, and transformative learning experiences to help them hone and build in-demand skills, drive their own advancement, and embrace the joy of lifelong learning.

MARKET OPPORTUNITY

Skillsoft’s market opportunity is large and growing rapidly. According to Arizton Advisory & Intelligence, the global market for corporate e-learning was $78 billion in 2022, and is expected to grow at a 15% compound annual growth rate to $183 billion in 2028.

Digital transformation, which was already affecting industries around the globe, only accelerated during the pandemic and has not abated in its aftermath, due in large part to the rapid adoption of AI. The need for skilling, upskilling, and reskilling workforces continues to grow as organizations grapple with talent acquisition and retention. There is a new — and necessary — focus on building and nurturing a sustainable workforce.

This dovetails with the social contract that is emerging between organizations and individuals. Expectations are that employers will afford the workforce greater flexibility and autonomy, while concurrently investing in holistic employee experiences with opportunities for learning and growth at the center. We believe these new and renewed priorities will continue to drive demand for Skillsoft’s transformative learning experiences.

The corporate learning market is always evolving, and Skillsoft has demonstrated its ability to evolve with it. We believe the reskilling revolution has the potential to impact nearly every industry, every company, and every knowledge worker, creating long-term tailwinds for Skillsoft to deliver profitable growth:

●The global workforce is being radically transformed – 1.1 billion jobs are likely to be transformed by technology in the next decade (World Economic Forum, Reskilling Revolution: Preparing 1 Billion People for Tomorrow’s Economy, 2023);
●Enterprise learning is a C-suite priority – 81% of organizations view investments in learning as the most promising strategy to deliver on their goals in the next five years (World Economic Forum, The Future of Jobs Report, May 2023);
●Effective strategies to address skills gaps are paramount – 60% of organizations identify skills gaps as the single most important factor limiting the transformation of their business (World Economic Forum, The Future of Jobs Report, May 2023);
●Re-skilling and up-skilling are strategic enterprise-wide imperatives – the average half-life of skills is now less than five years, requiring organizations to prioritize learning and development investments to maintain a productive and engaged workforce (Boston Consulting Group, Reskilling for a Rapidly Changing World, September 2023); and
●Emerging technologies like GenAI create a new catalyst for growth – 89% of executives rank AI and GenAI as a top-three technology priority for 2024, with most leaders expecting that almost half of their workforce will need to be reskilled in GenAI over the next three years (Boston Consulting Group, From Potential to Profit with GenAI, January 2024).

OUR COMPETITION

The corporate digital learning market is large and fragmented. Many of our peers are smaller than us and do not have the long history we have of serving our customers. The market is highly competitive and we expect it to remain so due to its highly attractive qualities such as: (i) increased demand for high quality, deep, and broad digital content solutions, (ii) the market’s whitespace opportunity, which we believe is material given the estimated size of the total addressable market and the magnitude of our peers, and (iii) the increased importance of continuous reskilling and upskilling to succeed in a skills-centric economy. Our direct and indirect competitors include, among others:

●Within our Leadership and Business offering, vendors such as LinkedIn Learning, CrossKnowledge, and Harvard ManageMentor, as well as OpenSesame;
●Within our Skillsoft Coaching offering, vendors like BetterUp, EZRAx, and CoachHub;
●Within our Technology Skills offering, vendors such as Pluralsight, Udemy, Safari (O’Reilly), Coursera, and Udacity;
●Within our Compliance offering, vendors such as Navex Global as well as LRN, SAI Global, J.J. Keller, and UL-PURESafety; and
●Within our Instructor-Led Training offering, vendors such as Learning Technologies Group, QA, Fast Lane, and Educate 360.

COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGES

Skillsoft offers far more than traditional online learning. We deliver immersive learning experiences that we believe enable organizations to transform their workforce and thrive in a time of profound skills disruption. We do this through a portfolio of high-quality content, an AI-powered platform that is personalized and connected to customer needs, and a broad ecosystem of partners. We believe we have significant competitive advantages that will fuel Skillsoft’s growth now and going forward.

One critical area in which we believe we have a competitive advantage is with respect to the rapid global adoption of GenAI. We believe there is a significant need for skilling to effectively, efficiently, and ethically deploy this new technology. Skillsoft has integrated GenAI into our comprehensive curriculum, which covers both general AI knowledge and technical courses. Furthermore, Skillsoft has improved its Codecademy platform to prioritize interactive learning for skill development. Additionally, in fiscal 2024, we brought to market Skillsoft CAISY™, and have rapidly scaled this market-leading innovation to offer more than 60 GenAI-based conversational simulations.

Today’s customers seek full-suite capabilities from fewer vendors, and full-stack skills from their workforce. Our new Lean into Learning report confirms this. Trending topics range from technical “hard skills” like Cloud Security and Java Programming, to cross-discipline “power skills” like Communication Essentials and Working Effectively as a Team.

Organizations also require a broader skilling framework lens beyond just catalogs of courses. At Skillsoft, we start by understanding each customer’s skills taxonomy, exactly what skills are the top priority for their organization. And, we provide 500+ Skill Benchmarks, skill diagnostic evaluations to help learners and organizations accurately measure competencies, benchmarking tools and assessments to identify gaps, reinforce skills, and quantify the impact.

The concept of training has evolved, and skills have become mission-critical organizational assets. That is why customers are looking for more than “content libraries.” Today, they are most interested in skilling solutions designed to address the most critical use cases — like onboarding, reskilling, performance management, and leadership development — that enable them to transform their workforce.

Given this, our content is expert-curated, multimodal, and digitally delivered, enabling learning anywhere, any time, and on any device. “Bite-sized” microlearning experiences are designed for time-pressed corporate customers and learners. Content is available in 30 languages, fully localized for accuracy and relevance, and can be customized and branded for customers. Learning experiences, including Skillsoft Aspire Journeys and Skillsoft Digital Badges (over 42 million issued to date), provide consistency for the learner. And, Skillsoft Coaching, instructor-led training, hands-on learning, and professional services enhance our digital course curricula to deliver a fuller, more powerful — and more transformative — skilling experience.

No matter the industry, even though nearly every company today is a technology company to at least some extent, power skills such as empathy, resilience, and agility, are in high demand. For example, ourIT Skills & Salary report found that Communication was one of the most important — and in-demand — skills for technology professionals. And finally, employee health and engagement, as well as Environmental, Social and Governance ("ESG"), are top of mind for organizational leaders as they grapple with labor and skills shortages, and the priorities of younger generations of workers. Skillsoft’s transformative learning experiences support these important and timely focuses.

In the 2023 Fortune/Deloitte CEO Report, Talent and Labor were cited most often as the biggest challenges CEOs face, along with, “Keeping up with the pace of global change,” “Resisting the urge to tap the brakes on hiring, investing, M&A, and growth initiatives,” and finally “Leading transformation.” At Skillsoft, we are in the business of workforce transformation that drives and enables strategic business imperatives.

Unlike many in the digital learning market, we are a “one-stop shop” for enterprise skilling, with a breadth of learning experiences designed to drive workforce transformation across the entire organization — from Leadership and Business ("L&B") Skills to Technology Skills to Compliance. This enables us to address some of today’s most pressing strategic issues. For example, our customers can combine Skillsoft’s technology learning experiences with our compliance content to help safeguard against cybersecurity threats. In addition, customers can create a learning experience within Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (“DEI”) modules by integrating compliance content with leadership and business learning journeys. All three of these rich libraries are enhanced by an AI-fueled learning experience platform and enterprise-grade customer support and service.

SKILLSOFT AND ESG, A RESPONSIBLE BUSINESS FOR A SUSTAINABLE FUTURE

For more than 25 years, Skillsoft has been a digital learning solutions innovator. By its very nature, our industry has helped organizations reduce their carbon footprints by curtailing unnecessary travel, printing, and other activities that can tax environmental resources. We have helped organizations digitally transform and support distributed workforces. And, we have had the honor of training hundreds of millions of people. We support our customers to advance their own understanding and expertise in ESG practices — whether that is through our Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion curriculum, our Corporate Sustainability learning experiences, or our Global Code of Conduct Solution.

As an organization, we have developed meaningful ESG goals, focusing on the areas in which we feel we can make the greatest impact. We have made a commitment to focus on three of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals, including Quality Education, Gender Equality, and Decent Work and Economic Growth.

At Skillsoft, we enable customers around the world to be more responsible in the way they train their workforce, offering a full spectrum of coursework spanning almost every ESG area – from more than 500 course hours on sustainability, to content co-developed with several Corporate Social Responsibilities ("CSR") partners, while serving as one of the world’s largest compliance content businesses. Further, our CSR efforts span the globe — from local organizations like Green Our Planet and the Be.A.Shero foundation, to global organizations like Special Olympics and iamtheCODE.

GROWTH STRATEGY

Our growth strategy is to win with organizations that see talent as critical to solving their most difficult challenges and capturing their biggest opportunities – and they invest in their talent accordingly.

Over the past several years, Skillsoft has brought together four unique, well-respected organizations aligned to a valuable and growing market in which skilling has become a strategic, C-level imperative. Core to our approach is a strategic alignment with organizations that understand that skill-building is intrinsic and central to their growth plans. They represent the future and by working with them to achieve their goals, we believe we become indispensable.

We are executing a growth strategy focused on long-term mutual value that is differentiated by customer type. Organizations around the globe are on different journeys when it comes to skills investments. With strategic segmentation and a customer engagement focus, Skillsoft is able to meet them where they are today, fulfill current use cases, and build a sustainable skilling solution for the future. We believe this differentiation, offering a true solution rather than merely content or platform, will enable us to grow and win. We have the ability to expand customer relationships and capture more share from our large and loyal installed base. Underpinning our own growth plans are three strategic priorities:

●Lead in Enterprise Workforce Transformation — Deliver transformative learning experiences that include high-quality content, a platform that is personalized and connected to customer needs, and a broad ecosystem of partners to achieve our customers’ desired business outcomes as they address critical use cases like onboarding, reskilling, leadership preparedness, turnover reduction, and succession planning.
●Win in Technical Skills — Help customers proactively grow technical skills and close the skills gap through learning experiences with instructional variety to match how their technology teams learn — meeting learners where they are: whether they are new to the workforce, mid-stage and looking to reinforce, or redesigning their careers, looking to pivot and gain entirely new skills.
●Advance Our Culture of Leadership and Learning — Be recognized as a role model of learning and development powered by usage of our own products. Lead by example in emerging areas of focus, such as GenAI, ESG, and DEI.

We believe executing against this strategy will position us to further differentiate Skillsoft in the market, extend our competitive advantages, and deliver long-term profitable growth and value creation. Helping us to execute this strategy are the following key qualities:

●Strong foundation for growth as an established global leader – (i) loyal, blue chip customer base underpinned by long-term relationships and recurring, multi-year contracts, (ii) comprehensive suite of multi-modal learning solutions spanning the largest and most critical subject matter areas, (iii) well-regarded AI-enabled learning experience platform and an early mover in bringing GenAI innovations to market;
●Large and growing market opportunity where we are uniquely positioned to win – (i) $78 billion total addressable market that we currently project is growing at a 15% compound annual growth rate through 2028 with multiple vectors to gain market share, (ii) global leadership position supporting the world’s largest enterprises with solutions that address the most acute and pronounced workforce transformation needs of those organizations that are leveraging skills development as a strategic advantage ("Skills Champions"), (iii) durable competitive advantage through the creation and ownership of our content IP; and,
●Attractive business model with a scalable financial profile – (i) primarily subscription-based recurring revenue model, (ii) opportunity for further margin expansion with operating leverage as the business scales, (iii) low capital intensity drives high unlevered free cash flow conversion.

CUSTOMER GROWTH AND SUCCESS

At Skillsoft, our commitment to serving customers is paramount. It is at the heart of our entire Go-To-Market motion, from Marketing to Sales, Professional Services to Customer Success. In a time of rapid transformation — driven in large part by new technologies like GenAI — organizations around the globe face large-scale skills disruption. With a dedicated focus on business outcomes and value realization, we recognize the importance of being a trusted partner, empowering our customers to achieve their most critical strategic objectives through skilling.

Our customer-centric focus prompts us to leverage the latest data science and marketing technology. Here is how we are evolving our approach to marketing:

●Elevating Brand Presence - We amplify our brand globally, leading conversations on AI, and partnering with industry giants like Microsoft, Accenture, and the World Economic Forum to deliver cutting-edge thought leadership.
●Targeting Our Message - We hone in on Skills Champions, those organizations that are leveraging skills development as a strategic advantage, with precision-targeted messaging focused on key topics such as AI adoption and digital fluency, ensuring maximum impact and engagement.
●Capitalizing on Account-based Marketing ("ABM") - Our sophisticated ABM strategy drives growth within our customer base both programmatically and through high-touch personalized programs in partnership with Customer Success to accelerate skills development and maturity.
●Engaging Consumers - Our robust consumer flywheel actively engages with Codecademy users and key buyers, capitalizing on the transformative shifts in technical skilling.
●Positioning Skillsoft as a Transformation Partner - We do not just offer content or platforms; we provide comprehensive solutions tailored to specific industries, solidifying our position as a leader in workforce transformation.
●Harnessing the Power of AI - We leverage GenAI to enhance productivity, drive efficiencies, and foster innovation within our marketing endeavors.

Our customers’ success is our own, and today’s customers are challenged by unprecedented skills disruption. This is why we have built a global field organization, comprising more than 600 dedicated sales, success, and services professionals who are adept at helping companies drive enterprise-wide skills transformations. We strive to understand each customer’s business, aligning our solutions with their most pressing current needs and their strategic objectives, and consistently measure our customer's progress to ensure success.

Our customer engagement model, powered by an unwavering commitment to delivering measurable outcomes for our customers, enables long-term growth. We continue to:

●Drive Strategic Acquisition - With an integrated, collaborative team of sales representatives and industry specialists working together at each stage of the sales process, we ensure that we are effectively reaching out to companies seeking holistic skills transformation solutions that go beyond content and platform. We are positioned to help these companies link professional development to key organizational goals, like onboarding, reskilling, leadership preparedness, governance, and employee retention.
●Manage the Customer Journey - Our Customer Success team builds and maintains strong relationships with customers, partnering closely to understand evolving business goals and to align learning solutions to meaningful business value. With their partnership and guidance, customers are able to meet learning and development objectives, and achieve skills transformation at scale.
●Drive Impact with Professional Services - With a dedicated team of consultants, we define, design, and deliver customized learning experiences that drive skills development and impact to organizations. Our team works to ensure the seamless integration of our platform into our customers' ecosystems and deliver bespoke solutions to meet the unique requirements of their business, industry, and geography.
●Utilize Global Partnerships - We have direct sales coverage throughout North America most of Europe and dedicated teams in India, Australia/New Zealand, and Singapore. For the remaining markets, particularly the major markets of Asia (Japan, Korea, Southeast Asia), Latin America, the Middle East and Africa, we leverage strategic partnerships with direct resellers and Original Equipment Manufacturers ("OEMs"). Our strategic partner network provides comprehensive global coverage, broadens our market reach, and drives revenue growth.
●Enhance eCommerce Offerings - Content is readily accessible worldwide through our enhanced eCommerce platforms, learn.percipio.com and codecademy.com, ensuring seamless learning experiences for consumers and small teams alike. With solutions available in multiple modalities, anywhere and on any device, Skillsoft can effectively democratize learning for the entire workforce of each customer.

SEASONALITY

Our business is subject to significant seasonality in bookings and billings, with the fourth fiscal quarter typically representing nearly 40% of annual volume. Our Content & Platform segment experiences the most seasonality, with the fourth fiscal quarter typically representing approximately 45% of annual volume. We generally recognize revenue from subscription fees ratably over the term of the contract; thus, while our billings are seasonal, revenue recognition is not subject to significant seasonality. However, accounts receivable and deferred revenue balances, as well as cash flow, are impacted significantly by our seasonality.

INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY

Our success is contingent upon the protection of our rights in intellectual property. We rely upon a combination of copyright and trademark laws as well as license agreements, intellectual property assignment agreements, confidentiality procedures, and employee invention assignment agreements to protect our proprietary rights. In certain cases, we have also entered into, and will continue to enter into, confidentiality agreements with our employees, consultants and third parties to protect the distribution of confidential information. We believe our intellectual property rights are a crucial component of our business.

As of January 31, 2024, we did not have any patents and pending patent applications in the United States or abroad. We have an ongoing trademark and service mark registration program pursuant to which we register our brand names and product names, taglines, and logos in the United States and other countries to the extent we deem appropriate. We also have common law rights in some unregistered trademarks that were established over years of use.

HUMAN CAPITAL RESOURCES

At Skillsoft, our values are borne with purpose, shaped by our people, and lived every day:

●One team - We can only succeed when we unite under one mission.
●Open & Respectful - We assume positive intent and ensure everyone feels welcome.
●Curious - Knowledge is power, and humility is the engine of learning.
●Ready - We must expect change and prepare for it always.
●True - We earn the trust of the people we work with and serve — every day.

We are committed to employing a diverse workforce that brings a variety of experiences, ideas, and perspectives. Our workforce is diverse when it comes to experience. We have learning professionals who have been in the industry — and at Skillsoft — for years, providing us with a wealth of institutional knowledge. We have young “digital natives,” who fuel innovation. We have integrated employees from multiple companies, enabling us to implement a broader set of best practices.

We encourage all of Skillsoft’s employees to take advantage of the same transformative learning experiences we deliver to our enterprise customers worldwide. As of January 31, 2024, we have 2,262 full-time employees, 39 part-time employees, 17 part-time project-based employees, for a total of 2,318 employees. None of our valued employees are members of unions.

AVAILABLE INFORMATION

Our annual reports on Form 10-K, quarterly reports on Form 10-Q, current reports on Form 8-K, and amendments to those reports filed or furnished pursuant to Section 13(a) or 15(d) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended, are made available free of charge through our website at investor.skillsoft.com, as soon as reasonably practicable after such documents are electronically filed with, or furnished to, the Securities and Exchange Commission (the “SEC”). The contents of our website are not, however, a part of this Form 10-K or intended to be incorporated by reference in any other report or document we file with the SEC. The SEC maintains an Internet site, www.sec.gov, that contains reports, proxy and information statements, and other information regarding issuers that file electronically with the SEC.

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The text of this filing, as the company filed it with the SEC, without its images or exhibits. This is not investment advice.