Forrester Research, Inc.
Q1 2019 Earnings Call Transcript

Published: 1 May 2019

[Operator:]

Good afternoon. Thank you for joining today's call. With me today are George Colony, Forrester's Chairman of the Board and CEO; Kelley Hippler, Forrester's Chief Sales Officer; and Mike Doyle, Forrester's Chief Financial Officer. George will open the call, Kelley will follow George to discuss sales, and Mike Doyle will discuss our financials. We'll then open the call to Q&A. A replay of this call will be available until May 30, 2019 and can be accessed by dialing 1-888-843-7419 or internationally at 1-630-652-3042. And please reference the passcode 8715326 followed by the pound key. Before we begin, I would like to remind you that this call will contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Words such as expects, believes, anticipates, intends, plans, estimates or similar expressions are intended to identify these forward-looking statements. These statements are based on the company's current plans and expectations and involve risks and uncertainties that could cause future activities and results of operations to be materially different from those set forth in the forward-looking statements. Some of the important factors that could cause actual results to differ are discussed in our reports and filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The company undertakes no obligation to update publicly any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. I will now turn the call over to George Colony.

[George Colony:]

Thank you very much for listening to Forrester's 2019 Q1 Investor Call. I will begin with an update on the quarter; Kelley Hippler, Head of Sales will give a short brief on the sales organization; and Mike Doyle, Forrester's CFO will then give a financial review for the quarter. I'm happy to report that the company's positive momentum from 2018 has continued into 2019 with Forrester achieving its booking goals for the quarter. In Q1, pro forma revenue achieved top end guidance and pro forma earnings per share exceeded guidance for the quarter. The U.S. performed well and we're seeing signs of recovery in our European business. Asia Pacific continues to lead all regions in growth with bookings there moving forward 15% year-over-year. The APAC sales force has been the first across to sell the SiriusDecisions product line in their book for SD deals in the quarter. 2019 will be a busy year for the company, so we're very pleased to be kicking off with solid results. Forrester is developing three capabilities for clients

[Kelley Hippler:]

Thank you, George. In Q1, the legacy Forrester sales organization continued our positive momentum from 2018. The customer engagement model or CEM, Forrester's go-to-market strategy, is continuing to add value for our customers while driving positive results for Forrester. Our agreement value has grown 12% versus prior year. Enrichment remained strong as our clients seek a greater role and greater impact from Forrester. Q1 also marked the ninth consecutive quarter that productivity of our ramped reps improved. In addition, we saw a decrease in sales repetition and an increase in the percentage of sellers getting to plan during Q1. With the sales model that is generating consistent results, our efforts are shifting towards integrating our recent acquisitions. We have expanded the number of sellers partnering with FeedbackNow to bring the ability to manage and respond to customer experience in real-time to more of our clients and prospects. George shared a number of reasons why we found the SiriusDecisions' acquisition so attractive, including but not limited to SiriusDecisions complementing Forrester's traditional strategy coverage, guiding our clients on what to do with operational coverage of how to do it. The strategy plus operations combination is both symbiotic and powerful. In addition, SiriusDecisions will also open four new paths for revenue synergy including

[Mike Doyle:]

Thanks, Kelley. I'll now begin my review of Forrester's financial performance for the first quarter of 2019, including a look at our financial results, the balance sheet at March 31, our first quarter metrics and the outlook for the second quarter of 2019. Please note that the income statement numbers I'm reporting are pro forma and exclude the following items

[Operator:]

Thank you [Operator Instructions] And your first question is from Tim McHugh. Tim, your line is open.

[Tim McHugh:]

Thanks. Just I guess first there is a comment in there about on the integration of Sirius with the sales force a little bit of turnover there I guess. Can you put a little more color around the size of the turnover I guess how meaningful and what's -- I guess any qualitative comments around what it is and then I think maybe surrounding that also then how that impacts plans to think about reconciling the sales models versus your legacy approach? Thanks.

[Kelley Hippler:]

Tim it's Kelley. Thank you for the questionnaire. In terms of the attrition, I'd say it's probably running about what we experienced when we put the customer engagement model in place and I think any time there is a major change to a selling motion, whether it be through a change in structure or an acquisition, you're going to have some folks that potentially want to explore other opportunities. I would say the positive for us here is that a lot of the attrition that did occur where folks that were into our hunter roles, so it has an impact on client relationships by and large and our ability to drive enrichment up-selling cross-sell which is really the focus of our work here with the integrations. So while it certainly wasn’t unfortunate, it's nothing that we think will hinder our ability to get to our plans for the year. With that said, we do have a number of cross-selling and up-sell programs that we're looking to launch across both sales forces shortly after Summit to try to help continue to drive that collaboration and make sure that we need the guidance that Mr. Doyle just communicated. So we are working on that. And again, a lot of it is to be expected very similar to what we experienced when we moved into the customer engagement model. I would also say having visited all the offices most of them multiple times at this point, there is a really good and talented sales force there, some people that are very engaged and very excited to be part of the Forrester, sales force is moving forward and I think it's just noise that you would expect with any acquisition.

[Tim McHugh:]

Have you moved sales force in totally onto your sales composition model and its kind of sales management approach? I know it's slightly different at Sirius than Forrester. Has that change been made I guess at this point?

[Kelley Hippler:]

That work is underway as part of our integration work streams and what we're also really wanting to make sure that we do is look for best practices across both organizations. So whether it would be the technologies that we're using, the methodology obviously the Sirius IT brings a lot around the areas of sales enablement that we are leveraging as well as what their sales force is doing that is work that we are already doing and expect to have concluded by next January.

[Tim McHugh:]

Okay. That's helpful. And then just on the ASV growth. Can you -- I know you broke it down by kind of some of the business units or product areas. But I guess maybe just qualitatively, I think the last couple of quarters it's really been more the advisory piece than more the kind of learning solutions that you've added that have been maybe driving a bit of more of the ASV growth. So what was kind of that core traditional research business ASV growth on an organic basis, if we looked at that this quarter and maybe how that compares versus the prior two?

[Mike Doyle:]

Tim, this is Mike. We are still getting I would say a healthy portion of our growth more on the advisory side. That said, we're seeing research pick up a bit, we had overall – I was very happy with the growth in the quarter. And on a cumulative basis for legacy Forrester, I think we're seeing the movement we wanted to see. Analytics has picked up we're -- probably we were struggling with that little over a year ago. So we're seeing the kinds of things come across that we wanted to see. So research is still not yet at a double-digit level, which is where we want it to be but I think we’re starting to see real progress there. As you heard from Kelley overall agreement value on legacy Forrester is up 12% and that's a consistent run of improvement on agreement value over the last four quarters. So we're really happy with what's going on, but I will say never satisfied with where we are with research, I think George has pushed us pretty hard that's got to be double-digit over the long haul because that's really what drives the profitable. And again we're seeing the right kind of movement. But we're still -- the bulk of -- the bigger growth is still coming out of our advisory businesses and learnings to your point.

[Tim McHugh:]

Okay. And then just lastly on the sales force, how much longer, I mean that’s a pretty healthy overall ASV growth rate, what's kind of organic with the sales force still flat and I understand you've been pushing productivity. How much more room is there before we need to see the sales force start growing more meaningfully to support ongoing ASV growth?

[Kelley Hippler:]

Sure. That's a great question, Tim and I think we are now getting to a place where with the growth that we’re having we will be looking to start modestly expanding heads I would also say we wanted to be very thoughtful about it knowing that we were -- there was a high propensity that this acquisition was going to close in January knowing that we were going to take onboard a large number of sellers and wanted to make sure that we had adequate territory and CV to support all of the headcount that we have. So I think given the current trajectory, we do plan to start expanding heads in a modest way towards the back end of the year.

[Tim McHugh:]

Okay, great. Thank you.

[Kelley Hippler:]

While still driving productivity, we do still believe that we want to be doing both moving forward, so not just doing one or the other. So I just want to put that caveat out there as well.

[Tim McHugh:]

Sure. Thanks.

[Operator:]

And your next question comes from Allen Klee with Maxim Group. Allen, your line is open.

[Allen Klee:]

Yes, hi. Compliments on the quarter. I was coming into this thinking this was the one quarter that we might have to worry about in the year with everything, but great job. When I -- one thing that stood out to me is the growth rate that you saw with Sirius, I think you said something like 24%. When you've made your -- last quarter when you gave your guidance, I believe you were guiding to like 15%. So was there something special about how they did this quarter? Or is it more that they're really tracking kind of like what they did a year before in terms of the growth?

[Mike Doyle:]

Yeah. I think -- Allen I think the 24% that you're thinking its really 20%. They are -- when you do our year-over-year comparisons, essentially what we're doing is capturing revenue this year for combined Sirius and Forrester, last year was just Forrester. So 24 points of our 34% growth in revenue was attributable to the addition of SiriusDecisions, they didn't grow at a 24% rate.

[Allen Klee:]

Okay. Thank you.

[Mike Doyle:]

It’s just the increment of them coming onboard, so.

[Allen Klee:]

Got it. Thank you. And then the customer feedback efforts you're making. Can you maybe just go into a little bit more about how where you are and all that?

[George Colony:]

Well, I talked -- George here Allen. So, I talked about the real-time customer experience cloud which we're currently developing. Its first iterations I said in my remarks is the physical FeedbackNow input. You can think about this as really as three parts of the cloud there is all the inputs. I am going to explain this in very simple terms all the inputs the analytics engine which is where GlimpzIt came into the picture because that is driven by an AI by an AI approach now that's of course the skills will be acquired with GlimpzIt. And then the third element of the customer experience cloud is the outputs to the client and a lot of these are in real-time via SMS or by sometimes with notification. So, those are the three elements. The current state of the cloud is we have a form of it which is built around the FeedbackNow capabilities with the physical inputs on the front end. Their analytics engine and then their notifications to clients. But that's -- we're 10% of the way to what with the full customer experience cloud is going to be. And so what's going on in the background is lots of development lot of we are spending lot of resources on developing the analytics engine more inputs and the way we are going to be outputting to clients. So, we are currently in bunch of alphas we will be we expect to be offering it sometime in the September-October timeframe for the first SKU of the fuller cloud. And I'm sorry if that confused you but -- it is amazing to be on the marketplace talking to clients about real-time whether they are selling software whether they are selling applications whether they are selling whether you're at an airport whether you're on a train almost every company that we meet with is fascinated with and is now focused on how they'll measure real-time experience it's really two parts monitoring the experience and then being able to improve the experience in real-time which is what we are aiming for here. So, I hope that helps.

[Allen Klee:]

No, that's great. Thank you. That should be valuable to customers. And then just -- can you help us understand bigger picture with when you get through integrating Sirius with Forrester? How you think about the impact that the overall profitability and growth rate? How we can think of the company as kind of a trend that it would be on?

[Mike Doyle:]

Yes. Allen its Mike. Look we love the Sirius product, it is highly syndicated. And it really helps fill the void for us I mean to George's point it's that third platform that we felt we needed it really gets very much at how do people operationalize change and make things happen. So, we love the syndicated portion of it, it is a high-growth company and our goal is despite a little hiccup we have right now is to continue to find a way to get that to stay at a healthy double-digit growth company that legacy Forrester is doing the same thing. So, we expect that as we roll into 2020 that we're leaving the year with both businesses running at healthy double-digit rates from a booking standpoint which will translate into very healthy revenue growth a higher syndicated mix as we go into 2020. Again because Sirius brings a nice syndicated component. And the net result of that is the expanding operating margins which both for legacy Forrester and for SiriusDecisions. So, we look at this as really Sirius helping us set the table to get to more expansive margins in 2020 when -- what that's going to be -- it's difficult to say is it 200 basis points probably, but we haven't given guidance out that far yet. But that's how we are thinking about this business that this is the year to digest it get it on board, make sure that we've integrated it well that we have packaged it up as part of a larger Forrester solution for our clients and roll into 2020 with a lot of momentum on across all product lines.

[George Colony:]

And lots of revenue synergy -- as Kelley talked about in her remarks, the synergy around selling SiriusDecisions outside of U.S. and they had a very, very small profile internationally and globally as an example I have might said this on the last call, but if you look at every large telecom in the world, whether it's Sprint's Telecom or Deutsche Telekom whatever, they all have a B2B sales force. So there is capability for us to sell the SiriusDecisions solutions into those -- into every telecom company in the world and those were entities that were never called out by the SiriusDecisions sales force. So the revenue synergy globally also takes SiriusDecisions into new roles to take it into new verticals. So it's -- I'm not going to make some promises about very, very high growth rates, but our plan this year I think is a conservative plan which has really not factored in a lot of the synergies that we speak that we're going to capture in 2020, 2021. We're very optimistic.

[Allen Klee:]

That’s great. Thank you so much.

[George Colony:]

Thanks, Allen.

[Operator:]

[Operator Instructions] And your next question comes from Vincent Colicchio with Barrington Research. Vincent, your line is open.

[Vincent Colicchio:]

Yeah. Just a couple from me, most of mine were asked. George, you talked about new business signings in the customer experience side. Just curious is the level of new signings then the pipeline, is that coming in better-than-expected? What does that look like?

[George Colony:]

I would love to say it is better-than-expected from what we acquired. I guess, I don't think we really understood the potential here Allen -- Vince. It is -- you have to realize it's a very new market for us. We did not sell in most of the places where FeedbackNow is located. We -- as an example, we would sell to the high level customer experience executive in these companies, but they are selling to the -- at the operational level, very different customer, very different types of companies. Today, I got an e-mail from the guy who runs a business force and he said we got three new wins and these are companies we never would have called on before. So, it's a very surprising business. Our strategy in the U.S. is to go after airports and to go after very large venues where we can install many, many devices, because as you know every time someone hits that button they see -- they will see the Forrester brand. And then, also, if we were installing in very large traffic areas, that's where we tend to get most of our leads. CEO's walk up to the buttons they look at it and say, this is kind of cool. And then they will e-mail us or they will hit the website and contact us. That's a new lead. So it -- Kelley may have a different view. And Mike may have a different view here. But I can say it's a very surprising business. Remember, it's just the arrowhead of the arrow of the full customer -- real-time customer experience cloud. But it is wonderful to be able to have a foothold in those companies, where we will be able to sell the larger digital version of the cloud as well in the future. But it's a -- so I'd say we're very happy with that acquisition. That was a good move, not only tactically in revenue-wise and bookings-wise but also strategically.

[Vincent Colicchio:]

Thank you for that and Kelley just kind of a general question. But the new sales model appears to be performing well. And we've talked before about it performing best in regions where it has been in place to the longest period of time. So I guess is that still the case. And then are there any regions where there are some concerns with the new model?

[Kelley Hippler:]

Sure. I would say it's still holds that the areas where the model has been in place the longest, is where we're seeing the most impact on client engagements, so that would be North America. This is the second full year that Europe and Asia Pacific will be in those models. So we do expect to see those engagements. Scores continue to rise which we know will lead to increased retentions. So, it is continuing to perform as designed. And we see the best results where it has been in place the longest. And we have the most seasoned, customer success, managers working with those clients.

[Mike Doyle:]

I'd say from my standpoint Vince, I'm very happy with the results here right. It's one of those deals we have been at this now for three years. And it's very cool to see it performing so well.

[Vincent Colicchio:]

Okay that’s good to hear. That’s it for me. Thanks guys.

[Kelley Hippler:]

Thank you.

[Mike Doyle:]

Thank you.

[Operator:]

[Operator Instructions] I am currently standing by for questions. Okay. And there are no further questions at this time. I would like to turn the call back over to Mike Doyle.

[Mike Doyle:]

Thanks very much. And thanks to all of you for joining the call. We are excited about 2019. George and I will be out on the road. And we will also be presenting at a few conferences. So, we look forward to seeing a lot of you over the next few months. So thanks again. And I appreciate you joining us.

[Operator:]

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.