Forrester Research, Inc.
Q2 2015 Earnings Call Transcript

Published: 29 Jul 2015

[Operator:]

Good afternoon. Thank you for joining today’s call. With me today are George Colony, Forrester’s Chairman of the Board and CEO; Michael Morhardt, Forrester’s Chief Sales Officer; and Michael Doyle, Forrester’s Chief Financial Officer. George will open the call. Michael Morhardt will follow George to discuss sales. Michael Doyle will then follow Michael Morhardt to discuss our financials. We will then open the call to Q&A. A replay of this call will be available until August 28, 2015 and can be accessed by dialing 1-888-843-7419 or internationally 1-630-652-3042. Please reference the pass code 7320030#. Before we begin, I’d 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, intend, plans, estimates, or similar expressions are intended to identify these forward-looking statements. These statements are also 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’ll now hand the call over to George Colony.

[George Colony:]

Good afternoon and thanks for joining the call. I will speak for a few minutes and then give an update on the quarter and on the first half of the year. Mike Morhardt, our Chief Sales Officer, will give a short briefing on sales at mid-year; and Mike Doyle, Forrester’s CFO, will then give a financial review of the second quarter. The three of us will then take questions. Our plan for 2015 is to expand the company’s operating margin, bookings, revenue and earnings per share. We are achieving those goals, but at a pace that is not yet consistent or comprehensive. Significant parts of our business are growing at double digits, but we still have some products that are not yet performing to planned levels. On a macro level, Forrester’s strategy of helping our clients win, serve and retain customers remains resonant in the marketplace and the opportunity for Forrester remains large. I was with more than 100 clients over the course of Q2 and the lean-in and interest in our strategy was probable. As we’ve spoken about on previous calls, Forrester believes that the marketplace is entering a 20-year period in which customers will become increasingly empowered, taking control away from corporations, governments and other institutions. In this age of the customer, Forrester helps clients in three areas

[Michael Morhardt:]

Thanks, George. For Q2, the sales organization continued to demonstrate progress towards our goal of consistent double-digit bookings growth. As George mentioned, our clients tell us that the age of the customer market dynamic is real and they need our help to capitalize on it. For the quarter, we saw five of the seven sales teams achieve year over year growth. Our North American new business team had a solid quarter, with improvements in year over year performance and local global acquisition. Our international partners also continued to perform above expectation. And we also saw a turnaround in our European business with improved year over year growth and retention rates. We are still seeing unbalanced performance in Canada, parts of the Midwest, and in some countries in Europe. We are addressing these regions through leadership changes and additions and a renewed focus on client retention. From a metrics perspective, we saw client retention up again for the sixth quarter in a row. Sales attrition was down again, we are now at a three-year low for sales attrition. We also continued our sales expansion efforts ending up 6% over year over year quota bearing head count. Our goal is to grow by 10% in 2015 and potentially accelerate that expansion if the opportunity present itself. This sales expansion effort will allow us to drive better client retention and enrichment and increase new client acquisition. We do expect sales attrition to accelerate in Q3 like it did last year, but drop down in Q4. The age of the customer market opportunity is also broadening our relationships with clients. Clients are looking for more comprehensive solutions from Forrester across many of our products

[Michael Doyle:]

Thanks very much, Mike. I’ll now begin my review of Forrester’s financial performance for the second quarter of 2015, including a look at our financial results, the balance sheet at June 30, 2015, our second quarter metrics and the outlook for the third quarter and full year of 2015. Please note that the income statement numbers I’m reporting are pro forma and exclude the follow items

[Operator:]

[Operator Instructions] And we have a question from [indiscernible].

[Timothy McHugh:]

It’s Tim McHugh. I guess first on just the 40% of the business that’s not growing like you would like. One, what’s the math on – what pace is that growing or even declining? And can we walk through, I know you gave pieces of this throughout, but to summarize it, what makes up that 40%? I know, leadership boards, events, I guess, can you break out the relative size of each of those pieces.

[Michael Doyle:]

This is 60% and 40% on bookings for the first half, just to give you some color, not revenue. Essentially, the 40% is declining and obviously that’s offset by what’s growing here. The largest single component is our board business, FLB. That’s the biggest piece of it, Tim. Of that 40% bucket, I won’t necessarily give specifics, but that represents slightly under 40% of the 40% bucket. So it’s the biggest piece. The next largest piece is advisory. Some of that advisory is by design. We expected it to be slower growth as we ramped up project consulting, but there’s still opportunities to grow bookings on the advisory side. That’s the next biggest bucket. That’s probably more in the 30% range of that bucket. Then you have, what we call, BT role view. And George sort of hinted it that the challenge there which is clients transitioning as we take the research agenda from an IT one to a BT one, our clients transition. And that’s probably more in the line of the 25%. And then you have events, which smaller numbers, but bigger variances. In terms of percentage declines, it’s the biggest decline. So that’s the remainder of the bucket. So those are the components, Tim.

[Timothy McHugh:]

And did you say what was events down for this quarter?

[Michael Doyle:]

For the quarter, on the revenue side, Tim, percentage wise, we were down about 20%.

[Timothy McHugh:]

And in terms of leadership boards, I guess the role view comment, it’s just a function of the shift in focus in advisory, there’s a little bit, that’s just a function of the shift in focus. But leadership boards, is there an answer to how you turn that around?

[George Colony:]

I’m not going to get too details here, the marketing and leadership board was a board that was diminishing and that’s the one that we’ve now transitioned over to be B2C marketer board. And I think, I’m looking at Mike here, we’re getting good early feedback on that. And then the sales enablement forum which also was dropping in size and that will transition over to be the B2B marketer board. So we feel like that’s going to turn around two boards that were really in trouble and this is going to turn that around.

[Michael Morhardt:]

If you combine that two, Tim, as George mentioned, we’re launching two executive leadership boards to target CMOs and CIOs, which is something that sales organization has been looking for. That will help as well. And I think over the course of the past year, we have pushed on the value proposition of pure networking and we’ve worked through our client base to make sure that they understand the value proposition within the Forrester leadership board. It’s focused on the pure networking aspect and so I think Mike had mentioned this and George had mentioned that, that means different things to different geographies. And so we’re being much more focused in how we sell this in say Asia-Pac, or in Europe versus in North America.

[Michael Doyle:]

And just some financial color on it, Tim. Our internal plan had the board business declining in the first half of the year, but it was a low single digit number, because we knew there was a transition. Because we did a reorganization in the first quarter where we eliminated some European councils, we expected noise. I think we’ve had a little bit more noise, to George’s point, we didn’t transition into those other areas as quickly as we would have liked. So I think the solution is we continue to move forward and execute well on the transition and get momentum back in that business. But we did expect a modest decline in that business in the first half. And in reality, it’s a low double digit decline and that’s, I think to George’s point, more a function of transition and execution and we’ve got to get after that.

[George Colony:]

Just to give you one more detail here, Tim, as Mike alluded to, but in Europe, we were serving eight to nine boards in Europe and it was just too many. And the actions we took at the early part of the year was to move to four boards in Europe, so that we have focus in four. So fewer boards in Europe, so that’s why the transition to a lower growth number in the first part of the year.

[Operator:]

Our next question is from Bill Sutherland.

[Bill Sutherland:]

The FX impact, Mike, was it meaningfully greater than what you were penciling in with the guidance?

[Michael Doyle:]

Not in the quarter, Bill. I would attribute the second quarter, it’s a headwind, but we captured most of that in our second quarter guidance. I think we’re seeing it more for the full year. We’ve now brought down our thinking about FX for the back half of the year, but it had, I’d say, a very modest impact on our second quarter. Our second quarter miss was really more driven by some event slippage and a couple of those things. It was more, what I would call, performance oriented and FX driven. For the full year, though, we look at FX as being about 20% of the reason for us bringing down guidance on revenue. So that’s a piece of the story for the back part of the year. The remainder is really around [indiscernible] events and FLB based on first half performance. That’s how we’re thinking about the back half of the year guidance.

[Bill Sutherland:]

So at the midpoint, you’re guiding now to revenue for the year of little under 1 point. What would that be FX neutral?

[Michael Doyle:]

FX neutral, it’s probably [take on] little more than 3 points on top of that. So I would say for the year we’re about 4%. Clearly, our intent is to try and drive more out of that, but right now, sort of where we are, that’s how we’re pulling it out.

[Bill Sutherland:]

Well, you do look like a thumbs-up in the fourth quarter, I don’t know if part of that is some of the FX impact getting alleviated or whether you’re thinking that’s more of a turn in the business by them?

[Michael Doyle:]

I think it’s a little bit of a turn and then typically we should get a bump up as we roll into the fourth quarter, you should get some bump up in advisory and project consulting. So that’s how we’re looking at it. So we’re looking to get an uplift and then just some normal trend movement there too, Bill.

[Bill Sutherland:]

And the turnover in the sponsorship sales organization, can you just give us a little color on what happened?

[Michael Morhardt:]

So the sponsorship sales organization was closely partnered with the field research and consulting sales organization a couple of years ago. And over the course of last couple of years, we migrated the sponsorship sales organization into – they were kind of in an order-taking role and we wanted truly to have hunters and somebody who is an account manager with these types of sponsorship opportunity. And so over the course of the last six to seven months, we’ve moved out these more junior individuals and brought in a more senior team. We had lost our sponsorship sales leader at the second part of last year. We’ve replaced that individual with a more seasoned individual and she has rebuilt the team.

[George Colony:]

So essentially, Bill, we were depending on the field sales force to do a lot of the sponsorship sales and we transitioned away from the field sales force to a dedicated sales force. But that was inelegant transition.

[Bill Sutherland:]

I think that’s it for me. I think you guys gave us the – yeah, you gave us the quota bearing reps for the quarter.

[Michael Doyle:]

We did, yeah.

[Operator:]

We have no further questions at this time. I’ll now turn the call over to Michael Doyle for closing remarks.

[Michael Doyle:]

Okay. Thanks very much everyone for joining the call. George and I are going to be on the road, actually doing bit of Midwest tour, but also trying to get out and see as many investors as possible. So we look forward to seeing you over the next months in our travel. Thanks very much.

[Operator:]

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. This concludes today’s conference. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.