Gartner, Inc.
Q4 2018 Earnings Call Transcript

Published: 5 Feb 2019

[Operator:]

Good morning, and welcome to the Gartner Fourth Quarter 2018 Earnings Conference Call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. [Operator Instructions] After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to David Cohen, Gartner's GVP of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

[David Cohen:]

Thank you, Heather, and good morning, everyone. We appreciate you joining us today for Gartner's fourth quarter 2018 earnings call. With me today are Gene Hall, Chief Executive Officer; and Craig Safian, Chief Financial Officer. This call will include a discussion of fourth quarter 2018 financial results and our outlook for 2019, as disclosed in today's press release. In addition to today's press release, we have provided an earnings supplement for investors and analysts, in which we provided a detailed review of our financials and business metrics. In the earnings supplement, we included a full non-GAAP P&L, excluding divested operations. This table combines Heritage Gartner and Heritage CEB, and removes the operating results of the divestitures starting January 1, 2017. For 2018, the table provides the results as if we had used the net proceeds from the divestitures to repay debt on December 31st, 2017. This gives you a view down to adjusted EPS for 2018 that reflects how we are thinking about the business as we move into 2019. Please note our Events segment has been renamed Conferences to align with the Business Operations. Also in our discussion of Global Business Sales or GBS, we will refer to the GXL products. These are the products for business leaders across the enterprise. Gartner for Marketing Leaders is GML; Gartner for Finance Leaders is GFL and so on. We've introduced six of these products over the past five quarters and we'll introduce more in the future. In aggregate, we will refer to these products for business leaders as GXL. We've posted the press release and the earnings supplement on our website investor.gartner.com. Following comments by Gene and Craig, we will open up the call for your questions. We ask that you limit your questions to one and follow up. On the call, unless stated otherwise, all references to revenue and contribution margin are for adjusted revenue, excluding divested operations and adjusted contribution margin, excluding divested operations, which exclude the deferred revenue purchase accounting adjustments and the recently divested businesses. All references to EBITDA are for adjusted EBITDA, excluding divested operations with the adjustments as described in our earnings release and excluding the divested operations. All cash flow numbers unless stated otherwise are as reported with no adjustments related to the divested operations. All growth rates in Gene's comments are FX neutral, unless stated otherwise. Reconciliations for all non-GAAP numbers we use are available in the Investor Relations section of the gartner.com website. Finally, all contract values and associated growth rates we discuss are based on 2018 foreign exchange rates. In the earnings supplement, the abbreviation ex D.O. indicates that the metric excludes divested operations. As set forth in more detail in today's earnings release, certain statements made on this call may constitute forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements can vary materially from actual results and are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties, including those contained in the company's 2017 annual report on Form 10-K and quarterly reports on Form 10-Q as well as in other filings with the SEC. I encourage all of you to review the risk factors listed in these documents. Now, I will turn the call over to Gartner's Chief Executive Officer, Gene Hall.

[Gene Hall:]

Good morning, and thanks for joining us. 2018 was a strong year. We continue to have world-class operational execution and innovation, while making progress on our core strategy of establishing leading the market positions in every role across the enterprise. We continue to invest in our business to drive sustained double-digit growth. Across the business, we grow sales forces and reduced open sales positions to record lows. We made substantial investments in GBS products, service and sales to accelerate future growth. We also made substantial investments in critical support functions, such as recruiting to ensure that we have the talent to support sustained double-digit growth. We divested several non-core businesses to focus on our enormous market opportunity. We helped 15,600 enterprise clients in 100 countries around the world with their mission critical priorities. We provided great jobs to 15,000 associates around the world, and delivered market leading returns for our shareholders. Few organizations had this level of global impact. In 2018, total revenues were up 12%, fueled by strong performances from our Research, Conferences and Consulting businesses. Research delivered another strong year of double-digit growth, up 12% over 2017. One factor fueling our growth is consistent application of the Gartner Formula. The Gartner Formula for growth is our playbook for driving sustained double-digit growth. It consists of indispensable insights, exceptional talent, sales excellence and enabling infrastructure. For all of these, we drive globally consistent execution of best practices and continuous improvement and innovation. We continue to apply the Gartner Formula to the Global Technology Sales, or GTS, and Global Business Sales, or GBS. GTS source leaders and their teams within IT and represents 80% of our total contract value. In GTS, our performance continued to accelerate in 2018. Contract value growth increased to 14% and sales productivity improved. We again delivered double digit growth in every region across every sized company and in virtually every industry. This acceleration is driven by three primary factors

[Craig Safian:]

Thank you, Gene, and good morning, everyone. 2018 was an exciting year for Gartner. It was the first full year of providing insight and advice to clients across all enterprise functions giving us a much broader addressable market and the ability to provide even more value to our clients. On FX-neutral basis, our year-over-year financial performance for 2018 included

[Operator:]

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from Tim McHugh with William Blair. Your line is open.

[Timothy McHugh:]

Thank you. Just, I guess, on GBS, I understand the comments you made, I guess broadly why there is a lot of change is happening in terms of the product set and new sales people. And so it's going to take time. But I think certainly relative to my expectations and the investors' expectations, it seems like it's harder or taking longer or at least the performance in the fourth quarter probably is a little weaker than we would have thought. So how does it compare to your expectations and what if it is taking longer or as harder? What's different than you would have said before?

[Gene Hall:]

Hey, Tim, it's Gene. I wouldn't characterize it that way. Basically we, as I mentioned in my remarks, our focus has been how do we get to sustained double-digit growth as quickly as possible. And to do that we needed to introduce new products, we needed to trend sales force on those products, maybe become a sales learning curve. As we talked that in the past, we allow them to keep some of the legacy products there in their pipeline till midyear of 2018. We trained them in the first half of 2018, the new products. And so if you look at the learning curve, they didn’t really get a chance to start the learning curve very well until the second half of 2018. And as Craig and I both mentioned, what happened basically at the end of the year is, they couldn’t sell the legacy problems, so that fell off naturally, and their acceleration on the new products wasn’t fast enough during 2018, it will be in 2019, wasn’t fast during 2018 to make-up for that falloff. We did that purposely. There wasn’t something that wasn’t -- that we didn’t know what’s going to happen. We knew we purposely that we talked about less of the quarters of that exact strategy of liking to finish up the pipeline and then training people in the first half on the new products and selling those exclusively for the people have them beginning in the second half of last year.

[Timothy McHugh:]

I guess, maybe following up on that. The change, I guess, in terms of the pace of growth you’re growing the sales force at. That’s different than what you have said three to six months ago, I guess. So what are you seeing that says -- I guess, makes you decided to stop growing GBS at the same rate?

[Gene Hall:]

So the -- we grew GBS very quickly during 2018 to set us for great 2019. We’re still planning to grow at pretty good double-digit rate during 2019. As we always do, as we’ve always done in GTS, as we think -- as see productivity going up during 2019 or not meeting our expectations, we’ll flex that up or down 2019. But I think we look at as we’re going into 2019 with a much stronger sales force, and we want to see return on that investment. And when we start to see full return on that investment, I can see its ramping up back in the 20% range of sales force growth as well.

[Craig Safian:]

And Tim, it’s Craig. Good morning. The one thing I’d add is, as I mentioned, we have moderated the growth rate. It was still projecting 14% to 16% GBS territory growth for 2019, which by many measures is still pretty rapid growth. But moderating -- it just allows us to have one less management challenge, if you will, as we roll into 2019. So as Gene and I both mentioned, as we think about 2019, we’ve got 23% more sales people. They all have more tenure or will have more tenure in 2019 than they had in 2018. We’ve got great progress on the GXL new business sales and a number of other things working in our favor as well. And so, again, as we moderated the growth we have all that in mind as we pivot into 2019.

[Operator:]

Thank you. Your next question comes from Manav Patnaik with Barclays. Your line is open.

[Manav Patnaik:]

So maybe just on GBS again, loosing clients in that business, I mean, I guess, I though you guys are still going to sell the legacy business for those who wanted it and so on and so forth. So can you just help me bridge why you’re losing clients? And just a little bit more color on why legacy is getting hit so quickly that fast?

[Gene Hall:]

So just to be clear on our strategy there, for clients that already have a legacy product, we will allow them to renew as long as they want to renew. And our renewal rates among the legacy products are slightly higher than they were when they were CEB products. And so actually they're riddled to going up since they become a product of GBS. So we're going to let clients who like that product, who want to keep renewing, they can keep renewing it. For new clients, we're still exceeding on selling just -- where we have the GXL products only selling GXL products because they provide more value to clients and higher retention. And so they’re better value for the clients and want the clients who have that value. And again, it benefits the economics of the business over the long term.

[Manav Patnaik:]

And I suppose, just in terms of visibility, I mean, I guess, one of the things that everyone’s liked about Gartner is given your subscription model and so forth you have the visibility. But at least it sounds like over the last few quarters things haven’t played out on the GBS side as we would have expected. So I guess what I'm trying to ask is, if I heard you correctly, I think, you guys said you'd get to 8% with no further improvements this year. And I was just learning how confident are you even in that 8% really?

[Gene Hall:]

So, I guess, what I'd say is, that’s purely the math of it meaning that if our productivity does not improve and our retention does not improve. By the way, we are certainly aiming to improve both productivity and retention. But if they did not, if you just take the pure math of it, that gets about 8% growth. And that's why we're pretty, I've said for quite some time, we are driving to get you double-digit growth by the end of '19, that table just shows the kind of pure math from where we are in terms of getting there.

[Operator:]

Thank you. Your next question comes from Gary Bisbee with Bank of America. Your line is open.

[Gary Bisbee:]

I guess, following on the – this line of questioning from others. Do you think you push change too fast that CEB given the state the business was in when you've acquired it? And maybe, in specifically, as it relates to the move to the seat base or the newer products, can you compare just how that transition when – Eugene, when you did that after joining Gartner a number of years ago? And how that’s looking now? When we look back at the numbers from then, it doesn't appear, but hard to tell that there was this much sort of impact to the numbers that you pushed that change through. And so just help us understand how that happened in the past and the confidence that provides or how that frames what you're seeing today? Thank you.

[Gene Hall:]

So Gary, that’s going back a long time. So I'll just stick very briefly to that. When we first started and we accelerated back then, we didn't have the Gartner Formula, we didn't have all the capabilities in terms of recruiting, training, tools, process that we have today. And so that acceleration took place over a much longer time period. As we have -- and our plan really hasn't changed, and we're proceeding according to the plan for the CEB acquisition, which is we acquired the company. We've developed new products. We talked all year last year about how during the first half we let them sell the legacy products. As we train them on the new products, we have stopped them then they'll ramp up. That's what going according to what we would have expected. And so we’ve purposely decide to go faster because we have better recruiting, training, tools and processes than we had 15 years ago.

[Gary Bisbee:]

And then, just the follow-up, maybe for Craig. So when I look at the free cash flow guidance for the year, it's not clear to me that there is the working capital benefit in the back half of the year that the acceleration of CV or GBS would normally imply. And so just -- can you help us understand as you think about the free cash flow profile of the business, do we still think that if you are successful in accelerating CV of that segment? We should see the cash conversion improved meaningfully over -- at least as an exit rate as we exit this year and into next year or is there anything different today? Thank you.

[Craig Safian:]

No. Good morning, Gary. I think the way to think about the free cash flow, I think, 2018 was a very strong free cash flow year for us as illustrated by the metrics and made really good progress over the course of the year, first, catching up on some of the challenges that we exited 2017 with, and then just having a very strong collection year. And we have fueled the bulk of that the great free cash flow year in 2018 was the accelerated growth and the accelerating growth rate of our GTS business, which again represents little more than 80% of that total CV base. As we pivot into 2019, we still expect very strong conversion and working capital benefit from that great growth rate that we’re getting from GTS. I think your hypothesis is correct in that. As we accelerate the growth of the GBS business, we get to take more advantage of working capital benefits that are just structurally inherent to a subscription business, where we’re billing all upfront and then delivering and recognizing the revenue over the balance of the contract. So as we get towards that double-digit growth rate by the end of 2019, that’s what we’re targeting, we should see the working capital benefit improve and the conversion metrics will look better as a virtue of that as well.

[Operator:]

Thank you. Your next question comes from Toni Kaplan with Morgan Stanley. Your line is open.

[Toni Kaplan:]

Did the macro environment this quarter play any part of role in sort of the GBS slowdown or customers maybe more reluctant to their subscriptions, just given some of the volatility, perhaps caution? Thanks.

[Craig Safian:]

Yes. So the answer is no. If you look at our business, Q4 is very strong. If you look at GTS, we had great growth there. If you look at Conferences, we had great growth there. If you look at the backlog and Consulting -- primarily our bookings, it was up 12%, which is very strong for us. And so that the whole story of GBS is actually pretty simple, which is the ramp-up in the GXL products wasn’t yet to the point where it made up for the decline in the legacy products. That will turn around in 2019. And that’s what was going on in GBS.

[Toni Kaplan:]

And then, your guidance for 2019 at the midpoint in place, little over 30 basis points of adjusted EBITDA margin contraction. I guess, as the sales people and GBS ramp-up. That makes sense. This could be more of an investment year and you’re not quite productivity -- peak productivity levels. How should we think about it afterwards like -- I know, historically -- you’ve said you wanted to keep margins pretty constant? At some point, could we actually see margins start to expand once the GBS sales people are at sort of a higher productivity level? Thank you.

[Gene Hall:]

Good morning, Toni. So the way we’re thinking about managing business is very consistent with how we’ve managed in the past. We’re obviously focused on accelerating the top-line growth rate in doing so, because Research has such great structural gross margins. We do typically get some gross margin leverage flowing through. As I talked about in my prepared remarks, we had gross margin leverage both in the in the fourth quarter and on a full-year basis in 2018. We'll continue to manage our G&A to grow at a slightly lower rate than revenue growth. And so there's operating leverage there as well. And we'll continue to invest in sales. And I think, in 2018 and 2019, we have invested across the board. I mentioned investments in GTS. I mentioned investments in our conference sales. And I talked about the kind of returns that we're getting in '18 and beyond or expect to get beyond from those prior investments. With GBS, we are investing -- we invested in '17 and 2018, we're continuing that investment in 2019 with the goal of getting double-digit CV growth by the end of '19, and then that accelerating from there. So double-digit is not the end game for us. It's just a stopping point on our way to see even faster growth. As that happens, there is some leverage that we will get on that GBS selling line. But again, the way that we think about managing business going forward is a little bit of gross margin leverage, a little bit of G&A leverage. And we'll continue to make sure that we're investing appropriately in sales to fuel sustained double-digit growth rate to the top-line.

[Operator:]

Thank you. Your next question comes from George Tong with Goldman Sachs. Your line is open.

[George Tong:]

Given your progress with your GXL initiative and phase out of legacy products for GBS, can you discuss how you expect GBS contract value growth to evolve over the next several quarters specifically? Should we expect to relatively steady ramp towards your targets? Or do you see factors that could cause lumpiness in growth over the course of the year?

[Craig Safian:]

George, good morning's, it's Craig. The way to think about it is a little bit related to the timing of the phase-out of the legacy products, new business sales. And so as Gene discussed, we still have that legacy new business sales happening, full on in Q1, slowly starting to diminish a little bit in Q2, and then where there was the relevant GXL products phasing out in Q3 and Q4. And the GXL new business sales continue to ramp. And so the way we kind of think about it is -- we really start to see the benefits of the GXL ramp in Q3 and Q4. We're not providing specific guidance around the CV growth on a quarterly basis. We're playing the long game here. We continue to play the long game on that one. But the way to think about it really is just related to the timing of the phase-out from 2018.

[George Tong:]

And switching gears to the GTS business. Can you discuss how spending intentions are changing among your existing clients there? And how you expect changes in overall IT spending to potentially alter IT research budgets?

[Craig Safian:]

Yes. So, as you know, we're a global company. We're in the 100 countries around the world. And things vary dramatically depending on which country you're in. And even within the countries specific industries or specific companies can be either doing well or in distress. And so, I guess, it's a sort of at a total macro level globally. I don't see any giant change like just keep slow down or even like that. If you look at individual markets or individual industries of those companies, you see puts and takes. But sort of in a global macro – we don’t see a big change there in terms of what we’re seeing.

[Operator:]

Thank you. Your next question comes from Bill Warmington with Wells Fargo. Your line is open.

[Bill Warmington:]

So, I have a question on the GBS contract side of growth. I was just hoping -- you could help me bridge the 1.1% CV growth in the fourth quarter to the 8% -- no improvement productivity, no attrition improvement in the upper left quadrant on the chart -- on Page 12.

[Craig Safian:]

Good morning, Bill. It’s Craig. Yes, happy to do that. So -- just so, we’re 100% clear. When we look on Page 12, the new business productivity is an expression of new business dollars for a salesperson. So it’s not the overall dollar amount of new business, it’s the new business we expect for salesperson. And again, using the same methodology we use for productivity, we base it on the beginning of period headcount. And so, as we talked about during my prepared remarks, the new business productivity we achieved in 2018 for sales person was a little more than $260,000 for an individual. We entered 2019 with 23% more people on Jan 1, 2019 compared to Jan 1, 2018. If you extrapolate the number of people times of new business per person that gets you a gross new business number. And if you then apply the attrition, again, we talked about having roughly based on the weighted average of our GXL and non-GXL products having attrition of around -- CV attrition of around 27%. If that is flat, we will use 27% of our roughly $600 million base, you then apply that new business number. And that gives you the calculated NCVI. The NCVI in the numerator, getting CV balance from the denominator, that gets us to the 8%.

[Bill Warmington:]

Okay. One -- my follow-up question, I wanted to ask about your thoughts on the continuing pace of hiring at GBS, and what kind of assumptions are built into the 2019 guidance for that in terms of gross ads and turnover assumptions at the headcount level?

[Craig Safian:]

Bill, the way we’re thinking about GBS is we grew the sales force net 16% in 2017, 23% in 2018. We’re targeting 14% to 16% headcount growth in 2019. Our turnover assumptions -- and we actually just went through pretty detailed review of this. GBS turnover and GTS turnover are about the same. We’re expecting that to continue into 2019. And again, we’re expecting net growth of 14% to 16%. I would say that we are over weighting the growth in areas that already have strong productivity. And again as Gene mentioned, that’s the way we typically manage it in our GTS business as well. And so, we didn’t set out with – hey, we need to grow X percent. We actually analyze the business at a detailed level, figured out where we could easily and productively and profitably absorb the headcount growth. And we went and built the growth plan that way. So that's the way we're thinking about GBS headcount growth in 2019.

[Operator:]

Thank you. Your next question comes from Jeff Silber with BMO Capital Markets. Your line is open.

[Jeff Silber:]

Just a follow-up on that question. If I do the math correctly, I look at your net sales force growth, it looks like you added about 550 people net in 2018. You're targeting about 460 or so for '19. That's a 1,000 people over a 2-year period. Are you having difficulty finding people? Are you having to pay these entry sales people more just to attract them?

[Gene Hall:]

So the short answer is no, we aren't having to pay them more than kind of the normal wage inflation in each market. Basically the -- Gartner is a very attractive place to work. And so whenever our recruiters go out, we have a great brand and we’re going to be a great brand. And on top of it, we have a really, really strong recruiting team. So between the combination of our great brand and our great recruiting teams, we've actually, in fact, exceeded our expectations. As I mentioned last year, we have fewer open territories than we had originally thought, because recruiting has been so strong because of the hold brand and recruiting capabilities.

[Craig Safian:]

The other thing just to reinforce Jeff there is, when we're recruiting and those gross numbers you're talking about from a hiring perspective, you're talking, specifically GBS. But we're recruiting around -- the world, we're recruiting experienced sales people, we're recruiting people right out of the university et cetera. So it's a very diverse recruiting pool that we're going after. It's not like we're reliant on any one city geography country wise. And so that minimizes the risk as well. And again, I double reinforce the comment Gene made about, the attractiveness of the Gartner brand as an employer, particularly for sales people and the strength of our recruiting organization.

[Jeff Silber:]

And my follow up question, I wanted to focus on the GXL product. You mentioned when comparing to the legacy product that retention is higher for your GXL products. Can you talk about -- is there any difference in pricing or margins between those two product lines?

[Craig Safian:]

So the way we thought about the GXL pricing, we're very big fans of simplicity and consistency. And so the GXL products are priced very consistently to their sister products on the GTX side. And those products are set up to deliver very good consistent gross margin for us. We price the value when we price to make sure that we're getting appropriate gross margins. I think the real beauty of GXL when we think about it from a growth opportunity perspective, number one is it's just a better constructive product, it serves the needs of the individual directly, but it also allows us to further penetrate organizations once we get in there. And so what you’ve seen us do on the GTX side, we've actually done on the supply chain and marketing side as well is, we'll get in with one to one seats in an organization, and then, over time, we will grow that footprint with our product portfolio. And GXL allows us to do that in those enterprises, whereas the legacy leadership council did not.

[Operator:]

Thank you. Your next question comes from the Peter Appert with Piper Jaffray. Your line is open.

[Peter Appert:]

Craig, just following upon the margin issue, to the extent, you've got slower sales force growth in ‘19, you’re anticipating better contract volume performance. It seems like there's -- a bit of a disconnect in terms of an expectation of lower margins. So what am I missing here?

[Craig Safian:]

You know the – obviously, all of the CV growth we deliver over the course of 2019, the corresponding revenue lags. And so -- as we build the CV and then CGI, over the course of 2019, the bulk of that revenue upside flows into 2020. And so there's one thing we're sure of which is we're going to pay the sales people and that expense is us as long as they're onboard or is with us as long as they're onboard. And that's what's dragging down the margin. So if you think about we're still -- we're growing GBS 14% to 16% coming off of a year, where we grew the sales force 23%, we're only going to build the double digit CV growth by the end of 2019. That will convert into corresponding double-digit revenue growth, but not until 2020, which will meet the margin impact. So it's really an investment in 2019 with the payback in 2020 and beyond.

[Peter Appert:]

And then just as the follow-up, and I guess this is sort of expanding on with Toni asked earlier, would your expectation Craig then be going forward that we should think about margins in the context of the base rate we're going to see in ‘19 as sort of the steady state level going forward?

[Craig Safian:]

Yes, it’s a good question, Peter. And we're not providing a margin outlook or margin guidance beyond 2019 at this point. We’ll definitely talk about it in upcoming investor interactions like our Investor Day. But as Toni articulated in her question and as I think, we attempted to articulate in our response. As we improve the growth rate of GBS, all things equal, that will help margin. And -- but again, as we think about the future, the way we’re managing our business is, accelerate the top line, a little bit of gross margin leverage, a little bit of G&A leverage and again we’re going to continue to invest in sales, so that we can sustain the strong double-digit growth rates into the future.

[Operator:]

Thank you. Your next question comes from Hamzah Mazari with Macquarie. Your line is open.

[Mario Cortellacci:]

Hi, this is Mario Cortellacci, filling in for Hamza. Just wondering if you can give us a sense of how you expect organic growth to perform in a slowdown given that CEB is now in the portfolio and GBS? Or maybe even asked in a different way is, I guess, do you view that business is being more discretionary than the GTS segment?

[Gene Hall:]

So we don’t view that business is being more discretionary than the GTS segment. Basically, our products are very affordable and they provide very high value. And we have, at any given point in time, and this is true whether it’s an IT or its HR, finance, we have clients that are their companies are doing really well and the companies are doing very poorly. And we do well in both environments because when people doing well, we’ll help them with like growth-oriented issues, when people doing poorly, we help them cost control-oriented issues. And so we can do well in both of environments. We shown them GTS, we remain in the same exact place in GTS.

[Mario Cortellacci:]

And -- I know, you’ve -- there are already questions about productivity metrics. I want to see if you can give us a sense of those metrics from a regional perspective. And I know you guys are growing those territory growth 11% GTS, 20% GBS. I guess, I just want to see if there is any variation from region to region? And also what’s your timeframe for GBS's sales productivity to get closer to GTS?

[Craig Safian:]

Good morning. It's Craig. The – so I'll take the second question first. So as we think about the corresponding productivity measures, obviously, in GTS, we've been focused on improving the GTS sales productivity. And we've been consistently doing that. And book by no means or we done there. We're focused on continuing to drive improvements to overall sales productivity. If you extrapolate the 2019 view that we talked about and that path to double digit and back into what is that mean from a productivity perspective, roughly speaking, I think on average the productivity would be around $75,000 of NCVI per accounting executive, and the team here second to Matt, just to make sure I'm right, to get close to double-digit growth. And again there were still be pretty sizable gap then between that 75 or close to 80K, and the 118K of productivity that we're delivering on the GTS side. We're going to be focused on continuing to improve the GBS productivity overtime. And we're going to remain focused on improving GTS productivity overtime. Over the long term, there is no reason why they can't be around the same levels. And obviously, if we're doing that and improving both GTS and GBS, our overall contract value growth will continue to accelerate. In terms of the regional differences, I think, we manage a pretty diverse sales force that calls on the largest companies in the world, down to relatively small enterprises that have around $100 million in revenue or in that neighborhood. And the people that we're recruiting to sell to those different types of organization, obviously, have very different background. So some of them, as I mentioned, are right out of university, some of them come to us with 5 to 15 years of experience, for the largest company, they might have 20 plus years of industry experience. And so the differentiation is probably more important and pronounced there than it is regionally. And we've got sort of that structure set up around the world, again, making sure that we're maximizing the opportunity for the type of account that we're calling on. We do look at productivity regionally. We do look at it by tenure. We do look at it by type of channel that we’re – or type of company that we're selling to. We look at it as compared to cost. We look at it all sorts of productivity metrics. The key for us is regardless of what level we're looking at, are we driving improvements for those productivity measures consistently overtime.

[Operator:]

Thank you. Your next question comes from Joseph Foresi with Cantor Fitzgerald. Your line is open.

[Joseph Foresi:]

So -- I was wondering how exactly are the GXL products different than CEB? I know you talked about the pricing model around them, but the products themselves. And do customers have to cancel legacy CEB in order to get on GXL?

[Gene Hall:]

Hey, it's Gene. So the GXL product have substantially more content in them than the legacy products did. They have more content of both -- any specific function like HR. And on top of it we've taken whatever technology content is relevant and put that in the products as well. So there is -- first thing is there is a lot more content in the GXL product than the legacy product. The second piece is that the actual -- what's included in terms of things like Events and things like that, you can go to analyst inquiries and stuff, also is a higher value package than what you get. So it's basically a combination of the content itself is better. There's a lot more content. And secondly, the other things that are part of the products are also a lot higher. And that's why you see the retention rates being a lot higher with the GXL products.

[Joseph Foresi:]

And then, I guess my second question. Why hope to the double digit growth? I think that was given kind of that closure of the acquisition. But a lot has changed since then, like you pulled forward investments, you ramped the sales force, you divested things. And now, it sounds like you're going after the products. I'm just curious. I understand the math pushes you kind of in that direction, but with all the changes post closure, why hold to that target? Why not just lower the target and give yourself more of an opportunity to outperform it?

[Gene Hall:]

So we've been focused on the operational changes to take advantage of this enormous market opportunity we have in GBS. And so we’ve started from the -- how do we actually get like, for example, the transition from the lower value legacy products to very high value GSL products. And because they're higher value, we want to get there as quickly as we could. We've introduced them now for the all the major roles, markets, HR, finance, legal, sales, and we’ll introduce others going forward. And so the double-digit is more of an outcome as opposed to a specific objective. So we sort of said, based on what we know about how people are going to ramp-up and follow-up legacy products, the strategy we've taken. This is kind of the outcome we expect as opposed to the other way around. And by the way, as Craig said, and as we both said several times, getting to -- our exploration is higher than just I’ve -- struggling across the finish line to double-digit. We want to be well in the double-digit range, not just 10.0%.

[Operator:]

Thank you. And this concludes our question-and-answer session. I'd like to turn the call back over to Mr. Gene Hall, for closing remarks.

[Gene Hall:]

So in summary, 2018 was a strong year. We continue to have world-class operational execution innovation, while making progress on our core strategy of establishing leading market positions in every role across the enterprise. We made investments across the business to support sustained double-digit growth and leading indicators are strong. For GBS, we entered 2019 with a 23% larger sales force or more experienced and further learning productivity curve. We have a higher mix of GXL products, which have great retention and while the full year of our tested retention programs. That's our path to double-digit GPS growth. We assisted our clients around the world with their mission critical priorities, provided great jobs for associates and delivered another year of market-beating returns for our shareholders. Thanks for joining us today and I look forward to updating you again next quarter.

[Operator:]

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for participating in today's conference. This does conclude the program. And you all may disconnect. Everyone have a wonderful day.