Forrester Research Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

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Provided by Quartr
February 8, 2024

There are 7 speakers on the call.

Operator

Good afternoon and thank you for standing by. Welcome to Forrester's 4th Quarter and Full Year 2023 At this time, all participants are in a listen only mode. After the speakers' presentation, there will be a question and answer session. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Vice President of Corporate Development and Investor Relations, Ed Bryce Morris.

Operator

Please go ahead.

Speaker 1

Thank you, and hello, everybody. Thanks for joining today's call. Earlier this afternoon, we issued our press release for the Q4 and full year 2023. If you need a copy, you can find 1 on our website in the Investors section. Here with us today to discuss our results are George Colony, Forrester's Chief Executive Officer and Chairman Nate Swan, Chief Sales Officer and Chris Finn, Chief Financial Officer.

Speaker 1

Carrie Johnson, our Chief Product Officer is also with us for the Q and A section of the call. Before we begin, I'd like to remind you that this call will contain forward looking statements within the meanings 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, uncertainties that could cause future activities and results of operations to be materially different from those set forth in the forward looking statements. Factors that could cause actual results to differ are discussed in our reports and filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, and the company undertakes no obligation to publicly update any forward looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

Speaker 1

Lastly, consistent with our previous calls, today we will be discussing our performance on an adjusted basis, which excludes items affecting comparability. While reporting on an adjusted basis is not in accordance with GAAP, We believe that reporting numbers on this adjusted basis provides meaningful comparison and an appropriate basis for our discussion. You will find a detailed list of items excluded from these adjusted results in our press release. And with that, I'll hand it over to George.

Speaker 2

Thank you for joining Forrester's Q4 and Full Year Earnings Call. Joining me today are Forrester's Chief Sales Officer, Nate Swan and our Chief Financial Officer, Chris Finn. Following my remarks, Nate and Chris will provide sales and financial updates. 2023 was the penultimate year of our Forrester decisions transition. This change coupled with the uncertain macroeconomic environment and technology market unevenness contributed to a challenging year for the company, but one that we navigated and managed.

Speaker 2

In my remarks, I'd like to cover 4 key themes. Number 1, the progress we made in 2023 2, Our Q4 and 2023 fiscal year financial performance 3, product and technology enhancements and filing number 4, 2024 guidance and the road ahead. We entered 2024 having achieved a major milestone in our product transition. As I've stated in previous calls, our North Star for 2023 was migrating 2 thirds of our contract value or CV into the Forrester decisions platform. I'm happy to report that as of January 1, 2024, we have hit that goal.

Speaker 2

While our short term performance has certainly been impacted by this journey, we are progressing on our long term goal of consistent contract value growth based on the Forrester decisions platform. With the exception of a small number of accounts, we will complete the final transitionary phase of this change in 2024. In 2023, we made 2 other strategic moves that are difficult in the short term, but will serve us well in future years. The first was sharpening the target audience for Forrester decisions. The product was built to primarily serve C level executives and their teams in large user organizations and our sales force is successfully pivoting to these targets.

Speaker 2

Selling higher and focusing on user companies with more than $1,000,000,000 of revenue allows us to land and expand across functions, ultimately making our business more resilient and scalable. The second move was the refocusing of consulting and events to help drive contract value. These non CV businesses are becoming a smaller fraction of our overall revenue mix. In 2023, 70% of total revenue was in Research Services and we expect this share to increase in future years. Our contract value portfolio is more predictable, scalable and profitable.

Speaker 2

So over time, the changing mix will improve the overall quality of our business. Turning now to our Q4 and full year performance. CV declined 4% in 2023. While we are not pleased with our CV growth, we did exceed consensus estimates on revenue for both Q4 and the full year And we hit the full year consensus for operating margin and EPS. In another bright spot, Q4 demonstrated the ongoing stabilization of our non CV businesses led by content marketing.

Speaker 2

Our Events business saw an annual growth in attendance with a record number of C level executives attending our Q4 events. In research, We saw Forrester Decisions wallet retention dip slightly in Q4, down to 87%. Expanding wallet retention is one of our top priorities in 2024. Nate and Chris will provide more detail on the plans to increase renewals enrichment in the year. We continue to enhance and improve our research power platform Forrester decisions.

Speaker 2

To reiterate my remarks in previous calls, The product is successfully delivering on its value proposition of enabling business and technology executives to align, plan and execute their most pressing initiatives to accelerate growth. And as an example, I was in Amsterdam in December visiting with the Chief Marketing Officer of a major European B2B Healthcare Company. And he recounted how he has used our research to build the demand marketing engine of his company. He and team have used our demand marketing waterfall model to increase generated leads, convert leads to sales opportunities, and ultimately convert opportunities into closed won business. In addition, he has used our B2B marketing models and frameworks to structure the company's marketing group and align it more closely with the sales and product organizations.

Speaker 2

We remain on our client side and by their side. In 2023 alone, we conducted approximately 15,000 guidance sessions with clients. These sessions are now more precisely focused as we debuted what we call client initiatives and outcomes in 2023. When a Forrester Decisions client onboards, we document their critical priorities and what business objectives they are seeking to achieve from those priorities. These initiatives and outcomes become the fulcrum of the Forrester relationship, laser focusing our customer success managers, analysts and consultants on what our clients are trying to get done.

Speaker 2

Over 85 percent of our Forrester Decisions clients now work with us this way. Our goal is to reach 95% by year end. Improvements to our research platform are driven by our Voice of the Client program, a systematic means of testing proposed product changes with our customers. In 2023, This effort yielded 6,500 client inputs originating from survey data, user testing studies and qualitative interviews. 2 prominent new product features that derive from the system were our weekly client only Forrester takes and the rollout of a new research theme focused on high performance IT.

Speaker 2

This idea helps technology leaders better match their information technology with their business goals. Now unsurprisingly, Gen AI was a major focus of our research in 2023 as we published more than 80 reports on the topic. Our analysts continue to look past the hype and noise in the market, providing clients with practical Gen AI guidance. In 2024, we will launch new Forrester waves focused in the generative AI market. As I stated on the Q3 conference call, Forrester's client facing generative AI tool, IZOLA, represents the most significant step forward in delivering content to our clients since we launched our website 30 years ago.

Speaker 2

We expanded the scope of our client beta in Q4 and plan a general release in Q1 for all Forrester Decision's clients. Clients describe IZOLA as useful and fast and appreciate the tool's direct link to relevant research. While Izola is focused on our clients, we are developing 5 other Gen AI tools that are built to improve internal efficiency. I'd now like to turn to our 2024 guidance. Given the bookings challenges we encountered in 2023, We anticipate declining revenue in the upcoming year.

Speaker 2

We will continue to be diligent in controlling costs to maintain margins, laying a foundation for sustainable growth in 2025. Accordingly, the company reduced its workforce today by 3%, a move that we do not take lightly, but which is necessary to keep expenses aligned with revenue. Chris will provide more details on 2024 guidance in his remarks. So to summarize, I believe that 2024 will be remembered as an inflection point for Forrester as we complete our product migration and our go to market strategy overhaul. Technology has never been more challenging for large companies to manage And a new tech era is dawning driven by generative artificial intelligence.

Speaker 2

Forrester was built for just these types of moments. When new technology arrives, our clients look to us to help them understand the future, make complex decisions, operate efficiently, and win and serve their customers in new ways. I will now turn the call over to Nate Swan, our Chief Sales Officer. Nate? Thank you, George, and good afternoon, everyone.

Speaker 3

I'd like to spend

Speaker 4

a few minutes outlining the progress made in the last 12 months since I joined Forrester and share what's ahead. We put in the foundation to build a high performance sales culture and are rallying around NCBI, Net contract value increase as a continuous motion to improve retention and growth. I'd like to expand on 4 areas. 1, building a strong sales leadership team 2, selling to C level decision makers in our ideal customer profile 3, standardizing the Forrester engagement model to drive renewals and 4, widening our reach within client and prospect organizations to drive growth. Going deeper on my first point of sales leadership.

Speaker 4

Throughout last year, I revamped key functions within the sales organization to improve structure, efficiency, execution and accountability. These changes include the addition of a new VP of Sales Operations and Enablement, new VP of Customer Success, new VP of New Business, And lastly, a new SVP of North American Account Management. With the exception of international leadership, every one of my direct reports is new from 2023. They all bring proven experience, building high performance sales and service organizations, and I'm excited by the strong caliber and energy of this leadership team. Secondly, we are focused on selling higher into the C suite at client and prospect organizations.

Speaker 4

This is where customer obsessed decisions are made. This is where Forrester's Research has the biggest impact on clients. We help business and technology leaders align and grow their businesses, And we've made good progress this year with coaching, training and enablement support of our salespeople calling on more senior executives. Approximately 70% of Forrester Decision's seat holders are at the Director level and above, which is significantly higher than our heritage product. Thirdly, we are maturing and standardizing our approach to retention across all products and delivering world class customer experience.

Speaker 4

The ongoing client engagement with sales, customer success and research teams includes mutually valuable cadence of meetings with clients. These help both parties stay aligned and ensure Forrester is focused on delivering high value outcomes that support clients' most critical business initiatives. Finally, sales is focused on growth and client enrichment. In 2024, we will continue to realize the land and expand promise of Forrester decisions by expanding relationships deeper within teams and cross selling to multiple functions. Our research, tools and frameworks are built to not only help executives align with their function, but across all strategic functions.

Speaker 4

We had some great wins in Q4 that demonstrate we're on the right track with our strategy of winning the leader and their teams. An IT department with a large local city government in the U. S. Doubled the size of their FD renewal, which is now valued at over $1,200,000 of contract value. A CX function at a large U.

Speaker 4

S. Insurer renewed its long time relationship with Forrester into a $1,200,000 contract with lots of growth. A global consultancy renewed its relationship with Forrester across multiple geographies, growing the Forrester decisions contract to $1,400,000 an increase of 40%. And on the new business side of the house, we have secured several new Forrester decisions relationships over $300,000 each. We've seen momentum in particular with CIOs and CISOs who need Forrester's help in navigating the Gen AI landscape as well as supporting high performance IT strategies that align with their tech and business strategies for growth.

Speaker 4

In summary, the last year has been foundational in building high performance sales at Forrester. I'm immensely proud of the strides that we have made in the sales organization and I look forward to executing in 2024. Thank you very much. And with that, I'll hand the call over to Chris.

Speaker 3

Thanks, Nate, and good afternoon, everyone. As George outlined, Our 4th quarter results were challenging. However, I'm happy with the progress the company made on a number of fronts, including evolution of the sales organization that Nate outlined, the continual improvements that we made to the Forrester Decision platform and the launch of our AI tool, IZOLA, along with the achievement of our migration goal of 66% of CV in Forrester decisions as of January 1. In addition, our financial results were in line with the midpoint of our guidance and consensus estimates. At the same time, we continue to see some of our key metrics negatively impacted by the ongoing migration and the uncertain underlying business environment.

Speaker 3

On the topic of metrics, we want to highlight a small modification to the calculation methodology of our CV metric. This change is driven by desire to better align contract value with trends in the business. As we complete the migration of Forrester decisions, the larger makeup of multiyear contract is driving the change in methodology. In our historical calculations, while the ratable portion of our subscription products have been annualized, the entitlements included in the subscriptions, representing approximately 10% of the subscription have been included in CV at their total value as all entitlements in the contract are available for use during an annual period. The revised calculation annualizes the entitlement for contracts greater than 1 year.

Speaker 3

This change will create a more precise view of the trends impacting CV, bookings and revenue. In addition, although update our CV metrics in the Q1 of the year for the current year's planned FX rates, we made that update this quarter in order to avoid a second change to the metric next quarter. Please note, we have recast prior quarters to reflect this revised metric and further information on the change can be seen in the investor deck on our Investor Relations website. For the quarter, overall revenue was $118,100,000 representing a 14% decline from Q4 'twenty two revenues $136,900,000 Overall revenue for the year came in at $480,700,000 representing an 11% decline from the $537,800,000 we generated in 2022. The revenue declines for both the 4th quarter and full year were primarily driven by declines in our consulting business and declines in our research business, largely from our legacy research and reprint products.

Speaker 3

In terms of segment results for the quarter, for the Research segment, CV came in at $332,100,000 at December 31, 2023, and this is a 4% decline from December 2022. The decrease in CV was largely due to a combination of lower enrichment of retained accounts along with additional churn in our vendor base. We continue to analyze why certain buyers are new and are rich at lower than expected rates, And this is tied to a combination of the ongoing migration, the current buyer profile and the ongoing tech recession. As Nate mentioned in his remarks, The sales organization is very focused on expanding our reach within client organizations and I'm confident in the team and processes that he has put in place. However, we expect both CV and wallet retention to be under pressure in 2024 as we work through the final year of the product transition in what is still a difficult economic and technology environment.

Speaker 3

We expect CV trends to turn flat to positive as we exit 2024. And although overall client count is down from the prior quarter, Forrester Decision's client count continues to grow and Forrester Decision's client retention remains well above overall client engine by approximately 10 points. We also achieved our migration goal as we had $215,000,000 or 66 percent of CV contracts on the Forrester decisions platform as of January 1, 2024. From a revenue standpoint, research revenues decreased 8% in the 4th quarter and 6% for the full year. For the full year, revenue from our subscription research products was down approximately 1% as growth in Forrester Decisions was offset by declines in our legacy research products.

Speaker 3

In addition, we experienced declines in reprints and our other smaller and discontinued products. Our consulting business posted revenues of $28,300,000 for the 4th quarter $118,200,000 for the full year, representing declines of 25% 23%, respectively, versus the prior year periods. These declines were driven by similar factors we have seen all year. 1, the external environment in which discretionary spending on consulting projects is meaningfully curtailed and 2, our internal decision except in limited circumstances to only sell consulting to customers have a CV relationship with Forrester. And finally, our events business posted revenues of $4,600,000 representing a decline of 36% compared to the Q4 of 2022.

Speaker 3

This decrease was driven by a shift in event timing. In Q4 of this year, Forrester hosted 4 events compared to 5 events in the prior year quarter. For the full year, the segment declined by 8% to $28,200,000 driven by lower sponsorship revenue. Continuing down our P and L on an adjusted basis, operating expenses for the 4th quarter decreased by 10%, primarily driven by the restructuring plan we announced during our Q1 call. Specifically on headcount, for the Q4, we were down 14% compared to the same period in 2022.

Speaker 3

On a full year basis, operating expenses decreased by 8%, also largely driven by labor reductions with additional savings from other categories, including facilities and professional services fees. Operating income decreased by 47% The $6,800,000 or 5.8 percent of revenue in the current quarter, compared to $12,900,000 or 9.4 percent of revenue in the Q4 of 2022. On a full year basis, operating income decreased by 25 percent to $52,300,000 or 10.9 percent of revenue, compared with $69,700,000 or 13 percent of revenue in 2022. We continue to be committed to aligning our cost structure with our revenue outlook. Interest expense for the quarter was $800,000 as compared to $700,000 in the Q4 of 2022.

Speaker 3

On a full year basis, Interest expense was $3,100,000 compared to $2,500,000 in 2022. This increase was driven by higher interest rates compared to a year ago. Finally, net income and earnings per share decreased 44% compared to Q4 of last year with net income at $4,800,000 and earnings per share at $0.25 for the current quarter compared with net income of $8,500,000 and earnings per share of $0.45 in the Q4 of 2022. On a full year basis, net income decreased 22 percent to $36,600,000 and EPS decreased 23% to 1.90 Looking at our capital structure, year to date cash flow from operating activities was $21,700,000 and capital expenditure was $5,500,000 and we had $124,500,000 of cash and investments as we exited the 4th quarter. There were no debt payments or stock buybacks this quarter, leaving us with $35,000,000 of outstanding debt and approximately $71,000,000 of our stock repurchase authorization intact.

Speaker 3

As we've outlined today, we have taken actions to better align our cost structure with the ongoing declines in our revenue forecast. I'll now provide some additional details regarding the restructuring. We have reduced our workforce by approximately 3% And we expect to incur approximately $7,300,000 to $7,700,000 of costs for these actions, including $700,000 that was recognized during the Q4. Approximately $3,800,000 of the charge is non cash and we plan to use a portion of the cost savings to fund focused investments across sales and customer success. Turning to guidance, starting with the top line.

Speaker 3

For 2024, we expect revenue to be $430,000,000 to $450,000,000 were down 6% to 11% versus 2023. This guidance assumes the outlook for the research business to be a mid to high single digit decline, a decline in our consulting business in the lowtomidteens and a decline in our events business in the mid single digits for the year. Given the actions we have taken to control costs and our ongoing focus on costs, we would expect our operating margins to be in the range of 9.5% to 10.5% for 2024. A portion of the cost savings this year are coming from non headcount related reductions, For example, a pause on non sales related variable compensation components. Interest expense is expected to be $3,000,000 for the year and we are guiding to a full year tax rate of 29%.

Speaker 3

Taking all this into account, we would expect EPS to be in the range of $1.50 to $1.70 for the full year. In summary, we continue to believe that 2024 will be another challenging year as it marks the final transition in Forrester Decision's migration and our go to market refinement. As Nate outlined, we are laser focused on Forrester Decision's retention with improvements in the engagement model, the retention lifecycle and target investments in customer success and sales. We believe these actions will pay dividends as we progress through 2024 and into 2025. Thank you all for taking the time today.

Speaker 3

And with that, I will hand the call back to George.

Speaker 2

Thank you, Chris. To summarize, 2023 was a challenging year with internal and external factors impacting our financial performance. However, we believe in the Forrester Decisions product, our evolution into a high performance sales organization, The impact of generative AI and the research market opportunity driven by massive technology disruption. We believe 2024 will be remembered as an inflection point for Forrester. The foundational work of the year will enable us to capture a growing share of our substantial total addressable market in 2025 and beyond.

Speaker 2

I'm going to hand the call back to the operator and we will now take questions.

Operator

Thank you, sir. And I show our first question comes from the line of Anja Soderstrom from Sidoti. Please go ahead.

Speaker 5

Hi, and thank you for taking my questions. I'm just curious how much of this sort of Decline for this year, the softness for 2024, do you attribute to just Internal initiatives in terms of switching to SiriusDecisions and new clients and How much is due to the general macro environment and maybe sales cycles being longer?

Speaker 3

Yes. Thanks, Heine. This is Chris. So this is the last phase in last year of the The transformation for us, we've been on this journey since really August of 2021 when we launched the product. And so during this time, obviously, we've made some decisions along the way that we feel would benefit us in the long term and we knew would hurt frankly in the short term.

Speaker 3

And so combine that with the fact that we've had a serious Tech recession here over the past couple of years with a lot of layoffs, large tech companies, both vendors and users. And I think it's hard to really peg the percentages. I would think that look a lot of this has been kind of external environment driven frankly. And but I'd say a smaller percentage of it really is things that we've made decisions on ourselves and that frankly have elongated the transformation that we're going through. With that said, I'm very confident that this is the final year.

Speaker 3

We do know that based on where we are today at 66% of CV and FD, We're confident that we're going to get to approximately 80% by the end of the year, really be done with this transformation at this point. And the remaining part of CV is really going to be in our non subscription areas around reprint. We feel confident about the direction that we're going in and we do feel confident that we're going to see probably a little bit more of a line as we go through the beginning of this year, but we're going to exit 2024 with CV starting to turn around and get some growth here.

Speaker 2

Anya, I think this is George here. I think the biggest surprise one of the biggest surprises has been the weakness in tech over the last 2 years. And that it's impacted us with small vendors, it's also impacted us with large vendors. I think it's been very interest rate driven venture has dried up and many of these smaller vendors are they've just cut budgets and cut people. And so That is definitely it is one of the major factors here.

Speaker 3

Yes. And I'd even say on the small vendor side too. Yes, I know the small vendor side as well. I mean a lot of those companies have literally just gone away. And I'd say on the larger vendor side, it's not so much Churn as it is as they've made the migration over to FD, and they've had budget constraints as well, they've reduced some of their overall spend with us, They have not churned out, unlike some of the small vendors.

Speaker 2

Yes. 1 of the disciplines we've developed through this period is we are We're being very, very selective as who we will take from that small vendor group. So generally, We are turning away from vendors under $50,000,000 in size.

Speaker 5

But that's something you've been doing over the year, right? It's been more strategic And move from the company that you intended to do anyway, right? It's not just a macroeconomic environment that's sort of weaving those out?

Speaker 2

Yes. Yes.

Speaker 5

And in terms of generative AI, it seems like that's on fire now. And how It's like that's on fire now. And how much of that is going to be driving your growth, do you think, and pick up your So the resources?

Speaker 2

Yes, there are approximately almost 100 analysts now who are spending a great deal of your time in generative AI for us. I talked about 80 reports. I'll take a I'll estimate this, but I bet I'll get pretty close that it's going to be in the area of 15% to 20% of our research focused in generative AI in 2024. And it's on the minds of all of our clients, whether they're vendors, users, all boards of directors. And the higher you go in the organizations, the more greater magnitude of questions here, Anya.

Speaker 2

So this is what as I said in my remarks, this is what Forrester was built to do. When there's big technology change, Clients need decision making, they need context, they need vision to the future. And so this is a great opportunity for us.

Speaker 5

Okay. Thank you. And in terms of the competitive landscape, is there anything to call out there that's been changing or?

Speaker 2

I'm looking at Nate here, but

Speaker 4

From a competitive landscape, no. I mean, I think we've We feel very confident in our research and our value proposition. Our clients are really reacting well to high performance IT. We think our view of customer obsession and how it plays across all different functions really makes us different. So there are great providers that are out there.

Speaker 4

We have a unique and our clients seem to like our perspective. And so we feel very confident in that. So I don't think competition is any more or less than it ever has been.

Speaker 2

I think the biggest change here Anja is that below us there are some smaller companies who are kind of turning away from research toward generating leads for vendors. So that's we like that because they're essentially taking a step outside of the research business and further away from us. We like that.

Speaker 5

Okay. And in terms of globally, is there anything to call out, Any region that did better or worse, sir?

Speaker 4

Yes, we did really well on from an international standpoint, one of our best performing groups. We did well in the government sector. We've been growing pretty well in that marketplace and saw some really good green shoots in Q4 for the user new business team. We've got a new leader in that group and had some great focus And that team really delivered in Q4 and is off to a pretty good start actually in Q1 as well. So Lots of consistency.

Speaker 4

All teams are working really hard. We've just got some tougher markets in the high-tech side of the house And North America is a big focus for us. Patrick is going to be a great leader for us, really bringing structure and discipline to the organization. And I expect the North American team will really react well to that.

Speaker 5

Okay. And just one last one, if I may. In terms of the headcount, the 3% you expect, You've been cutting headcounts now for a couple of quarters. Is there more room to cut? And where are you cutting?

Speaker 5

And how can you do that without the quality of your work?

Speaker 3

Yes, that's a good question, Anya. We feel like at this point, We're through the labor reductions and the risk disproportionately impacted our consulting organization, which really was necessary to bring the resources in line with where the expectations are on the consulting business for 2024. We know there were some challenges there last year and we do expect some of those to continue into this year. And so as a percentage of headcount, most of the other business units were really well below the 3% average for the company, as we really intend to preserve resources to get back to growth later on this year.

Speaker 5

Okay. Thank you. That was all for me. Appreciate the time.

Speaker 2

Thanks. Thanks, Anup.

Operator

Thank you. And I show our next question comes from the line of Vincent Colicchio from Barrington Research. Please go ahead.

Speaker 6

Yes. A question for Nate. So the 70% of seat holders at director level and above sounds like sorry?

Speaker 4

Yes. Go ahead. Sorry, Vince.

Speaker 6

Sounds like a pretty good data point. Did I hear you I'm not sure if I heard Is that in line with your objective? Did you mention that?

Speaker 4

It is in line with where we are going. So we are we look at really Three roles as our target roles to enter into a company. We want to be at the head of function, generally at a CMO, CPO, Chief Digital Officer, CISO type role. We look at the VPs and we look at the directors. We certainly have opportunities with managers and below.

Speaker 4

Generally that is going to be our team seat function that we can grow in. So What we're looking to do as a strategy, Vince, is we want to win the leader and then we want to capture the teams underneath them. Organizations work in a team based function to accomplish their goals. And I think the great thing about Forrester decisions and how we are Aligned as a company is the alignment we create across the organization. So if we happen to be in with the IT organization, The next step might be to get over to the CX organization or the marketing organization.

Speaker 4

We can work with all those organizations at once. You don't tend to capture those deals all at one time. You grow into those. But the way you capture opportunity, grow the opportunities by being at the most senior level functions and by understanding what their initiatives are and delivering against those initiatives. And when you do that, clients feel very comfortable expanding and growing the relationship.

Speaker 4

So we've seen some good success in doing that. The sales organization is very excited about doing that. We've got a new sales methodology that we are in process of rolling out for the organization, and we're excited about what that's going to do for us, which is really understand and align on how our clients are trying to work.

Speaker 6

So when you began this journey, If you were to know that you'd be at this level of seed holders at the director level or above at this point in time, I assume you'd be content with that?

Speaker 4

Well, I don't content might be a good word, I guess. We always want to get higher, Right. If you sell to the senior most function, you can sell our highest level offering, which will deliver the most value to the organization. So I think all of our sales people want to try to get to the top level of the organization. It's where impact happens.

Speaker 4

It's where the revenue happens. And it's where they can be most successful and it's where they can help their clients the most, working on those really top initiatives that they're going on. So we are paying attention to it. We are capturing data as to where people are going and we can see that we are improving at calling on more senior levels. So we'll continue to do that.

Speaker 4

We also know that when we call them more senior levels, we are able to sell multiyear contracts because initiatives go over multiple years. So it's really, it aligns really well with Forrester decisions, which we've been trying to sell more multi year. We want to really try and drive that number up as much as we can.

Speaker 2

Vince, I think the important point here is that we are selling at a higher level with Forrester decisions than we did with legacy. That's good, but we need to get at even higher levels. So I'd say we're feeling good, but we're not content. That's a wrong word to use there.

Speaker 6

Yes, I think maybe I'm sounded a bit more exciting to me than maybe I shouldn't be too excited. I mean, good progress, but A ways to go. Yes.

Speaker 2

Yes, exactly.

Speaker 6

Very good. On the small client side, are we Nearing a point where there may be some stabilization in the client losses and also how many what portion of small clients make up your total currently?

Speaker 3

Yes, Vince. This is Chris. Yes, we feel like I mean, certainly this year, We're going to be through most of that churn in the base from a CV perspective. Our expectation in general is that we're going to get CV from a legacy perspective down below 10% at that point. And so that's a small portion.

Speaker 3

We think we're through the majority of that. We don't really give guidance on the number, but I think based on the CV metric that I just gave you of it being below 10%, you get a sense of kind of what it is.

Speaker 2

And also, Vince, I think Forrester Decisions has been a weeding effect here because it's built for larger organizations And it's a little bit more expensive. So that has also helped take smaller, the smaller especially vendors out of the mix.

Speaker 6

And I think most organizations including yourselves are expecting a better IT spending year this year than last year. And you're targeting larger enterprises. I just how do you square sort of your expectation that CV doesn't pick up till later in the year versus a better IT spending year. I suppose it's just the vagaries of executing on a new product. What am I missing?

Speaker 3

Yes. No, I think that's right, Vince. I think we're probably being a little bit conservative here just because of what we came out of Q4 with and going into Q1. We are seeing some bright spots certainly, but I don't want to get too excited yet. We have to show that we can execute, but certainly The continued momentum around the growth on FD is certainly really important and we're seeing that.

Speaker 3

And I'd love to see some moves, obviously, on interest rates. I think that will help too. But I think the tech recession is still very much year, but we're starting to see some green shoots around budgets opening up and having conversations. We're even having conversations with Clients that on the big vendor side may have reduced spend during the migration over to FD. They're actually coming back now and having discussions about larger contracts, which is a bright spot.

Speaker 3

So we're definitely seeing it start to open up a little bit, but our expectation is that a little bit conservative in the first half and expect to get start to see some of that growth during the back half, especially as we exit the year.

Speaker 6

Okay. Thanks guys.

Speaker 2

Thanks Vince. Appreciate

Operator

it. Thank you. I'm showing no further questions in the queue. At this time, I'd like to turn the call back to Mr. Chris Finn, CFO, for closing remarks.

Operator

Yes.

Speaker 3

Thanks everyone for joining the call today. We really appreciate it. If you have any questions or follow-up, please contact Ed or myself. Thank you. Thank you.

Operator

This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for attending. You may all disconnect.

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Earnings Conference Call
Forrester Research Q4 2023
00:00 / 00:00