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Forrester Research, Inc. (FORR)

Q3 2013 Earnings Call· Wed, Oct 23, 2013

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good afternoon. Thank you for joining today’s call. With me today are, George Colony, Forrester’s Chairman of the Board and CEO, and Michael Morhardt, Forrester’s Chief Sales Officer and Mike Doyle, Forrester’s Chief Financial Officer. George will open the call. Mike Morhardt will follow George to discuss sales. Michael Doyle will then follow Mike Morhardt to discuss our financials. We’ll then open the call to Q&A. A replay of this call would be available until November 22, 2013 and can be accessed by dialing 1-888-843-7419 or internationally 1-630-652-3042. Please reference the pass code 9233923#. 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 expect, believe, anticipate, intend, 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 the 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 within the Securities and Exchange Commission. The company undertakes no obligations 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

Management

Good afternoon and thanks for joining Forrester’s Q3 conference call. I will spend a few moments reviewing the quarter. Following my remarks, Mike Morhardt, our Chief Sales Officer will give a short update on sales. Mike Doyle, Forrester’s CFO will then give a full financial review. Mike, Mike and I will then take questions. As I’ve stated throughout the year, the streamlining and strengthening of our organization continues to be a work in progress. The rebuilding our sales force is proceeding in gradual and steady increments as you’ll hear from Mike Morhardt. The build-out of our consulting organization as outlined in the Q2 call continues to pace. And finally we’re enhancing our research and product engines as I will outline below. Against this backdrop, I wanted to spend time today outlining the unique opportunity that is presenting itself to Forrester. Now this is a somewhat complex story but I believe that it should be well understood by our investors. We are in the age of the customer and this is a 20-year period during which buyers are taking power from institutions. Using technology, customers are able to price, critic and buy products from any company at any time, with few geographical boundaries. Customers are dynamic, moving quickly between brands, morphing their behavior and using technology to buy in hard to predict patterns. This is placing harsh demands on companies. They must be prepared for continuous changes and the onslaught of disruptive and unpredictable new market rules. In the age of the customer, three inter-related opportunities are opening up for Forrester. Firstly, Forrester helps its clients understand their customers. If large companies are to thrive in these times, they must have precise and continually updated information and data on their buyers. They must understand demographic, social and behavioral dynamics that are…

Mike Morhardt

Management

Thanks, George. As George mentioned, we continue to see improvements in the sales organization. Our goal is to methodically build a more mature, performance driven culture marked by greater accountability, discipline and results. As I’ve said from the start, our strategy has centered around three key areas. First, geographic sales expansion, putting more sales people where our clients are located so we can develop stronger relationships. Secondly, operational discipline, bring more analytics and data into our decision making driving consistent execution and thirdly, improving our overall sales force productivity. Q3 showed continued improvement across all three of these key strategies. Make no mistake, we are seeing progress. Our geographic sales expansion continued as we added three new cities to our coverage totaling 10 for the year. Discounting has dropped 4.9% year-to-date and 7.4% for Q3 year-over-year. We’re seeing improved productivity for those reps that attended our redesigned new hire class this past Spring. We saw bookings improvements across all regions and all teams quarter-over-quarter. And finally our net new client acquisition improved quarter-over-quarter by 31 net new logos. While, these signals are encouraging, we still have a lot of work to do. The velocity of our change is dependent upon the related changes across the company, from recruiting of a sales person to the delivery of a project. Our success is dependent on the alignment of Forrester as a whole. So the recent organizational changes George announced will have a significant impact in our ability to serve our clients more effectively. Alignment across research, consulting, product and sales is instrumental to our success. In the short time that the new organization has been in place, we have seen better and faster responses to clients and prospect requests. To wrap up, we are seeing positive signs from the changes we have made. We’re not where we want to be and we realize there are obstacles ahead but we are very encouraged by the progress we made in Q3. And with that, I’m going to turn it over to Mike Doyle, to give the financial update.

Mike Doyle

Management

Thanks, Mike. I’ll now begin my review of financial performance for Forrester’s third quarter results, the balance sheet at September 30, our third quarter metrics and the outlook for fourth quarter and full year of 2013. Please note that the income statements numbers I’m reporting are pro forma and exclude the following items, amortization of intangibles, stock-based compensation expense, reorganization costs, and net gains and losses from investments. Also for 2013, we will utilize an effective tax rate of 39% for pro forma purposes. The actual effective tax rate for the third quarter of 2013 was approximately 39%. For the third quarter, Forrester met its revenue and exceeded its pro forma operating margin and EPS guidance. Revenue gains in our marketing strategy business continued to offset some softness in our business technology business, while both planned and unplanned expense savings from unfilled positions and tight expense management help bolster operating profit. We did see modest bookings improvement in the third quarter relative to the third quarter of last year. And we’re making progress across all sales teams. That said, to reinforce what Mike and George previously said, we saw work ahead of us to return to historical growth levels. The changes Mike has made to our sales organization and processes has had some immediate benefit to our results, but the full effect will come over the next three to four quarters. On the capital structure front, we continue to repurchase shares of Forrester stock during the quarter, with our year-to-date purchases totaling approximately $109 million. This exceeds Forrester’s repurchase activity for the previous three year’s combined. Now, let me turn to more detailed review of our third quarter results. Forrester’s third quarter revenue increased by 2% to $69.6 million from $68.5 million in the third quarter of 2012. Third quarter…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. We will now begin the question-and-answer session. (Operator Instructions). Our first question comes from Tim McHugh from William Blair. Please go ahead. Matt Hill – William Blair: Hi, this is Matt Hill in for Tim McHugh this afternoon. One of the questions, I guess, could you walk through a little bit more about the organizational change and some of the benefits you see occurring to your customers and then also on your side? And then also any of the changes – there is going to be a change to the subscriptions or you have to consolidate some of those, that sort of thing?

George Colony

Management

Yes, this is George here. Very simply stated, the new organization is – was really designed and built to enable us to be – to take advantage of the opportunity around age of the customer. With topping age of the customer, if you look at a large company like L’Oreal, they are working intently every day to combine the efforts of the marketing executives, L’Oreal into tech management executives at L’Oreal, to build a whole bunch of new technologies like mobile engagement which I won’t bore you talking about but giving L’Oreal the ability to connect to the technologies that their customers are using. And this is a very cross-disciplinary effort which is going on in the clients that we serve. We could not serve that cross-disciplinary effort unless we were – unless we also had a combined research organization which enables as an example to take the work of our customer – in our customer experience based in marketing with the application development space in the tech management side. So, it really – organization was really responsible – there are really two goals to the organization. One was to enable us to more – to structure – to manage that opportunity that’s one. And two, it simplifies how we operate internally. We had two research organizations, we had no designated product organization. And now with the new structure, it’s very clear who’s in-charge, who is in-charge of products, who is running research and exactly how the decisions are going to be made. So it really is number one to take advantage of the opportunity and number two to simplify how we operate. Matt Hill – William Blair: Okay, great. And then also in the press release, I think one of the last comments was seeing some positive signs in some areas of the business. Can you expand on that a little bit more, maybe what those areas are and then conversely what are the areas that maybe aren’t looking so good?

George Colony

Management

I’ll sort of offer, we can kind of ramble around the three of us here. On the areas where we’re seeing proven events to be an example, where we have rebuilt the experience for events. We’re seeing better attendance this year. So I think events generally that would be one-two, would be our business in Asia, which is very stable and is growing pretty much to their plan right to this point. So that’s working pretty good. On the downside I’ll probably let Mike, address this. I think Europe is still a work in progress, I mean for everyone, not just us but other companies operating there.

Mike Morhardt

Management

Yeah. I would echo George’s comments on Asia-Pac and events, I would say. The other thing that I’m encouraged by is our new business acquisition. That engine has kicked in after some changes in leadership and alignment. And it’s great to see when you make some of these changes, the impact it can have over a couple of months. How we’re aligning to our clients, I mean, George mentioned the organizational alignments, I’ll echo what he is saying. In the short term, this is really only been a place since the beginning of October. We can see the responsiveness to our clients around some of the initiatives George outlined with the age of the customer. Our ability to bring the right research analysts, right consultants to a particular client problem has been remarkably improved. We started work to do there. And we know there is a great market for it. So, that’s good. On the downside, again, we’re trying to put processes in place that in some cases are different than say what has been in place in the past. And so those, cultural changes which is aligning to our clients from an engagement model perspective where we follow a very disciplined approach in how we engage our clients over the life of their contract. There is a lot of work that needs to be done there to train everyone up across the organization to make sure that we continue to focus on retaining our clients. So we’re seeing the new business engine working but we have other things in place that we need to push. And then Mike mentioned one other piece from a sales perspective. While attrition is down, it’s not down where I’d like it to be. Part of that has to do with things that we have put in place around performance management. So we want to make sure that we’re building out the right team with the right expectations about how to grow the business. But from a hiring perspective, we’ve been able to increase the number of cities that we’re covering. But again, this is some new muscle memory that we’re trying to develop here as far as how we recruit in particular geographic areas, the types of candidates that we’re bringing in is a little bit different than what we have done in the past. And the discipline around how we do that hasn’t been in place. So everybody is learning a little bit around that as well.

Mike Doyle

Management

Yes, I think I would add just to – so we can close on an up-note with the finance guy. We will – yes, I think consulting had a strong quarter. And I think that’s benefiting both from our existing analysts but also some of the new consulting part that we’re bringing into the business. And that’s had a nice growth year-over-year, so that’s certainly encouraging. I think we’re seeing more broadly M&S beginning to sort of research which is great news for us. I think on the challenge front, we clearly would like to hire more people, more quickly. And I think we’re working hard at that. I mean, we’ve got opportunities for business out there that we can’t fulfill in some instances. So that’s a challenge. But I think we’ll work our way through that. And overall I think expense management is our main tie. So profitability from a company standpoint has been pretty strong. Matt Hill – William Blair: Okay. And then, on the capital allocation plans, is it still the $100 million – getting down to $100 million, is that still the goal for the end of the year or is that maybe spread out a little bit?

Mike Doyle

Management

Matt, its Mike. Our target – look, our target has been the end of the year. We’re just going to have to see – we’re going to have – as I say, we’d be opportunistic in that to some degree as a supply demand situation. So we’ve got to find sellers frankly for us to buy and buy at the right price. So it remains the target but I’m not necessarily going to lock ourselves into a 12/31 date. But as both George said and I said, our target is to get to the $100 million. We’ve been aggressive this year, I think as we highlighted we’ve cleared stepped up our purchase activity. And our game plan is to continue.

Mike Morhardt

Management

Yes, Matt, also depending on M&A activity which as you know can be – it is always unpredictable, exactly when an instant deal might go down, so. Matt Hill – William Blair: Yes, certainly. And then, one numbers question, I’m sorry, I might have missed this. But did you give the events revenue or number of events during the quarter?

Mike Doyle

Management

We did not give events revenue, the number of events was three. And the event’s revenue for the quarter was – it’s all done – we’ve got $350,000. So these were the three-ish back, relatively small events. Matt Hill – William Blair: Okay. All right, well, thank you.

George Colony

Management

Thank you.

Mike Doyle

Management

Thanks, Matt.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Vincent Colicchio from Noble Financial. Please go ahead. Vincent Colicchio – Noble Financial: Hi, good afternoon guys. Mike, could you give us more color on the data weakness within research services?

Mike Doyle

Management

Yes, I mean, real quickly Vince. Essentially what’s going on is we’ve got two things going on. We’ve got a – we had – what we call tech marketing navigator product that was a syndicated data product that we’ve been phasing down. And we think that that our clients can be better served by taking elements of that model and taking into our foresights data package. And we’re planning to do that in 2014. So that’s had tech marketing navigators been sort of the downward pull on our data business. So, it’s also what it’s done is, we’ve also seen a shift out of syndicated data and more into one time. That offset some of the syndicated data weakness with one time. And I think that’s just phenomenon we’re seeing. I think that’s something that we’re looking at as we go into ‘14 to see – I think first of all the transition out of TMA and into foresights is going to help. That’s going to be a plus. Then the question is, can we push more back into a more syndicated oriented data model. And that’s just a work in progress with our data team right now. I feel comfortable where we’re headed and I like what we’re doing. It’s just as transitioning with tech marketing navigator that’s proven to be a little bit of a drag on a data business.

Mike Doyle

Management

Renewing the completion of that then. Vincent Colicchio – Noble Financial: And Mike Morhardt, I’d be curious at this point, in a sales organization process. To hear from your perspective, any positive or negative surprises you’ve – you’ve encountered on your journey there?

Mike Morhardt

Management

Sure. I’d say from a positive perspective now I’ve been here, I’m coming up on my one year anniversary in November. And I’m impressed by the talent that we have. I’m impressed by the talent that we’re bringing on board. So that gives me a lot of encouragement over the last six months or so, some of the new folks that have joined us, their ability to hit the ground running and produce results quickly, locally is great encouragement. The other part to the business is I think George outlined, the alignment with the rest of the business, I can’t underestimate how happy I was personally of having this alignment with the research and consulting and product organizations because as a sales leader, feeling with a bunch of different leaders, it makes you more difficult when it comes to servicing our clients and working with our prospects. So that move has already started to pay dividends and I’m excited about what that’s going to mean in 2014 as we can become further aligned. So generally very encouraged with the talent that we have – that the talent we’re bringing on. Frustrated that I can’t hire faster but that’s – part of the reason is we don’t want to hire the wrong people. And so, we’re going to be thoughtful about doing this and creating the right territories and putting them in the right locations that are going to drive the right productivity. And so, overall I’m satisfied but looking forward to the next couple of quarters and seeing some of these changes that we’re making, produce the results like we have with discounting and net new logos and some of the other things that we’re seeing now. Vincent Colicchio – Noble Financial: Okay. Thanks guys.

Mike Morhardt

Management

Thanks, Vince.

George Colony

Management

Thanks, Vince.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Bill Sutherland. Please go ahead. Bill Sutherland – EGN: Hi, thanks. Hello everybody. Hi Mike, I’m curious what your hiring plans look like as you head into the year-end. Obviously it’s a challenging time to be ramping I would think, a lot of new hires?

Mike Doyle

Management

I think, Billy, you’re speaking about sales? Bill Sutherland – EGN: Yes.

Mike Morhardt

Management

Yes. It is a challenging time. But this is an end situation we need to deliver a number end build for 2014. And right now I think you’ll see as we go into Q4, we’ve been preparing for this. We realize that we have some additional folks that we need to bring on board. The pipelines are good. We’re learning every day and how do this more effectively whether it’s a recruiting organization or sales managers. There is a mind-shift that need to take place within the organization, specific to the sales organization and the sales leaders that you are part of a growing organization. And so that’s been a good sort of benefit of some of the work we did in Q3, and we saw some improvement there. We’ve done a lot of our performance managements so we’re not out-running attrition like we were in the first – in Q2 and Q3. So, the net news I think we’ll have a bigger impact, we’ll see more net news in Q3 based on what we’re forecasting from a net new sales person perspective. Bill Sutherland – EGN: And do you happen to have the number of quarter carrying reps that you had at quarter end, maybe Mike has – I mean, Mike Doyle?

Mike Doyle

Management

Yeah, I mean, the quarter carrying at the end of September was 281 Bill, this exclude event sales reps. There is another 13 of event sales rep. So, all on you’ve got 294 what I call bag carrying reps. And that’s up. We ended… Bill Sutherland – EGN: Can you tell us what that compares to?

Mike Doyle

Management

Well actually, it’s only up one relative to the end of June. And it’s up seven year to date. Bill Sutherland – EGN: Okay.

Mike Doyle

Management

On the event side. So you’re up nine year-to-date. Bill Sutherland – EGN: Okay. And Mike Morhardt, I’m just curious, I keep hearing about better tone of the economies in Europe, even Spain. What are you seeing most recently over there, anything that gives you a little more confidence?

Mike Morhardt

Management

Yes. So, as I mentioned in the last call, we have brought on Alex Harp, who is now our European sales leader. We’re in the process of Alex, just got over there probably two or three weeks ago. And so, he’s meeting with all the teams. The good news there is we have seen some good improvements in new business. We have seen pockets in specific countries starting to pop which is good. We’ve seen stability within the sales ring, so we don’t – we haven’t seen the attrition that we have in the past. Those are all good signals that it allows us to sort of build off of. I’m – I know there is still going to be macroeconomic trends relative to Europe. But in the markets that we’re serving right now I’m starting to see some better signals. Bill Sutherland – EGN: Good. And so, in the U.S. your plans for the geographic sales expansion, kind of where would you like the – I mean, what’s – what would the more or less complete coverage from number of cities?

George Colony

Management

I think you know, that’s – it’s a great question. I don’t know the exact number. I think we’re starting from a low base right, where we had the vast majority of our sales organization located in a couple of specific hubs, Cambridge in San Francisco and Dallas. And as you break out of that looking at L.A. and Denver and Chicago and all the other locations, what we’re finding as we’re building out these territories, there is definitely in our prospects. And what we’re trying to do is making sure that they’re productive territories so that there is a mix of existing contract value, existing contracts that they can maintain and also build off of that. So, there are all the logical locations and we have a scoring model that we leverage to look at those particular territories that we want to prioritize first. So, I don’t know what the total number of cities would be. But we’re scheduled to probably be at around 12 by the end of the year. And then in some cases, it’s not so much adding another city, it’s adding another person to an existing city. Bill Sutherland – EGN: Okay. I think that does it from me. Thanks.

George Colony

Management

Thanks, Bill.

Mike Doyle

Management

Thanks, Bill.

Operator

Operator

(Operator Instructions).

George Colony

Management

Great. I think if there is, no further questions, thanks very much for everyone attending the call. And we look forward to seeing most of you on the road over the course of the upcoming quarter.

Operator

Operator

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