Good afternoon and thank you for standing by. Welcome to Forrester’s Second Quarter 2023 Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Please be advised that today’s conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to the Vice President of Corporate Development and Investor Relations, Ed Bryce Morris. Please go ahead.

Thank you and hello everyone. Thanks for joining today’s call. Earlier this afternoon, we issued our press release for the second quarter of 2023. If you need a copy, you can find one 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 and Chris Finn, Chief Financial Officer. Carrie Johnson, our Chief Product Officer and Nate Swan, our Chief Sales Officer are also here with us for the Q&A section of the call. Before we begin, I’d like to remind you that this call will contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Words such as expects, believes, anticipates, intends, plans, estimates, or similar expressions are intended to identify these forward-looking statements. These statements are based on the company’s current plans and expectations and involve risks and uncertainties that could cause future activities and results of operations to be materially different from those set forth in the forward-looking statements. 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. Lastly, consistent with our previous calls, today we will be discussing our performance on an an-adjusted basis, which excludes items affecting comparability. While reporting on an an-adjusted basis is not in accordance with GAAP, we believe that reporting numbers on this adjusted basis provides a meaningful comparison and an appropriate basis for our discussion. You can find a detailed list of items excluded from these adjusted results in our press release. And with that, I will hand it over to George.

Thank you for joining Forrester’s Q2 2023 investor call. As I noted in the Q1 call, we are still navigating the dual issues of an uncertain economy and our product transition. These two factors constitute persistent challenges which will continue into 2024. At the midway point in the year, I would like to cover five themes before I turn the call over to Chris Finn for financial update: number one, Forrester’s second quarter performance and the macroeconomic environment; two, an update on our events business; three, the Generative AI opportunity; four, enhancements to the Forrester Decisions product; and five, our effort to move Forrester sales from good to great. In Q2, Forrester continued to navigate the tech recession in the generally uncertain macroeconomic environment. With approximately half of our clients residing in the technology vertical, we have been susceptible to the pullback in that industry, which began in the second half of 2022. We have felt this most acutely in our non-CV businesses, in particular, consulting in the sponsorship side of our events business. While non-CV has been challenged, we have seen our contract value business show signs of stabilization. In the second quarter, we secured a 2-year $5 million Forrester Decisions contract with a major financial services company. And this is the largest deal of our new product to-date. Client retention for Forrester Decisions did not increase in the quarter, but it remains well above historical retention for our legacy research products. In the quarter, we passed a major milestone in our transition with 51% of our contract value now in Forrester Decisions, up from 44% at the end of Q1. With the growth of Forrester Decisions, we are focusing on selling to 1V plus companies and lowering our mix of sub $50 million technology vendors. As this transition…

Thanks, George and good afternoon, everyone. As George mentioned, our second quarter results were impacted by the ongoing business headwinds we are experiencing with most metrics coming in lower than the prior year, but generally consistent with the prior quarter. We continue to operate in a volatile environment with macroeconomic uncertainty and weakness in our non-CV business, specifically with consulting and events that we expect to continue as the year unfolds. This has led us to tighten the high-end of our revenue guidance and update our margin and EPS outlook for the year. The uncertainty around the non-CV business has impacted our outlook. However, we have confidence in our ability to continue managing costs, while creating a solid foundation to improve performance. As George mentioned, we had flat CV in the quarter and overall revenue decreased 9% driven largely by our consulting business. Specifically for the total company, we generated $135.6 million in revenue compared to $148.2 million in the prior year period, a 9% year-over-year decrease as I just mentioned. In terms of segment results for the quarter, research revenues decreased 2% compared to the second quarter of 2022, with revenue from our subscription research products growing 2%, but being offset by declines in our reprint product and our other smaller and discontinued products. Overall client and wallet retention were both flat to Q1 at 74% and 92% respectively, while Forrester Decisions specific client and wallet retention were down slightly versus the first quarter by approximately 1 point each at 86% and 92% respectively. Although overall client count is down from the prior quarter, Forrester Decisions client count continues to grow and Forrester Decisions client retention remains well above overall client retention by approximately 12 points. We have seen that our clients, particularly technology clients are continuing to experience…

Thank you, Chris. This month Forrester is celebrating its 40th year. Across its four decades of operation, Forrester has weathered many economic storms, and has been at the forefront of every major technology revolution. The company has proven to be a highly resilient business through changing in uncertain times. We remain well positioned for long-term success. And I want to thank Forrester’s employees, customers and investors for their continued support for our important mission. And with that, I am going to hand the call back to the operator and we will now take questions.

[Operator Instructions] And I show our first question comes from the line of Anja Soderstrom from Sidoti. Please go ahead.

Hi and thank you for taking my questions. So first, I am just curious in terms of the churn you are seeing in the clients. What kind of plans is that you mostly see dropping off?

Yes, it’s Chris. Yes, from a client churn perspective, it really continues to be in the small vendor clients that we have discussed before. But based on that churn, as we go forward, we continue to see that as a smaller percentage of the business. And within the growth that we continue to see on FD, the larger 1 billion plus client base and enterprise continues to grow and be very positive and have a lot of value – realizing a lot of value on FD as a platform.

Okay. And you are also talking to – I am sorry, yes,

I was just going to follow-up. This is Carrie, that we have talked in the past about FD being targeted at a $1 billion plus company, as Chris mentioned. And we do see more than 70% of FD bookings and current client base in that segment. So, this is a sort of shifting dynamics of the business that we have been very intentionally setting out to do.

Okay, that sounds like kind of young. And then you have more up-selling and cross-selling opportunities within those larger organizations?

Correct.

Exactly.

Thank you. And then in terms of events, are they still hybrid or…?

They are, this is Carrie again. We continue to offer both a in-person and digital event. I think as you know, our ability to do that, since we have transitioned to digital so quickly, is a well known playbook for us at this point. And clients have experienced both. And we also are seeing an increased use of our member tickets for our events, so, attendance coming from ACC, from Forrester Decisions member clients, because of that digital capability as well.

And do you see the remote attendance is going up or are people more prompt to go to the in-person event?

It is going up a bit. And we also offer the ability to post event attend sessions, what we call a forum in a box, which is actually very strong little product for us showing that it’s a mix of both, kind of as you see in the rest of the world, right. Folks are excited to be back in-person and this capability expands our audience.

Okay. Thank you. And in terms of the longer sales cycle, you said that some economic concerns are budgetary constraints among some of these customers. Are you seeing that is enough? Have they got more clarity as we soak up to quality, or are you seeing – what are you seeing in terms of that from new customers?

Sure. Anja, this is Nate. Thanks for the question. We are seeing pipelines are starting to grow, and we are seeing customers really starting to engage with us more. One of the things we are working on is upskilling our account executives and account managers to have better conversations with them. They are really moving up the stack and higher in the organization, which is a little bit different kind of conversation they are used to. But they are responding really well to that, and leaning into the coaching and development that we are giving them. Running second half workshops, coming up over the next couple of weeks on how to better engage with them, and make sure that we are engaging in the right sales activities and getting the right deals in place so that we are focused on the right opportunities that can move quicker through the pipeline.

But Anja, we definitely feels a little bit of unfreezing going on right now.

Okay. Thank you for that. I will get back into queue.

Thanks Anja.

Thank you.

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

Yes, hello guys and gals. It was nice to see that the contract value stabilized in the quarter. Chris, in your expectations, are you assuming contract value stays flattish in Q3 and Q4?

Yes. Thanks Vince for the question. So, we have to really guide on CV growth. But as we said the past and we actually expect those metrics to be a little bit lumpy as we go through the ongoing product transition with FD, especially in light of the macroeconomic backdrop. So, for the next few quarters, we do sort of expect CV growth move up and down a few points, but be relatively flat. With that being said, we continue to get positive feedback on FD. And we are very encouraged by the stabilization and our overall client retention metrics. And that combined with improvements that Nate and his team are making to the sales organization gives us a lot of confidence that meaningful CV growth will turn as we get further along down this product transition that we have been talking about.

And the ending sales force number was down quite a bit. Could you remind me how much of that was restructuring, or what was driving that, did attrition pick up?

Yes. So, it’s Chris again. No, attrition did not pick up. Attrition has been very stable and low. That really is from the restructuring that we did in the prior quarter.

And Nate, it was good to hear that C-level participation at the events is up. And maybe George can chime in here too, were those numbers as expected, or did you – could you think about it? Can we talk about in those terms? And also you see more success selling higher? How did you perform in terms of selling higher in the organization this quarter in terms of actual sales versus expectations?

Great question Vince. On the first one, the engage, I may have missed it a little bit, the engaging at the events might be a little better for Carrie. But I can tell you that from a sales standpoint, where we are engaging at more senior levels. So, our big win that we talked about earlier in the quarter, some of the most senior levels in the organization really engage there showing tons of value to those senior executives. And they in turn, sponsored us with senior executives throughout the organization. So, that is a blueprint for us, for the rest of the organization to follow. And we are doing a lot of training and activity on that. And we are tracking how well our salespeople are doing, with where they are calling and levels in the organization we should be able to get pretty good metrics in the next quarter on when you are calling higher, you are getting a better return. To-date, we aren’t able to see those metrics, because it’s something that we just put into our systems, but we should see feedback on that at the end of Q3.

I can add a little bit of color…

Yes. Go ahead.

To the C-level question at events, we raised our expectations for C-level attendees at events very deliberately with a bigger focus on what we call our Majestic program, which is getting prospects to the event which is a tighter sales and events playbook to get those prospects there at the right level. So, that was in fact higher than prior years. But as we hoped and hit our goals for because we had such a deliberate program there. The other metrics that we are tracking, in terms of C-level penetration against goals is the number of seats that we have per account and FD in particular. And that continues, I can’t talk about those numbers, but that continues to rise very nicely, as expected and as the platform has meant to do quarter-over-quarter.

Those are good data points. Thank you. I will go back into the queue.

Thanks Vince.

Thank you. I am showing no further questions in the queue. At this time, I would like to turn the call back over to Chris Finn, CFO for closing remarks.

Thank you all for joining us this evening. Please reach out to Ed Bryce Morris if you have any questions or want follow-up conversations in the days and weeks ahead. Thank you very much.

Thank you. This concludes today’s conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.