5/5/2021

speaker
Operator

Good afternoon. Thank you for joining today's call. With me today is George Colony, FOSA's Chairman of the Board and CEO, Kelly Hipler, FOSA's Chief Sales Officer, and Scott Chenard, FOSA's Interim Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer. George will open the call. Kelly will follow George to discuss sales. Then Scott will discuss our financials. We'll then open the call to Q&A. Kerry Johnson, Forces Chief Research Officer will be joining the Q&A portion of the call. A replay of this call will be available until June the 5th, 2021 and can be accessed by dialing 855-859-2056 or 404-537-3406. Please reference the conference ID 5068724. 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, estimate, 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. Some of the important factors that could cause actual results to differ are discussed in our reports and filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The company undertakes no obligations to update, publicize any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information future events or otherwise. I would now like to hand the call over to George Colony. You may begin.

speaker
George Colony

Thank you very much for listening to Forrester's 2021 Q1 Investor Call. I will begin with an update on the quarter. Kelly Hippler, Head of Sales, will give a sales update, and Scott Chouinard, Forrester's Interim CFO, will then give a financial review for the quarter. Kerry Johnson, Forrester's Head of Research and Products, will join us, and then the four of us will take questions. I'd like to start by reflecting on the overall economy. We are entering a period of recovery in the U.S. with Europe lagging and the Asian markets slightly ahead of the U.S. Disruption from the pandemic continues in certain regions, with India being the most prominent example. It's clear that the pandemic has driven some important market changes. Consumer behavior has shifted permanently toward digital. The way we work has been reorganized around virtual and flex. and companies must now be all in on connecting to their customers via sophisticated technology. In this backdrop, the Forrester value proposition has never been more resonant. We will be on the side and by the side of our clients as they navigate the challenges of the post-pandemic economy. In the first quarter of 2021, we significantly beat our expectations for revenue, operating margin, and earnings per share. The momentum that began building in the third quarter of 2020 continued forward into Q1. While we are cautious, given that the pandemic is not over globally, we expect our momentum to carry through the year. We grew contract value bookings by 4% year over year. We have seen three quarters of sequential CV growth since the second quarter of 2020. And as a result of this strong performance, we will be raising guidance for the year, and Scott will go into that in more detail. As I mentioned on our last call, Forrester is laser focused on expanding contract value, the value of Forrester's annual recurring research revenue. We define CV products as services that our clients use periodically over a year's time and then renew on a yearly basis. In 2021, we are planning to grow CV bookings by double digit rates. The consistent expansion of contract value is attractive to investors as it results in predictable and profitable revenue streams. In past years, we have tracked syndicated revenue and agreement value for investors. These metrics are now being replaced by the more conventional and simpler CV. Now, how will CV growth improve the long-term prospects of Forrester and drive shareholder value? As CV grows, earnings and free cash flow will increase. We will invest this cash in three ways. Number one, expanding and improving the sales and marketing engine, two, enhancing and launching research products, and then three, acquiring other companies. A more powerful sales engine coupled with improved CV products and acquired contracts will enable Forrester to grow CV at faster rates, generating increased cash, which will then be reinvested continuing the cycle. Scott will share results of three key metrics that the company will be reporting on quarterly basis, CV growth, wall retention, and CV client retention. I want to turn to the performance of our three businesses, research, this is where most of our CV products reside, consulting, and events. And starting with research, readership in Q1 was up 6% year over year, and analyst inquiries increased 23%. As clients used Forrester to help build their post-crisis strategies, and execute on key digital initiatives. Our future of work research continues to resonate as we are guiding our clients back to offices and into flex work arrangements. One of the most read reports from late Q1 was the opportunity unknowns and the risks of vaccine passports in the workplace. We also deliver research to help clients update their IT stacks to become more adaptive, creative, and resilient. And we call this FutureFit. The post-pandemic drive to be digital is challenging legacy IT and control-focused CIOs. Our FutureFit research is helping companies sense change in their customers and markets and then update their technology quickly to meet these new demands. We grew CV bookings in our FeedbackNow startup venture. FeedbackNow enables companies to measure and improve customer experience in real time, and we have developed touchless smiley boxes for the post-pandemic world. FeedbackNow had a strong quarter powered by enrichment and multi-year renewals in the healthcare, transportation, and retail industries, as well as new clients like Nestle and a major European roadside management corporation. Consulting also exceeded expectations, with 21% growth year over year, in part driven by the sustained success of content marketing. Technology vendors continue to use this product to drive their marketing and sales leads in the absence of in-person events. Now turning to Forrester events. While we held no summits or forums in the first quarter, the team was preparing for our two largest events, which are being held in the second quarter. The company's largest venue, B2B Summit, convened this week in a live virtual format. And this is the second time that it has been delivered via a digital platform. Paid attendance at Summit was up 20% year over year. Our second largest event, CX North America, will be held in June. And sponsorships for both Summit and CX North America are sold out. Well, all of our events in the first half of the year will be held virtually, we are planning to move some of our events to in-person in the second half of the year, contingent on infection rates and the willingness of attendees to travel and gather. I would now like to turn to the launch of an important new product for Forrester. We decided early in 2020 that we would use the pandemic year to innovate and stay on the offensive. Approximately a year ago, we began to design a new research portfolio combining the best of Forrester with the best of Sears Decisions. We announced this new product, which we call Forrester Decisions, on Monday of this week with the ringing of the opening bell at NASDAQ. In hundreds of interviews, clients told us that they wanted to formulate strong visions of the future and then quickly translate those plans into implementation and outcomes. It is no longer possible for large companies to run multi-year strategy and change management projects. Customers are morphing too fast and competitors are too aggressive. So we've designed our new research portfolio to help companies shorten the time between technology vision and business execution. And very importantly, we are doing this in one research portfolio, not two. The world is no longer neatly divided into technology and business. Forced decisions helps companies merge these disciplines to win more customers and grow faster. Pacesetters like Amazon and Netflix see business as technology and technology as business. And that is how we're going to be leading our clients to move forward. The new portfolio will serve 15 executives, including CIOs, CMOs, chief sales officers, chief product officers, security and risk executives, and enterprise architects. All of these executives will receive all of Forrester's vision research. The intention is to help clients in technology and business build a shared vision of the future so they can move forward together in formation to win customers. The legacy Forrester and Serious Decisions research products will still be available. There's no hard cut over to Forrester Decisions. Now, that said, we do expect that most clients will be transitioned to the new product within 18 to 24 months. And Forrester decisions will be available in August, and I will update you with more details on the Q2 call in July. Turning to our balance sheet, we generated a record amount of cash from operations in Q1 and ended the quarter with over $125 million. The company is financially prepared for investments and acquisitions that will drive our CV growth. I wanted investors to know that we have upgraded our site to include details on Forrester's position on ESG, environment, social, and governance. And you can find the link at the bottom of the Forrester.com page under investor information. I'm going to conclude my remarks by thanking our employees and clients for the continued trust and dedication. I also want to let our colleagues in India and other countries that are battling the pandemic know that we will support them in any way that we can. And with that, I'll turn the call over to Kelly Hipler, Forrester's Chief Sales Officer. Kelly?

speaker
Kelly Hippler

Thank you, George. Today, I want to spend a few minutes discussing two things. Number one, our pivot to contract value, and number two, our preparations for the Forrester decisions launch. Number one, pivot to contract value. The Forrester sales team has embraced our laser focus on driving contract value growth, Increasing contract value is centered on building long-term and deep partnerships with our clients. In Q1, we realigned all awards and recognition to celebrate those who overperform on their CV growth targets, including our prestigious Winner's Circle trip. I'm pleased to report that year-to-date, we are on pace with contract value bookings expectations. To drive contract value, we are taking a multi-pronged approach targeting client retention, wallet retention, and client acquisition efforts. I'll highlight a few examples of our Q1 wins. Client retention. We continue to see improvements in retention across geographies. For example, one systems integrator that we partner with in Southern Europe signed a three-year renewal totaling $1.25 million, a 100% CV relationship. Wallet retention. We closed an enrichment program with a major financial services company in the U.S. to provide research and analytics to support their home lending business for $227,000. Client acquisition. We saw strong performance across our new business teams in the quarter. One of our many new business initiatives is a coordinated win-back program to re-engage clients with Forrester who were lost during the pandemic and were already gaining traction. An example was a major U.S. retailer who signed a three-year, 100% CV contract totaling $384,000. Number two, our preparations for the Forrester Decisions launch. Our sales and customer success teams are excited about the launch of Forrester Decisions, our new premium product line. Our sales enablement team has built a robust training plan that launched in February to start preparing our teams. This new product will show the power of aligning the revenue engine across product, marketing, and sales. On a personal note, I'm very eager to be able to offer Forrester decisions to our clients. Forrester decisions will help us to deliver on our brand promise of being on our clients' sides and by their sides, in turn leading to double-digit contract value growth. And with that, I will turn the call over to Scott Chouinard.

speaker
George

Thanks, Kelly. I'll now review Forrester's financial performance for the first quarter, the new metrics that we published today, and our guidance for the second quarter and full year 2021. Please note that the income statement figures we review on this call are non-GAAP results, which we refer to as adjusted results. We have provided a reconciliation of our GAAP results to our adjusted results in our press release that we issued today. As George mentioned, we had a fantastic quarter and delivered revenue, operating margin, and earnings per share that exceeded the upper end of our guidance and showed significant improvement from the prior year period, with total revenue up 7% or 6% on a currency neutral basis and earnings per share up 22%. CV bookings increased 4% for the quarter, and we remain confident in achieving our goal of double digit CV bookings growth for the year. Our consulting Revenue significantly exceeded expectations and operating expenses were in check as we were cautious with our spending during the quarter. We generated record operating cash flow for a single quarter of $40.6 million and ended the quarter with over $125 million in cash on the balance sheet. Overall, the momentum in the business that we saw in the fourth quarter continued into the first quarter. We are optimistic regarding the balance of the year. And as we indicated on our last call, we reported a new set of metrics today and have published these metrics going back to the first quarter of 2019 on the investor relations section of our website. Now let me spend a few minutes explaining these metrics with the overall concept being that our new metrics are based on our contract value products as compared to our prior metrics, which encompassed our entire portfolio of products. So starting with the contract value metric or CV, This is a measure of the annualized value of our recurring research products. This is predominantly made up of our subscription research products. However, we also include reprint products in CV, as these products include a subscription component, are used throughout the year by our clients, and are typically renewed. We show the CV metric on a currency neutral basis. And we've modified our client retention metrics to include retention of CV clients only. and we have introduced a new metric called wallet retention. And this metric combines our old dollar retention and enrichment metrics into a single metric. Wallet retention measures how much of our CV that we have retained from the prior year, which includes two components. One, losses from client attrition, and two, enrichment from the clients that we retained. And enrichment simply means the increase or decrease in the contract value of the retained client. In addition, We have modified our client count methodology. Our previous methodology included only clients with whom we had a subscription research relationship, and these are the vast majority of our client relationships. However, our new client count includes all clients that purchase a CD product, including our reprint product, for which we have seen an increase in demand during the past year as clients look to us for help in generating leads for their business. Our new client count methodology may make our client count more volatile as compared to our old methodology. And as I mentioned, we published these metrics on the Investors Relations section of our website going back to the first quarter of 2019. So turning to the results for the quarter, research revenues were up 1% compared to the first quarter of 2020. CV growth was essentially flat compared to Q1 of 2020. However, we've seen three straight quarters of sequential growth in CV from the second quarter of 2020 to the first quarter of 2021. And similar to the trend in CV, we've experienced a sequential upward trend in both wallet and client retention from lows in Q3 of last year. And client count has increased steadily from Q3 of last year due to the strength of our reprint business. Consulting revenue was the primary driver of our revenue beat this quarter with 21% growth compared to the prior year This represents two consecutive quarters of double-digit growth in consulting revenue. And event revenue was minimal, as we did not hold any events during the quarter. Operating expenses for the first quarter increased by 5%, driven by the reinstatement of our annual bonus, merit increases, and higher professional services related to our consulting delivery. These increases were partially offset by lower travel and entertainment expenses due to travel restrictions that remain in effect, ending headcount was down 2.5% compared to the first quarter of 2020. Operating income and margin both expanded compared to the prior year with operating income at 14 million or 12.3% of revenue in the current quarter compared to 11.3 million or 10.6% of revenue in the first quarter of 2020. Interest expense for the quarter was 1.1 million as compared to 1.5 million in the first quarter of 2020 due to reduced debt levels and lower interest rates in the quarter. And net income was up 24% and EPS increased by 22% compared to Q1 of last year with net income coming in at 8.6 million and earnings per share at 45 cents in the current quarter compared with net income of 6.9 million and earnings per share of 37 cents in the first quarter of 2020. Cashflow from operating activities was a quarterly record of 40.6 million an increase of 86% compared with the $21.8 million generated in Q1 of last year. And we ended the quarter with $125.6 million of cash on the balance sheet. CapEx was $1.5 million for the quarter compared with $2.4 million in Q1 of last year. So in summary, we had a great first quarter from both an earnings and cash flow perspective and saw continued momentum in the business. This momentum has given us confidence to, one, accelerate investments in the business during the remainder of the year to drive CV growth in 2021 and beyond, and two, to increase our full-year revenue in EPS guidance. And as Kelly mentioned, the entire company is excited about the launch of Forrester Decisions and the benefits that this product set will bring to our clients and how it positions the company for sustained CV growth. Clients will be able to purchase Force to Decision starting in the third quarter. And as this product is a subscription product, the impact on revenue in 2021 will be muted with a larger effect in 2022. Now regarding our 2021 guidance, first a note on events. We are still planning for a hybrid event experience in the second half of the year, which will be a mix of in-person and virtual experiences. And the final decision on the format will be made in the next few months. Now we have raised our full year revenue guidance by $7 million or 2% and raised full year EPS guidance by 8 cents or 5%. Embedded in this guidance are a few factors. Number one, as I mentioned, we were cautious with our spending in the first quarter due to the uncertainty with the economic recovery as the vaccine rollout was at an early stage. We expect to accelerate investment spending in the coming quarters in the areas of sales and product development. Two, we are restoring our vacation benefits to pre-pandemic levels. Three, our guidance beat in the first quarter was largely due to overperformance in our consulting business. And although we expect that business to keep performing at a high level, we do not expect to run as hot as we did in the first quarter. And lastly, we are being a bit cautious with our outlook as we are not out of the woods yet with the pandemic, with certain markets facing renewed virus threats and lockdowns. We have provided guidance on a GAAP basis and listed the items excluded from our adjusted guidance in our press release and 8 file today. Our second quarter 2021 guidance on an adjusted basis is as follows. Revenues of $120 to $124 million. operating margin of 13% to 15%, an effective tax rate of 31%, and diluted earnings per share of 52 to 58 cents. Our full year 2021 guidance on an adjusted basis is as follows. Revenues of 473 to 483 million, operating margin of 10 to 11%, an effective tax rate of 31%, and diluted earnings per share of $1.58 to $1.68. Thank you very much, and I will now turn the call over to the operator for the Q&A portion of the call.

speaker
Operator

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, as a reminder to ask the question, you will need to press star then one on your telephone. To withdraw your question, press the pound key. Again, that's star one to ask the question. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. Our first question comes from the line of Andrew Nicholas with Wim Blair. Your line is open.

speaker
Andrew Nicholas

Hi, good afternoon. Thanks for taking my questions. The first one I had was just on the contract value metric. Obviously, that's new this quarter. Appreciate you presenting the historical numbers on the IR site. Just wanted to ask about how you're thinking about contract value and that metric and the cadence over the course of this year, now that you have the first quarter under your belt and part of the second quarter underway. And then, you know, in addition to that, and this might be a bit more difficult to answer, but how are you thinking about the different components to that growth as we move through the year? Do you expect it to be more levered towards win-backs from clients lost last year, adding seats to existing clients, bringing on new logos, anything? Any color on the underlying components would also be helpful.

speaker
George

Hey, Andrew. Thanks for the question. This is Scott. I'll at least take the first part of that. As you know, we've talked about our CV bookings growth goal of double digits. And we talked about on this call that we hit 4% in the first quarter. So there's certainly an expectation of ramping up our CV bookings as the year goes along. And as that ramps up, we would expect you know, the CV metric to show, you know, growth, you know, kind of expanding growth as we move throughout the quarters. So, you know, we're flat Q1 to Q1 this year. You know, we'd expect probably low single digits in Q2 and then have that expand as bookings expand throughout the year. And, you know, I'll take a stab at the second part too while I have the mic. You know, I think there's going to be a mix of both pieces here. You know, certainly we came into the year with the season's Salesforce and, you know, Kelly has great programs in place for both, you know, expanding from an enrichment standpoint and from a win back standpoint. So I think we'll see a mix from, you know, CV bookings expansion from both of those as we go throughout the year.

speaker
Kelly Hippler

Great. Thank you, Andrew, for the question. And Scott, I completely agree. We do have a multi-pronged approach to how we're going to drive contract value moving forward. New business is fully armed and our teams there are fully staffed. In addition to enrichment, we're also putting focus on renewal and retention programs. And that's also an area where we've been partnering with our marketing organization where we've stood up a client marketing discipline now under that. So it will be a three-pronged approach to driving those metrics moving forward.

speaker
Andrew Nicholas

Great, thank you. And then in terms of kind of bookings and bookings velocity, could you kind of talk about how it progressed or how it improved over the course of the quarter? I know it's been improving sequentially on a quarter-over-quarter basis, but anything notable between January to February to March, and then anything that you can say about quarter-to-date activity?

speaker
Kelly Hippler

Sure. Thank you for the question. What's interesting there, Andrew, is that we have not seen a huge shift in terms of average days to close, but what we did see year over year was about a 7% increase in conversion rate on the Q1 pipeline. So we were very pleased with the ability to take those opportunities that we had, especially without having events in quarter, to be able to take that pipeline and close on a significantly higher percentage of that, which I think just speaks to the value that our clients and prospects are seeing in the research and the help that we're providing them with right now.

speaker
Andrew Nicholas

Awesome. And then if I could just squeeze one more in, just bigger picture, kind of speak to how the U.S. market is, you know, different from or recovering differently than the international market and how that might kind of play out through the rest of this year and into next given circumstances. These different regions are obviously at different stages in their COVID recovery. Thanks.

speaker
George Colony

Yeah, Andrew, George here. Great questions. We're observing it sort of across the board at this point. I mean, even travel appears to be recovering. We're winning some contracts in that space right now, which surprised us that that was happening in Q1. So there's a broad strength across a lot of different verticals. in the U.S. And as I said in my remarks, Asia is also doing quite well. You know, Europe is still very inconsistent at this point, I would say, by country. I don't think you're going to see acceleration there until the second half. I think Q2 will be a big vaccine quarter for them, and I think things will improve in Q3 and Q4. But I'd say just generally about the U.S., broad recovery here.

speaker
Andrew Nicholas

Thanks again. Thanks, Adrienne.

speaker
Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Vincent Colicchio with Barrington Research. Your line is open.

speaker
Vincent

Yeah, Kelly, it sounds like you did real well with older clients returning in the quarter. I was wondering if that was up significantly sequentially, and if you think that'll be an ongoing tailwind going forward.

speaker
Kelly Hippler

Thank you, Vincent. So we have been pleased with the steadily improving retention rates. I'd say it's probably been since Q3 timeframe. And we do expect that trend to continue as we move forward throughout the year. And as George alluded to, as we continue to see different regions recovering throughout the course of the year. So we are expecting and seeing higher retention rates and also been pleased to see a number of clients who we lost last year because of the pandemic already signed back up with us this year as things start to improve.

speaker
Vincent

And do you expect that trend to continue?

speaker
Kelly Hippler

We do, both between the improving economy and then later in Q3 with the launch of Forrester Decisions. I do believe that those two things in concert will help us get back to where we were pre-pandemic as we move forward.

speaker
Vincent

And Scott, in the financial guidance section, What is your assumption for the business in terms of when you return back to office in a meaningful way and when T&E expenses may pick up? And I'm curious, what are you assuming for the event business? Are you being conservative in the guidance in terms of in-person events?

speaker
George

Thanks for the questions, Vince. You know, I'd say from, you know, return to office and expense standpoint, you know, we've built into our guidance some, you know, gradual, you know, teeny expense buildup from, you know, Q3 into Q4. You know, assuming that folks will be back in the office, you know, primarily in Q4 and that, you know, sales travel will start back up again and event travel will be there too. From a revenue standpoint, we are including probably a couple million dollars of upside for hybrid event experience. And we have two events in the third quarter and then six in the fourth quarter. So we're really hoping by the time the fourth quarter rolls around that we'll be able to do those hybrid events. But there's not a lot of revenue baked into the guidance there. It's probably not, to answer your question more directly, not a lot of upside on the guidance there. Um, you know, I'd say from an, from an upside perspective, you know, where, you know, consulting has been running, running hot, ran hot in Q1. Um, you know, we expect some strength in Q2 because we have some visibility into the backlog in Q2, but, um, you know, just not sure if some of that first half growth eats into the second half growth that we had originally planned for.

speaker
Vincent

And George, in terms of, uh, some of your, your, your, uh, capital allocation priorities, uh, acquisitions were mentioned, uh, um, after internal investment, um, is it, is that something we may see this year or is it sort of on the back burner?

speaker
George Colony

No, I'd say that it's in the middle burner at this point. Uh, you know, not the front, not back, but certainly, you know, coming from the back to further toward the front. Um, we have a lot on our plates this year, Vince, with, uh, with fortune decisions. Um, but that being said, we have a couple of very good targets that were, that were on the, no announcement today, but we're, we're, we're, we're looking carefully. Um, So, you know, as I've talked about on calls past, acquisitions, it's very hard to predict. You know, you get a deal, you get all the way down to the end of the line, and the deal goes south on you. But I'd say that, again, moving toward the front burner, off the back burner.

speaker
Vincent

Nice quarter, guys. Thanks, Vince.

speaker
George

Thank you, Vince. Thank you.

speaker
Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Anja Soderstrom with Sedoti. Your line is open.

speaker
Anja Soderstrom

Hi, thank you for taking my questions, and congratulations on a strong quarter. It looks like things are moving along nicely for you. I'm a little bit surprised about the full-year guidance. It seems a little bit shy. What do you expect there? What kind of upside could you see? What kind of risk do you see for the second half there?

speaker
George Colony

You know what?

speaker
George

Or is it Anja?

speaker
George Colony

I can't tell. It's Anja. Joke. Yeah, look, we're not out of the pandemic. We have a large operation in India. There are, of course, great difficulties there. So, you know, we are being – I don't think we're being overly cautious, but we're being cautious here, Rania. And we see there's a lot of good signs in the business, and, you know, enforcement decisions is very cool in the product. But that being said, you know, we're – I think we are being typically cautious here. Scott, you may have better color here.

speaker
George

Yeah, I mean, I would – You know, to start out saying, look, the research portion of the business is on track, right? That performed as we expected in the first quarter. You know, we were confident in hitting our bookings number for the year. So that, you know, that from a guidance standpoint, that's pretty consistent. You know, where we saw the overachievement was really on consulting and the fact that we held back on some spending in the first quarter just due to the uncertainty, you know, coming into the year. You know, so as we look out, you know, for guidance, a lot of that Q1 revenue beat is baked into the guidance. And we see a pretty strong Q2 from a revenue standpoint. But as I just mentioned with Vince's question, we're not sure if some of that consulting heat kind of eats into their original Q2 plan. So from an upside perspective, maybe consulting gets a little bit better in the second half than what we projected. But we can't really see that right now. And, you know, we've taken the opportunity with the strength in Q1 that, you know, we're going to invest in both from a sales standpoint and from a product standpoint. And mentioned, you know, restoring kind of the final employee benefit that was touched on in 2020. So that's part of what, you know, eats into the second half margins.

speaker
George Colony

Yeah, I think one last note. Yeah, and Anya, one last note here is we haven't made a call on events for the second half of the year yet. We're being quite conservative there, and we'll make that call after the end of Q2.

speaker
Anja Soderstrom

Okay, that makes sense. And then in terms of the first decision, it's a significant fact release. When do you expect to see any sort of meaningful contribution from that? You're releasing it in the third quarter, right? So it will take... some lag there.

speaker
George

Thanks, Ania. This is Scott. We're really excited about this product launch. It's a huge launch for us. The whole company is behind it and excited. We can't wait to start selling it. That being said, it's a subscription product. It's going to be available in the third quarter. It'll take a little bit for you to see that revenue roll out into our financials. The 2021 effect will be muted. I think what you'll see the biggest effect is we'll start to see some effect, as Kelly mentioned, with retention. This is going to be a product that clients will want. So we should start to see as this rolls out and clients transition that we see some benefit on the retention side. And it'll take a little bit to see in that metric. It's a rolling 12-month metric. But that's probably the biggest or the earlier impact that you'll see. And then the revenue piece will be rolling out more so in 2022. You know, and it's a little bit of a higher cost to serve model, so we wouldn't expect necessarily a big margin impact with it until we start to get the volume, then you get the normal leverage in the business as you drive CV growth.

speaker
Anja Soderstrom

Okay, thank you. And given your strong cash generation now, and you talked a little bit about the capital allocation, are you at all discussing the dividend to come back or?

speaker
George Colony

Not as yet. Well, there was a short discussion at the board meeting last week, but we have not made a final decision here yet, Anya.

speaker
Anja Soderstrom

Thank you.

speaker
George Colony

Yeah, Anya, if we do bring the dividend back, we will bring it back. We want to make sure we want to do that because we don't want to keep bringing it back and then suspending it. Obviously, the inconsistency is that it's whiplash for investors. So if we bring it back, it's going to be come back. I don't want to, don't quote me on this, but it'll come back for good. So we want to make sure we make that, we consider, there's a lot of consideration around that decision.

speaker
Anja Soderstrom

Yeah, that makes sense. Well, thank you for that, Connor. That was all for me.

speaker
George Colony

Thanks, Anya. Appreciate it.

speaker
Operator

Thank you. I'm not showing any further questions in the queue at this time. I would now like to turn the call back over to Scott Chenot for any further remarks.

speaker
George

Okay, thank you. So I want to thank everyone for joining us on the call today, and we look forward to seeing some of you at the conferences that we have scheduled this quarter and then updating everyone on our progress to date during our second quarter call. So thank you.

speaker
Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.

Disclaimer

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