Information Services Group, Inc.

Good morning and welcome to the Information Services Group First Quarter 2026 conference call. This call is being recorded and the replay will be available on ISG's website within 24 hours. Now I'd like to turn the call over to Mr. Will Thortz for his opening remarks and introductions. Mr. Thortz, please go ahead.

Thank you, operator. Hello and good morning. My name is Will Thoris. I am head of corporate communications for ISG. I'd like to welcome everyone to ISG's first quarter conference call. I'm joined today by Michael Connors, chairman and chief executive officer, and Michael Sherrick, executive vice president and chief financial officer. Before we begin, I would like to read a forward-looking statement. It is important to note that this communication may contain forward-looking statements which represent the current expectations and beliefs of the management of ISG concerning future events and their potential effects. These statements are not guarantees of future results and are subject to certain risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those anticipated. For a more detailed listing of the risks and other factors that could affect future results, please refer to the forward-looking statement contained in our Form 8K that was furnished last night to the SEC and the risk factor sections of our most recent Form 10-K and 10-Q filings. You should also read ISG's annual report on Form 10-K and any other relevant documents, including any amendments or supplements to these documents filed with the SEC. You will be able to obtain free copies of any of ISG's SEC filings on either ISG's website at www.isg-1.com or the SEC's website at www.sec.gov. ISG undertakes no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statement to reflect subsequent events or circumstances. During this call, we will discuss certain non-GAAP financial measures which ISG believes improves the comparability of the company's financial results between periods and provides for a greater transparency of key measures used to evaluate the company's performance. The non-GAAP measures which we will touch on today include adjusted EBITDA, adjusted net earnings, and the presentation of selected financial data on a constant currency basis. Non-GAAP measures are provided as additional information and should not be considered in isolation or as a substitute for financial results prepared in accordance with GAAP. For the reconciliation of all non-GAAP measures presented to the closely applicable GAAP measure, please refer to our current report on Form 8K, which was filed last night with the SEC. And now I would like to turn the call over to Michael Connors, who will be followed by Michael Sherrick. Mike?

Thank you, Will, and good morning, everyone. Today we will review our strong Q1 results, our compelling AI transformation story, our view of the broader demand environment, and our outlook for Q2. ISG had a strong first quarter and an excellent start to the year, continuing our momentum. Our Q1 results, both revenue and EBITDA, were at the top end of our guidance. Revenue was $61.2 million, up 3%, led by 25% growth in Europe and 9% growth in recurring revenues, powered by our research, public sector, and governance businesses. In terms of profitability, Q1 marks the sixth quarter in a row that our adjusted EBITDA has grown by double digits. Versus the prior year, it was up 12% to $8.3 million, and our adjusted EBITDA margin was up more than 100 basis points to 13.5%, fueled by a more profitable business mix and our strong operating discipline. Now, a few comments. on our AI transformation story. AI demand continues to accelerate for ISG. In Q1, we delivered $21 million of AI-related revenue, about a third of our firm-wide total. That was up from $12 million a year ago. AI-related revenue includes work where AI is a key part of the client solution, including AI research and insights, AI strategy, sourcing governance, operating model design, business case validation, software, tech provider evaluation, and transformation support. AI and the cost optimization initiatives that fund digital transformation remain leading areas of client investment, and that plays to our strengths. Apart from AI-driven solutions, we are leveraging AI in our own client delivery model to improve speed, quality, and efficiency, thereby supporting margin expansion over time. Our recently launched ISG AI Index underscores how the AI market continues to develop. Initial spending is concentrated in infrastructure as hyperscalers ramp up capacity to meet demand. Software and platform providers are beginning to monetize their AI capabilities, while managed services is still in the early stages, indicating the larger opportunity remains in front of us. As AI demand rises, so does complexity. It's in these periods of disruption, especially, that clients turn to ISG for our independent, trusted advice. Each year, we influence more than $200 billion of tech spend. This activity informs our advisors and researchers, expands our benchmarking data, and delivers data-driven insights and recommendations our clients depend on for their AI-powered business transformations. While AI adoption is still in the early stages, pilots are progressing into broader deployments. We expect this to translate into sustained demand and a growing pipeline of opportunities for ISG. One of the highlights of Q1 was the signing of our largest deal ever, a multi-year agreement valued up to $17 million to provide governance services to a top global manufacturer. Under this landmark contract, ISG will manage $300 million in global technology spend, with $200 million technology vendors to support a large-scale, multi-year AI-powered transformation. This work is beginning, and we expect to support this client for up to eight years on this AI-centered client initiative. One comment on our ISG Tango. We continue to deliver great value through our proprietary, AI-powered, next-generation sourcing platforms. More than $27 billion of contract value is flowing through Tango, which is now fully integrated into our workflows and has become integral to our sourcing business. Now, turning to our regions, the Americans delivered $40 million of revenue in Q1, down about 3% from last year against a tough compare, and up 4% sequentially from the fourth quarter. Our current America's pipeline is robust, and we expect solid year-over-year growth in Q2. During the first quarter, the region saw double-digit growth in research and governance, and in our health sciences, insurance, and public sector industry verticals. Key client engagements included Estee Lauder, ExxonMobil, and the state of Arizona. During the quarter, we began work on a $5 million engagement with a leading U.S. healthcare company to deliver technology, cost savings, and AI-driven innovation with the goal of improving patient care. We are providing a full range of services, including benchmarking, operating model design, sourcing, transition, change management, and governance services. This is one of the largest ever technology transactions in the U.S. healthcare sector, where there is increasing demand to modernize and digitize care, pointing to a great future opportunity for ISG. Also within this sector, we continue to deliver a multi-million dollar series of engagements for a global healthcare and medical products company, involving sourcing, governance, network, and software. We are also supporting the client's shift to agentic AI, which we expect will lead to follow-on work as the client accelerates its AI adoption. Our Europe region continued its momentum from the second half of last year with an excellent first quarter. Revenues were up 25% to $17 million, driven by double-digit growth in our advisory, software, and governance businesses, and in our consumer, insurance, and health sciences industry verticals. Key client engagements in Europe in the first quarter included Allianz, Diageo, and Barmer, a leading health insurer in Germany. During the quarter, we won a large engagement worth about $1 million with a welcome back client, a leading medical technology company. We are supporting a broad range of infrastructure and software initiatives for the client, aimed at optimizing cost and adopting AI with room for follow-on opportunities. We also want a $3 million engagement with a leading pharmaceutical company, a new client for the firm. We are delivering software advisory support and executing on an enterprise-wide technology sourcing and vendor consolidation strategy. involving AI ops and proprietary AI platforms. The goal is to free up savings for the client to reinvest in its research and development activities. As you can see from these examples, this was a big sales quarter for ISG in the health sciences sector, both in the US and in Europe. In Asia Pacific, our Q1 revenues of $4.1 million were down $700,000 compared with the prior year. Based on our current pipeline, including public sector work, we expect Q2 revenues to be up 20% sequentially. In Q1, we saw double-digit growth in our consumer and enterprise industry verticals. Key clients in the quarter included IMO and Woolworths. During the quarter, we continued our work on a new, nearly $1 million engagement, with a provider of data center services to power the region's ongoing adoption of AI. ISG is helping the client build out its core AI capabilities to support its rapid growth plans. Now turning to the broader market and our guidance for Q2. Clients continue to focus on cost optimization and AI investments, despite uncertain macro conditions. And this plays to our strengths. We see current demand trends continuing into Q2. With this in mind, for the second quarter, we are targeting revenues of between $62.5 and $63.5 million and adjusted EBITDA between $8 and $9 million, which will continue our year-over-year growth and margin expansion. Now let me turn the call over to Michael Sherrick, who will summarize our financial results. Michael?

Thank you, Mike, and good morning, everyone. Revenue for the first quarter was $61.2 million, up 3% year over year. By region, America's revenue was $39.8 million, down 2.9%. Europe delivered revenue of $17.3 million, up 25.3%. And Asia-Pacific was $4.1 million, down 14.7%. Adjusted EBITDA for the quarter was $8.3 million, up up 11.8%, with margin expanding 111 basis points to 13.5%. Operating income was $5 million, up 47.7% year-over-year, resulting in an operating margin of 8.2%. Gas net income was $2.7 million, or 5 cents per fully diluted share, compared with $1.5 million, or 3 cents per fully diluted share, last year. Adjusted net income was $4.3 million, or 9 cents per fully diluted share, up from $3.7 million, or 7 cents per fully diluted share, a year ago. Headcount at quarter end was 1,276, essentially flat with year end. Our consulting utilization was 71.5%, in line with our typical first quarter levels. We ended the quarter with cash of $22.7 million, compared with $28.7 million at the end of the fourth quarter, and up $2.6 million year over year. For the quarter, net cash used in operations was $700,000, which was in line with our expectations given normal first quarter seasonality. We continue to expect strong operating cash flow for the remainder of the year. During the quarter, we paid dividends of $2.2 million, and repurchased $2.1 million of stock. Our next quarterly dividend will be paid June 26th to shareholders of record as of June 5th. At quarter end, fully diluted shares outstanding were $50.2 million, and our gross debt to EBITDA ratio was just under 1.8 times, down from 1.9 times at December 31, 2025. Our average borrowing rate for the quarter was 5.4%, down 115 basis points year over year. Overall, our balance sheet remains solid, providing us with a strong foundation to both operate and invest in the business, especially in our AI initiatives. Mike will now share concluding remarks before we go to Q&A. Mike?

Thank you, Michael. To summarize, ISG is off to a strong start in 2026 with AI acting as a tailwind. Our first quarter results were led 25% growth in Europe and 9% growth in recurring revenues. We delivered our sixth straight quarter of double-digit growth in adjusted EBITDA, up 12% in Q1, with our margins up by more than 100 basis points. We believe ISG is a compelling AI transformation story in the technology research and advisory services markets. Not because we are talking about AI, but because AI is already having a positive impact on our revenue, our margins, governance wins, and client demand. Indeed, ISG is uniquely positioned to help clients realize their AI ambitions. Our unmatched value chain of research, benchmarking, advisory, and governance services is a key competitive advantage for ISG. delivering ROI to our clients and long-term value for our shareholders. So thank you very much for calling in this morning, and now let me turn the session over to the operator for your questions.

Today's question and answer session will be conducted electronically. If you'd like to ask a question, you can do so by pressing star 1 on your telephone keypad. If you find that your question has been answered and you would like to remove yourself from the queue, You may do so by pressing the pound sign. Again, if you would like to ask a question, you can do so by pressing star one on your touchstone keypad and we will pause for a moment to allow questions into the queue. The first question comes from the line of Joe Gnomes from Noble Capital. Please go ahead.

Good morning, nice quarter. Thank you. Good morning, Joe. First of all, I wanted to ask on the new client, and I don't know what more color you can provide on that, and maybe, you know, the pipeline there for a similar size type of deals. I know that you've mentioned this is the largest one, but, you know, is the pipeline growing to those type of deals more than, say, a million or $2 million deals? Yeah, thanks, Joe. So, first of all, yes, first of all, the major manufacturing company, a very large deal all around AI governance, which is a hot, hot topic with our client base. You know, they have allowed a diversification of the use of different tools on a global basis in a lot of these major enterprises. And the question now is, with all the usage and the cost going up, how are we going to govern this in an enterprise? And so we have a number of discussions going on and a number of things in our pipeline relative to our governance services, with AI governance being at the top of the list. So we expect this to be a very hot area for us over the next couple of years, Joe. Okay. And then just on the guidance, maybe you could kind of, you know, walk me through, you know, if I look year over year, you know, the second quarter last year was $61.6 million, and we're guiding the $62.5 to $63.5. You already talked about, you know, Asia should be up 20%, which is, you know, close to a million dollars there. I think you said North America or America should be also see some growth. So is there something still in the second quarter numbers last year that would kind of, you know, if we removed that, you know, would show a bigger growth rate for this year? Or are you just being conservative because of the environment out there?

Yeah, Joe, it's Michael. Thanks for the question. Yeah, look, I don't think that there's no item or individual thing we would point to, to your point, that drives it in terms of where we are. I think like anything, you know, there's an uncertain macro environment. We're still early in May. And so, you know, as always, we want to be conservative in how we look at things and make sure that, you know, we're not getting ahead of ourselves.

Okay, great. Thanks, Ben. I'll get back to you.

Thanks, Joe.

Our next question comes from the line of Dave Storms with StoneGate. Please go ahead.

All right, and thanks for taking my questions. Maybe you wanted to start with Europe. You mentioned you had a welcome back customer there. Just curious as to, you know, when you're looking at your pipeline, are you seeing an increase in welcome back customers? Is this kind of a one-off? I'm sure you guys are always working on that, but maybe any further color there would be great.

Yeah, so look, the reference we were referring to, just for definitional purposes, we call a welcome back client someone who has not done work with us in the last 24 months, I call it two years. We have a lot of continuous clients. As you know, about 80% of our clients or so are continuous year over year. So, no, I mean, what happens is in different segments, depending on what the environment is and what clients are wanting to move on and take action on and if they feel like the macro environment is looking a little better, in this case, the examples that I was giving was around, I think, the health sciences areas. You know, it's really driven by AI, and it's really driven by the need to accelerate pace. And as you know, in Europe, they're a little behind the U.S., primarily because the environment over there is a little more constrained because of all the geopolitical and other things going on. They want to make sure the air is clear. But that's what we're seeing. We're seeing that they are now moving at a more rapid pace than they had been. And they're right behind the U.S., but they are behind the U.S. overall. And AI is driving the need to move quicker.

Understood. I appreciate that. And then I did want to circle back to the large client. It sounds like this contract is predicated on a client that has already been working with AI and now maybe needs a little more guidance. Maybe if you were having this conversation a year ago, the conversations were more about getting clients more comfortable with AI and learning there. Are you seeing more contracts where you're coming into an environment – where the customer already has some familiarity and now you're working to professionalize, or do you still see a large number of clients that you're doing more teaching on, if that question is asked the right way?

Yeah, it's a good question. I hate to answer it this way, but frankly, it's both. The specific example, this is a very well-known manufacturing company. They began to put together a strategic plan. AI roadmap over the next eight years. It was an eight-year roadmap. So they were in the early stages of developing the roadmap. They asked us to come in and help them complete the roadmap. And in the process, we ended up with this longer-term contract. But I would say it's equally that and equally that others are beginning the journey. And I know it's hard to believe. But a lot of clients are in the very, very beginning, just like cloud where there are late bloomers, just like certain companies have never outsourced, believe it or not, in 2026. So there are different companies in different industries, and the pace is different. The consumer market, I'll use that one as an example, is red hot. Why is it red hot? There's a lot of pressure on pricing, on the consumer market. Fuel prices are up. It's taking away some discretionary spend. So the pressure to be able to use AI and optimize costs is increasing on the consumer sector. So that's a red-hot industry. I mentioned health sciences as a second one. And the public sector, we don't do work at the federal level, but we do work in the state level in the U.S., is also very, very hot. Those are, it varies a little bit, Dave, but I would say we have both sides of that coin that we're working with clients depending on where they are on their journey.

That's great commentary. I'll come back to you. Thank you. Thanks, Dave.

Our next question is from the line of Vincent Kaluki with Barrington Research. Please go ahead.

Yeah, good morning, Mike. Good morning, Vince. You just mentioned that you've seen some clients new to outsourcing. My question was going to be, is that happening to a great extent? In other words, is the complexity and shortage of talent and AI expanding, you know, the number of companies you could potentially be working with versus other recent years?

Yeah. So, good question, Vince. Let me start with the mid-market. And we define the mid-market, but he defines it differently. is under a $10 billion revenue company. So think about it, $1 to $10 billion. That is a very sweet spot. Why? Most of them are, they all have, of course, CTOs or CIOs, but the depth of experience at those size companies is not near what it is on the, you know, call it the global 1,000 companies. And so our ability to go in, especially using Tango, as our platform, has been a great door opener, as has the AI Maturity Index, to help them understand the level of maturity that their organization is in. It's eye-opening to them. And so what we've been able to do is to penetrate that mid-market where we have never been able to penetrate it because of our pricing scheme before. Now, with AI and the complexity of that, they want to be able to figure out how they can use AI at scale that can change the complexion of their business, and they don't have that level of talent typically inside their organizations. So, yes, it's been a nice uplift.

And then, Michael Sherrick, did acquisitions meet the expectations in the quarter, and what was the contribution?

Yeah, so, again, if you look quarter over quarter, You know, what we really had this quarter was AI MI, nothing really material year over year. So, it did meet our expectation. We continue to be extremely encouraged and optimistic on that transaction, right? It really is a tip of spear, door opener type of offering for us, you know, in the world of AI. So, you know, again, We did that one knowing it was a technology and it would be that hyposphere, and we've seen that play out. So we continue to be very excited with both the offering and specifically the team that we took on from there.

And, Mike, in APAC, I wasn't clear on if you're seeing the government come around there in Australia.

Yeah, so what we are seeing is our pipeline now is very strong, including the public sector. And that's why we're pretty bullish on, I mentioned earlier, we expect to be in the 20% growth sequentially in Asia Pacific. That would make it about flat year over year. So that is making the turn of the corner. And that's being driven because the federal spending, based on our pipeline, we see picking up. And so that should begin to display in the second quarter. And that was what I was referring to there, Vince. Okay. Nice quarter, gentlemen. Yep. Thanks, Vince.

Your next question comes from the line of Mark Riddick with Sidoti and Company. Please go ahead.

Say good morning, everyone.

Morning, Mark.

I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about what you're seeing as far as catalysts, demand catalysts, maybe from a regulatory standpoint or maybe some other external catalysts as far as the AI market. activity that you're seeing more recently?

Yeah, the biggest one we're seeing is in the whole area of kind of risk mitigation, compliance, and governance. And this is what I was referencing both on the very large client contract we just won. But overall, there is strong sentiment to find the best way to govern the AI spend and and the use of the AI tools in broad, big enterprises. So, you know, when we do this AI maturity index, the way it works is that an individual takes 15 minutes. It's all digital. They lay out kind of we get the level of kind of maturity that they are at, including the tools that they're using. And then we can roll it up on an aggregate basis for the organization. And the eye-opener there is that they find out that there are 10, 15, 25 different tools that are being used in their organization globally, and they are a big eye-opener for them. That leads them to, well, how are we going to govern and manage this exploding use of AI tools and models and so forth? That's the number one thing we are saying, which is benefiting, you know, our thrust in governance services that we started, you know, as you know, several years ago.

Right. Right. Excellent. And I'm not sure if you mentioned in your prepared remarks, but sort of where are we now as far as recurring as a percentage of revenue? Yep.

Let us get you that number, but I think the recurring Do you have that, Michael? Yeah, just give me one second.

I think it's around 47%.

I think it's around 47%, something like that. We'll get you the exact precise number, but it's approaching that 50% mark, which we had laid out.

So we're getting close. I think we had said it was up 9% versus prior year. To be exact, it's 47%, so we're approaching that 50% level, as Mike just noted.

Yeah, that makes sense. That was sort of where we're getting to there. And then I just, last thing for me, I was sort of curious, I know it's early, but it was nice in the introduction of the AI index, not last enough, I guess. But I'm wondering maybe you could talk a little bit about some of the thoughts there or feedback that you've received and sort of what your expectations are. as far as sort of moving that message forward?

Yeah, no, it's a good question. So we launched the AI, ISE AI index to cover kind of three areas, infrastructure as a service, software as a service, and managed services, which are really the three largest components of the whole thing. Infrastructure, we used the mark of December 2022, so shortly after the The chat GPT thing came out. We use that as the start point. So if you look at it from there through the first quarter of this year, infrastructure as a service is up 160%. Revenue has doubled. Profitability in the companies are up 60%. Their stock's up 113%. And CapEx, and this goes to everything you see, is up 265%. So it's a clear sign. that growth of AI with the hyperscalers. If you move the software as a service, they too, despite all the noise about the SaaS players, they're up 53% since that date. Revenue's up 61% with those aggregate software players. Profitability up 18%. Their stock's up 39%. And the key metric that we use there is what we call current remaining performance obligations. or CRPO, and that essentially is the backlog. That's up 71%. So you can see that both of them, despite some of the noise in the market, are performing overall very well. Managed services is up slightly less than 1% since inception. Revenue is up 8%. Profitability is up 4%. Revenue per employee is up 8%. So think about automation. And stock, though, is down a third. So what we see here is that revenue per employee is increasing despite the pressure on growth and margin. But I think you should see that turn over the next 12 months in that segment. So the feedback we've gotten is great. We're putting some structure around I'll call the noise. Because our ISG index, we've been doing it for over 90 consecutive quarters. They love the fact that we are now creating this index and can put some structure around around what the, you know, the noise is out in the marketplace. So, that's where we are on that. It's very encouraging. Thank you very much. Yeah, thank you.

Your next question is from the line of Doshi Shree with Singular Research. Please go ahead.

Good morning, Kevin. Can you hear me?

Yes, good morning, Doshi.

Good, thank you. This $17 million governance contract, can you get a sense of the economics? Is that a fixed annual fee over that eight-year contract, or what does the margin profile look like?

So, Gauchi, it's Michael. Sorry, I couldn't hear if you had a follow-on to that, but it's Michael. So, in contracts like that, specifically, there's really two components. The first starts with a I'll call it an implementation, is you're getting everything put in place and ready for the ongoing contract. And then it's a fixed fee contract thereafter. So that's how those are typically structured for us.

Okay. And at what point of the year does it kind of start contributing uniquely to their advertising?

This might. Think about it as roughly $2 million a year. So think about it roughly that way. And that should start right toward the tail end of Q2. And we should start to begin to see that, you know, annualized, if you will, starting in Q3.

Gotcha. Awesome. Okay. Thank you, Galsha.

I'm showing no further questions. I'll turn the call back to Mike Connors for closing remarks.

Great. Thank you. Look, in closing, let me thank all of our professionals worldwide for their continuing progress and for their collaboration and unwavering dedication to our clients in driving our long-term success. We had the honor of celebrating this week, ringing the closing bell at NASDAQ that represented our 20th anniversary. And it's our people that have a passion for delivering the best advice and support to our clients as they continue on their AI-powered transformations, and I could not be prouder of them. So thanks to all of you on the call for your continued support and confidence in our firm, and have a great day.

This concludes today's conference call. You may disconnect at any time. Thank you again for joining us.