Gartner, Inc.

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Gartner's third quarter 2021 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. To ask a question during this session, you'll need to press star 1 on your telephone. If you require any further assistance, press star 0. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, David Cohen, GVP of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Good morning, everyone. We appreciate your joining us today for Gartner's third quarter 2021 earnings call and hope you are well. With me on the call today are Gene Hall, Chief Executive Officer, and Craig Safian, Chief Financial Officer. This call will include a discussion of third quarter 2021 financial results and Gartner's updated outlook for 2021. As disclosed in today's earnings release and earnings supplement, both posted to our website, investor.gartner.com. Following comments by Gene and Craig, we will open up the call for your questions. We ask that you limit your questions to one and a follow-up. On the call, unless stated otherwise, all references to EBITDA are for adjusted EBITDA, but the adjustments as described in earnings release and supplement. All growth rates and jeans comments are FX neutral unless stated otherwise. Reconciliations for all non-GAAP numbers we use are available in the investor relations section of the Gardner.com website. Finally, all contract values and associated growth rates we discuss are based on 2021 foreign exchange rates unless stated otherwise. As set forth in more detail in today's earnings release, certain statements made on this call may constitute forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements can vary materially from actual results and are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties, including those contained in the company's 2020 annual report on Form 10-K and quarterly reports on Form 10-Q, as well as in other filings with the SEC. I encourage all of you to review the risk factors listed in these documents. Now, I will turn the call over to Gartner's Chief Executive Officer, Gene Hall.

Good morning, and thanks for joining us. Our growth increased again in the third quarter. We were performing well across the business. We delivered strong performances in contract value, revenue, EBITDA, and free cash flow. Total company revenues were up 15% in Q3, with continued momentum across all three of our business segments. We also repurchased another $355 million of stock in the quarter, bringing our year-to-date total through October to $1.6 billion. And we're thriving in the current environment. Research continues to be our largest and most profitable segment. Our research segment provides actionable, objective insight to executives and their teams. We serve leaders across all major enterprise functions in every industry around the world. Our market opportunity is vast across all sectors, sizes, and geographies, and we're delivering more value than ever. Everywhere around the world, our clients are facing more issues than ever before, challenging issues, things like the future of work, cybersecurity, carbon footprint, digital business, diversity, equity, and inclusion, cloud, and more. Our research is closely aligned to our clients' priorities. We recently launched a new sustainability resource center that provides clients and prospects with actual insights on sustainable business strategy. Total research contract value growth increased to 14%, with acceleration in both GTS and GBS, driven by strong execution in both retention and new business. Global technology sales, or GTS, returned to double-digit growth. GTS contract value growth accelerated to 12%. We expect GTS will deliver long-term, sustained double-digit contract value growth. Global business sales, or GBS, delivered another outstanding quarter with contract value growth of 22%. All practices across GBS drove double-digit contract value growth. Across our entire research business, we're driving consistent execution of proven practices, and we continue to see the results of our efforts. Our conferences business also continues to deliver excellent performance. In 2020, we developed an entirely new conferences business model. This model leverages virtual conferences to deliver extraordinarily valuable insights to our audiences. We delivered a strong performance in conferences. For the third quarter of 2021, conferences revenues were $24 billion. Total attendee numbers were up in Q3 as we're increasing our reach through our valuable content. There's a large constituency of our clients and prospects who prefer in-person conferences. We've recently held some in-person event events, which were very well received. As conditions continue to stabilize, we are operationally prepared to return to in-person conferences where and when we can. We'll continue to leverage our profitable virtual conferences as appropriate. Partner Consulting is an extension of Partner Research. Consulting helps clients execute their most strategic initiatives through deeper, extended, project-based work. Consulting is an important complement to our IT research business. Consulting revenues grew 6% in Q3. So overall, we're performing really well as a company. We're thriving in our current environment. We're able to serve our clients and sell to prospects very effectively in a virtual environment. Most of our associates appreciate working virtually. They would like some in-person interactions with their colleagues. when that's the best way to engage with each other and get work done. We've created an operating model that supports virtual and in-person interactions, and this gives our associates flexibility while promoting activities that drive associate engagement. We've also ramped up our recruiting function to support long-term, sustained double-digit growth. We're seeing great success in hiring during one of the toughest labor markets ever. Finally, we're taking steps to make the associate experience at Gartner even better. We're a growth company, We're focused on ensuring our associates have clear and compelling career paths. We're helping our managers and leaders have powerful career development conversations with their teams. We continue to improve on our proven practices, and we're innovating processes and technology to streamline operations. In closing, Gartner delivered another strong performance in Q3. We're performing well across all three of our business segments. We delivered strong performances in contract value, revenue, EBITDA, and free cash flow. and we repurchased another $355 million of stock in the quarter. We continue to get better, faster, stronger as a company. Gartner is a great place to be for our associates. We deliver extraordinary value to our current clients. We provide outstanding returns for our shareholders, and we're thriving in the current environment. With that, I'll hand the call over to our Chief Financial Officer, Craig Sapien.