Gartner, Inc.

Good morning, everyone. Welcome to Gartner's first quarter 2026 earnings call. I'm David Cohen, SVP of Investor Relations. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After comments by Gene Hall, Gartner's Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, and Craig Safian, Gartner's Chief Financial Officer, there will be a question and answer session. We ask that you limit yourself to one question and a brief follow-up in order to give all our analysts a chance to participate in the call. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. This call will include a discussion of first quarter 2026 financial results and Gartner's outlook for 2026 as disclosed in today's earnings release and earnings supplement, both posted to our website, investor.gartner.com. On the call, unless stated otherwise, all references to revenue are for adjusted revenue and all references to EBITDA are for adjusted EBITDA. In each case, excluding the divested operation and with the adjustments as described in our earnings release and supplements. All contract values and associated growth rates we discuss are based on 2026 foreign exchange rates. All growth rates in Jean's comments are FX neutral unless stated otherwise. All references to share counts are for fully diluted weighted average share counts unless stated otherwise. Reconciliations for all non-GAAP numbers we use are available in the Investor Relations section of the Gartner.com website. As set forth in more detail in today's earnings release, certain statements made on this call might 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 2025 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 Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Gene Hall.

Good morning. Thanks for joining us today. First Quarter Insights Revenue, EPITA, Adjusted EPS and free cash flow were ahead of expectations. New business with enterprise leaders was strong in the first two months of the quarter. Due to changes in the geopolitical environment, client decisions slowed somewhat in March. Year-over-year contract value growth accelerated in the first quarter. We were agile in managing expenses, and we continued to deliver unparalleled value to our clients. Gartner's strategy is to guide executives on their journeys to achieve their mission-critical priorities. Our clients are the senior-most executives and their teams who lead every major enterprise function. For example, chief information officers and senior IT leaders, chief supply chain officers and heads of logistics, chief financial officers and corporate controllers, and more. These roles are enduring regardless of change in the world. The executives who lead these roles will always have priorities that are mission critical to the success of their enterprise, their functions, and their personal careers. Priorities that are mission critical tend to be long, complex journeys. They take time and effort to achieve. Executives want and need help. In today's environment, most executives face information overload. It can be challenging to differentiate authoritative sources from others. Trust is at a premium. Gartner is the best, most trusted source for the health executives' need to achieve success. We proactively deliver insights that guide smarter decisions and stronger outcomes on mission-critical priorities. Gartner insights are derived from a vast pool of highly proprietary data. Every year, we hold more than a half million two-way conversations with more than 80,000 executives across every major function and in every industry. We conduct more than 27,000 briefings with executives from technology providers. We also leverage data from proprietary surveys, tools, models, benchmarks, and more. This gives us a deep understanding of what executives care about most, what's working, and what isn't. Our insights are independent and objective. They reflect the latest information and situations our clients are experiencing. They're continually updated. and they're available exclusively from Gartner. A large part of our value comes from helping clients see around corners. We help leaders understand issues and approaches they're often not aware of. We help them identify blind spots, prioritize issues, and avoid costly mistakes. Our insights are forward-looking. We guide clients on how the world is likely to change and what they should do to thrive in uncertain environments. We deliver unparalleled client value, through both digital and human interactions. Clients can access our written insights, major quadrants, type cycles, critical capabilities, ignition guides, toolkits for procurement and governance, and many more. In addition, through inquiry, clients can tap into the deep expertise of our world-class analysts that goes beyond what's in our written insights. They can get personalized support from experienced practitioners. Through our conferences, Clients can interact in person with analysts, peers, and technology providers. They can validate decisions through the Gartner peer community, which has more than 100,000 executives from nearly every enterprise function. And of course, they can use Ask Gartner to go even deeper into specific topics. No one else does what we do at our scope and scale. Retention is foundational to our success. Clients who engage frequently with our insights receive greater value and retain at higher rates. To support more frequent client engagement, we've been transforming our business and technology insights organization and processes. I covered the dimensions of this transformation on last quarter's earnings call. They are impact, volume, timeliness, and user experience. Today, I'll give you an update on how we're doing. We measure progress in a number of ways. I'll highlight just a few examples for simplicity's sake. Starting with impact. Our objective is to ensure insights are always on the topics our clients care about most right now. We've increased the number of high impact documents by 22%. The second dimension is volume. The number of documents in our insights library is up 19%. The third dimension is timeliness. With the accelerating rate of change in the world, we've introduced insights that are published the same day important events occur. The number of these documents has more than doubled. A recent example includes recommendations for heads of software engineering in response to the dramatic change in the security landscape posed by Anthropix mythos. And of course, we continue to make improvements on the user experience. For example, we've added the ability to create downloadable PowerPoint presentations directly from within Ask Gartner. Clients can ask questions in 25 languages, and we continue to integrate additional proprietary data sources. The programs we have underway are driving increased client engagement, which should result in higher retention and additional new business. AI continues to be one of the most requested topics across all the roles we serve. Gartner sits at the nexus of CIOs and IT organizations, business leaders, and AI technology providers. This gives us a full proprietary perspective that includes all the major players. We also have comprehensive independent and objective guidance on all aspects of AI, strategy, ROI, ethics and governance, workforce readiness, and more. We cover the full range of issues leaders need to address to be successful with AI. And we are world-class users of AI internally. No one is more capable or better positioned to guide leaders along their AI journeys than Gartner. Our people drive our success. I just returned from one of our sales recognition events. where I had the opportunity to spend time with hundreds of our most successful salespeople. They continue to demonstrate unwavering dedication to their clients and are incredibly excited at the future of our business. In closing, Gartner has an unparalleled and enduring value proposition. We're transforming our business and technology insights organization processes to deliver even more client value. Clients who engage frequently with our insights receive greater value and retain at higher rates. Gartner is the best source for clients looking to achieve success on their AI journeys, and our teams are incredibly optimistic about our future. Looking ahead to the rest of the year, we expect contract value will accelerate. We will continue to drive strong free cash flow that we can put to use to drive incremental shareholder value, and we expect to deliver adjusted EPS on a compound annual basis above 12% over the next three years. With that, I'll hand the call over to our Chief Financial Officer, Craig Sapien. Thank you, Gene, and good morning. First quarter contract value, or CV, grew 1% year over year. This was an acceleration from the fourth quarter. Insights revenue, EBITDA, adjusted EPS, and free cash flow in the first quarter were better than expected. We are increasing our EBITDA, adjusted EPS, and free cash flow guidance for the full year. In the first quarter, we reduced our share count by about 4%. buying back $535 million of stock. And we expect to generate significant free cash flow and have fewer shares outstanding over the course of the next several years. First quarter revenue was $1.5 billion, up 2% year-over-year as reported and down 1% FX-neutral. In addition, total contribution margin was 72%. EBITDA was $395 million, up 6% as reported and 1% FX-neutral. Adjusted EPS was $3.32, up 11% from Q1 of last year. And free cash flow was $371 million, up 29% year-over-year. Rolling for a quarter return on invested capital was about 27%. Insights revenue in the quarter grew 3% year-over-year as reported and was about flat FX neutral. First quarter insights contribution margin was 78%, up about 120 basis points versus last year. Contract value was $5.3 billion at the end of the first quarter, up 1% versus the prior year, and an acceleration from year end. Excluding the U.S. federal government, CV growth was 3.5%. At March 31st, we had approximately $114 million of U.S. federal CV. Q1 is normally a higher-than-average renewal quarter and our seasonally lowest new business quarter. The second quarter is a smaller renewal quarter and a larger new business quarter than Q1. We had more than $200 million in new business in the first quarter as there continues to be considerable interest in Gartner's proprietary, unbiased insights. As you recall, new business dollars increase each quarter as we move through the year. Driving engagement is critically important to retention. As she discussed, through both digital and human interactions, we understand our clients' mission-critical priorities, and we are proactive in helping them to address those priorities. This ongoing engagement helps drive client success and strong retention. We've increased licensed user engagement levels over time. In each month of the first quarter, they are higher than they've been in any of the same months over the past three years, with consistent engagement improvements in both digital and human interactions. Derived from analyzing monthly active users, overall engagement in Q1 was up over 170 basis points compared to the prior year quarter. Digital engagement improved by more than 160 basis points year-over-year. Human interactions increased more than 80 basis points year-over-year through improvements in the usage of analyst inquiries. Global technology sales contract value was $4 billion at the end of the first quarter, up versus the prior year. GTS CV for both enterprise leaders and tech vendors increased by more than 3% year-over-year ex-fed. Wallet retention for GTS was 97% for the quarter. Ex-fed wallet retention was 99%. GTS new business was down 4% compared to last year and down about 3% ex-fed. As Gene noted, new business was tracking ahead of the prior year through February and was affected a bit in March due to the geopolitical environment. Global business sales contract value was $1.3 billion at the end of the first quarter, up 3% year over year. Ex-fed, GBS CV grew 5%. Growth was led by the sales, supply chain, and legal practices. Wallet retention for GBS was 98% for the quarter. GBS new business was down 2% compared to last year. Again, as Gene noted, new business was tracking very favorably through February, with some client decision-making slowing down in March. Conferences revenue for the first quarter was $78 million. On a same conference basis, revenue growth was around 9% FX neutral. Contribution margin was 39%. We held 10 destination conferences in the first quarter as planned. Q1 consulting revenue was $119 million compared with $140 million in the year-ago period. Consulting contribution margin was 31% in Q1. Labor-based revenue was $90 million. Backlog at March 31st was $201 million. In contract optimization, we had $147 million of revenue on an LTM basis, about flat compared with Q1 of 2025. On a two-year CAGR basis, revenue was up about 15%. As you know, our contract optimization revenue is highly variable. EBITDA for the first quarter was $395 million, up 6% from last year as reported and 1% FX neutral. We outperformed expectations in the first quarter through effective expense management and a prudent approach to guidance. Adjusted EPS in Q1 was $3.32, up 11% compared to Q1 last year.

We had 70 million shares outstanding in the first quarter.

This is an improvement of about 8 million shares or approximately 10% year-over-year. We exited the first quarter with 68 million shares on an unweighted basis. Free cash flow remained strong in the first quarter, up 29% year-over-year. Free cash flow on a rolling four-quarter basis was $1.3 billion. Adjusting for several items detailed in the earnings supplement, free cash flow was 20% of reported revenue, 79% of adjusted EBITDA, and 145% of gap net income. At the end of the first quarter, we had about $1.7 billion of cash. This includes about $500 million for running the business and around $1.2 billion available to deploy on behalf of shareholders. Our March 31st debt balance was about $3 billion. Our reported gross debt to trailing 12-month EBITDA was under two times. We repurchased $535 million of stock during the first quarter, reducing our share count by more than 4%. Last week, the board increased the buyback authorization to about $1.2 billion. We expect the board will refresh the amount as needed. We are updating our full-year guidance to reflect recent performance and trends, including FX. For Insights revenue in 2026, our guidance reflects Q1 contract value. The revenue outlook is operationally unchanged as we had modeled in the NCVI performance we saw in the quarter. We increased the outlook for FX. For conferences, we are basing our guidance on the 56 in-person destination conferences we have planned for 2026. We have good visibility into current year revenue with a majority of what we've guided already under contract. For consulting, we've reflected a prudent view for the balance of the year based on the Q1 results. Contract optimization has had several very strong years and the business remains highly variable. For 2026, we expect consolidated revenue at or above $6.405 billion. which is updated from last quarter and is FX neutral growth of 1%. We now expect full-year EBITDA at or above $1.545 billion, up $30 million from our prior guidance. This reflects full-year margins at or above 24.1%, also up from last quarter. We expect 2026 adjusted EPS at or above $13.25, an increase from last quarter that primarily reflects the increase in the EBITDA outlook and a lower share count. For 2026, we expect free cash flow at or above $1.16 billion. This reflects a conversion from GAAP net income of 137%. Our guidance is based on 69 million fully diluted weighted average shares outstanding, which incorporates the repurchases made through the end of the first quarter. We exited Q1 with about 68 million fully diluted shares. For Q2, we expect EBITDA at or above $425 million. Our profit and cash flow results in Q1 were ahead of expectations, and we've increased the EBITDA, adjusted EPS, and free cash flow guidance for 2026. Contract value ex-fed grew 3.5% in the quarter, and total CV growth improved from the fourth quarter of 2025. We are positioned to accelerate CV growth in 2026, and we expect to deliver adjusted EPS on a compound basis above 12% over the next three years. We'll also deploy our capital on stock repurchases, which will lower the share count over time, and on strategic value-enhancing tuck-in M&A. With that, I'll turn the call back over to the operator, and we'll be happy to take your questions. Operator?

Thank you so much. And as a reminder, to ask a question, simply press star 11 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To remove yourself, press star 11 again. We ask that you keep your questions to one and one follow-up. One moment for our first question. Comes from the line of Jeff Mueller with Baird. Please proceed.

Yeah, thank you. So it makes sense that the selling environment would be tougher in March. Can you give any perspective on if that has started to convert in April, the things that kind of slipped out of March? By some indications, maybe the environment is getting a little bit better. And then just any differentiation on new business sales trends between new logo versus upselling in the base, which I think had been lagging.

Hey, Jeff, it's Gene. I'll get started. So in terms of, again, as I said in my prepared remarks, we had a really good January and February. March, decisions slowed down. By and large, clients and prospects told us, we still want to buy from you, but we can't make a decision today. To your point, as we roll into April, we're seeing many of those deals actually close, where clients delayed in March but actually then came through and closed in April. And then, Jeff, good morning. You know, on the mix between new logo and existing client growth, you know, the – you know, what we saw through the first two months where we did, you know, see nice year-over-year growth, that was broad-based across both new logo and with existing clients. And then, you know, with the challenging, more challenging environment in March, it was also broad-based across, you know, new logo and existing clients. And so, as we continue to see some of those things, as Gene just mentioned, come through, it's a mix of new logo growth and growth with existing accounts.

Got it. And then on good to hear overall engagement of both in person and digital, just anything you can give us on the evolution of Ask Gartner, either usage statistics or any meaningful changes in I guess, user experience, either from something new with the foundational models and underpin it, or any adjustments that you've been making to it? Thank you.

Yeah, so AskGartner is just one part of our value proposition. Obviously, there's a whole lot of other pieces of Gartner white people buy. We have AskGartner, and it's important, we will make it competitive. The client usage continues to increase, and the amount of repeat client usage continues to increase. And so we're seeing increasing engagement with AskGartner. We do a new release every two weeks. Clients, you know, we have a tell us what else you want button on there, and they do. Plus, we do market research. And so every two weeks, we have new releases. As Craig and I mentioned in our remarks, we've added support for 25 languages. You can now create PowerPoints directly from within Ask Gartner. And there's a whole series of other kinds of upgrades. Again, we're upgrading every two weeks, so it's too numerous to actually talk about over the course of a quarter. Yeah, Jeff, it's a common, those upgrades are a combination of feature enhancements and incremental proprietary data that the tool is pulling from as well. And so, you know, we are very quickly rolling out new features, as Gene mentioned, every two weeks. And we'll continue to do that as there's demand for it, as the models improve, and as our clients give us feedback on what they want from the tool.

Thank you both.

Thank you. Our next question is from Faisal with Deutsche Bank. Please proceed.

Yes, hi. Thank you. Good morning. I wanted to follow up on the geopolitics comment, and I'm curious if you could give us some regional color. Did you see, you know, slowing sort of across the board, or if there was any differentiation regionally? I'm assuming maybe you saw some, you know, slower decision-making outside the U.S., but just would love some additional color there.

So there was a slowdown across the board by industry. It was worse in some places than others. So if you could imagine with airlines and transportation companies, it was worse than with financial institutions, for example. And it was worse in the countries directly impacted, such as the Gulf Cooperation Council countries, than it was in places that were less impacted, like in the U.S.

Okay, understood. And then I'm curious if you're, you know, reevaluating any pricing strategies, maybe just thinking about the overall price point, just as you know, virtually every company is trying to figure out AI, but you know, maybe they can't afford, you know, your services at or your subscription at the price point that it is. So just curious how you're thinking about, you know, any changes around pricing?

You know, we talk to our clients a lot about pricing and understand how they think about pricing, whether we're priced appropriately or not. And the feedback we get from our clients today is that their pricing is very appropriate, what they expect, they're very comfortable with it. We have different price points. So if a client, you know, we have, you know, our community-guided products, which is the highest price, then our guided products, then our advisory products, then our reference products. And when clients have price sensitivity, we give them an option. They can go for a different level of service. So same content, but a different level of service with those. And that's what clients choose to do. As we look within each of those groups, we feel like we're price appropriate. Again, we talk to clients. We benchmark with clients to see if that's the case. We also look when clients say, I'm not going to buy. Price is a major issue. And price is not the issue. It tends to be if they're not going to buy, the CFO said, we have to cut all expenses 50%. And so whether we're four points or eight points higher isn't the issue at all. It's kind of a broader cost cutting that the organization is going through. And Faiza, it's important to remember who we're targeting and focusing on from a go-to-market perspective and a strategy perspective, which is really the top of the org chart in each of the functions that we serve. And so, again, we are going in and targeting the CIO, the Chief Information Officer, or the CFO, or the chief supply chain officer, et cetera, and their teams. And so we're starting at the top of the pyramid where there tends to be much less price sensitivity around those things. And again, we have, as Gene articulated, an architecture where if there is price sensitivity, there are offerings that we can provide to the clients if they're not willing to sign up. for a guided product. They'll go with the advisor product if they're not willing to go with the advisor product to go with the reference product and so on. And the other thing to think about is that it's a very small part of their budget. So even our smallest clients would have like $100 million per revenue. And so an individual executive might have a $10 million budget and their service partner might get $100,000 out of that $10 million budget.

So whether it's $100,000 or $104,000 isn't a big issue. It's about the value they get.

Great, thank you so much.

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Andrew Nicholas with William Blair.

Hi, good morning. Appreciate you taking my questions. I wanted to ask on the U.S. federal government business in particular, I think it was 250 basis point headwind in the quarter, maybe a little bit more than I would have thought because I thought you had laughed most of that. Can you just level set for us where you sit in that kind of renewal cycle post kind of some of the government approach changes early last year? And maybe at what point would you expect that headwind to alleviate as we move through 26?

Good morning, Andrew. It's Craig. On the U.S. federal side, as we talked about through most of last year, the DOGE impacts, we really didn't start feeling them until March of last year. And so Jan and Feb were, let's just say, semi-normal months. you know, from a selling environment perspective. And then when the Doge activities kicked in, that was really March and April and then forward from there. And so, you know, I think as we roll into Q2, we really do start to then lap the significant challenges that we had there. From a US federal CV perspective, we exited Q1 with about $114 million. worth of U.S. federal CV spread across GTS and GBS, the bulk of that actually in GTS. What we saw from a renewal rate perspective in the quarter was obviously significant improvement on a year-over-year basis. We are renewing a lot of business. We are writing new business, but we really do start to lap the significant challenges starting in Q2 with U.S.

fed clients. Perfect. Very helpful. Thanks. And then for my follow-up, I just kind of want to go to the headcount growth. I think you had outlined low single-digit growth for GTS and and mid-singles for GBS as kind of your targets for this year. Is that still the case? And any color you could give us on the cadence or the slope of that range would be great. Thank you.

Yeah, Andrew, so the targets still remain. You articulated them correctly. That is what we are gunning for over the course of the year. We typically do see a little bit of a step back in the numbers in Q1 just because We do a lot of our promotions in the first quarter from frontline seller to manager. We try and get ahead of that from a hiring perspective, but it often does take a little bit of time to catch up on some of that hiring. As we noted, The hiring we're doing in 2026 is really about 2027 and 2028 and beyond. We've got ample capacity in 2026 to deliver on that CV acceleration that we've been talking about. The other note I'd mention is we are hiring more incremental new business developers than AEs. It's not one or the other, but we definitely have a bias towards hiring incremental BDs right now as opposed to hiring incremental account managers going forward.

And that's baked into those year-end numbers you talked about, and that's all baked into our OpEx guide as well. Thank you.

Thank you. Our next question comes from Jason Haas with Wells Fargo. Please proceed.

Hey, good morning, and thanks for taking my questions. I'm curious for the ex-federal government CV, did that accelerate from the 3.5% that you reported for 1Q in April? And how are you expecting that to trend through the year? Do you expect an acceleration in ex-federal government CV growth? Thanks.

Hey, Jason. Good morning. It's Craig. So, you know, we're not giving any stats on April yet. We've barely closed the books on that. So, you know, can't quite comment on that. I think the answer on the CV trend is we expect the whole CV base to accelerate over the course of 2026 and then continuing onward, which would be a combo of the U.S. Fed recovery and then also the non-U.S. Fed base accelerating as well.

Okay, great. Thanks. And then, do your pre-existing long-term targets still hold, or are those no longer in place? Thanks.

That's a great question. So there's no change to the medium term objectives. I would say those objectives really do apply to a normal operating environment. And you can still find those medium term objectives in our Gartner 101 presentation, which is on the investor relations site. I do think, you know, as we think about where we are today, and, you know, both Jean and I articulated this, you know, we expect in the current environment for our CV growth to accelerate. um we're committed to driving compound annual growth at or above 12 to our eps number um we continue to have a great and very large addressable market and a compelling client value proposition those two things are unchanged You know, we've re-baselined the EBITDA margin now based on our updated guidance of 24.1%, and we would expect our margins, you know, moving forward over the medium term to expand from there. And then, obviously, with the great free cash flow engine that we have, we expect to generate you know, significant amount of free cash flow as CV growth accelerates, we'll get, you know, more towards the higher end of our typical conversion levels of net income to free cash flow or EBITDA to free cash flow. And obviously, we'll have all that free cash flow to put to use on behalf of our shareholders as well.

That's great. Thank you.

Thank you. One moment for our next question. It comes from Surinder Thin with Jefferies. Please proceed.

Thank you. When looking ahead and we think about the acceleration in CV growth, any code there where you can maybe disaggregate the drivers? Is the expectation maybe a bit more new business development or should we expect wallet retention to continue to improve and maybe a bit more upsell at existing clients and then Maybe I assume it's also underpinned by just normalized annual price increases that are normally embedded. The reason we're expecting CB to accelerate is we're expecting – so we're making a bunch of changes in business, which we talked about. So Craig talked about how we're driving engagement, and we expect engagement to go up. In fact, engagement has been rising, just as Craig outlined. We expect that to continue because we've got a big focus on it. When we get more engagement, we expect that our – with our increased engagement. In addition to that, we're making a bunch of changes in BTI. I articulated all the changes we're making, and we expect that's going to lead to more and better insights that, again, leads to even more engagement and also helps support new business growth. And so as we look forward through the year, we expect that our new business growth and our retention are both improving as we go through the year based on all the changes that we're making and the leading indicators, which Craig and I talked about, that indicate that These things are causing increased engagement with our clients, which ultimately should result in more business, more retention, and higher growth. And surrender, you should see that come through, obviously, in the CV growth rate, but also in the lot retention number, which is the measure of net growth from clients that stay with us. And so the more that clients stay with us, the more new business opportunities we got with that. You know, the more that they stay with us, the more opportunity we have to expand the relationship and so on and so on. So, you know, we would expect, you know, the CV acceleration to read through both obviously to the top line CV growth, but also on the while retention line as well as we will be selling more new business to existing clients over that time frame as well. Got it. And then just on the management of costs, Can you maybe provide a bit more color there just relative to your expectations versus just kind of normally being conservative when you initially guide? Just any update where maybe there's a bit more benefits from even if it's AI or just other things that are going on and the opportunity for a potential structural change in the outlook for margins at this point or is it just one small step forward each quarter at this point? That's great. It's a great question, Surinder. So, as we look at the OpEx number, I'd say a couple things. So, one is we're obviously very focused on making sure that we're delivering on our commitments from both you know, EBITDA profitability perspective and a free cash flow perspective. And we are tuning our OpEx model as we go. The second thing I'd say is we're very focused on making sure that we keep our run rates aligned with our CV growth expectations, which are essentially what drive, you know, future revenue growth. And again, we want to make sure that we not only deliver, you know, strong earnings and free cash flow in current year, but that we're setting ourselves up to continue to do that into the future. Third thing I'd say is we are always focused on continuous innovation and continuous improvement and driving operational efficiencies through the business. We can leverage AI for some of that. We can leverage other technologies for other things. We can improve processes as well, and we will continue to do that. And then the fourth thing I'd say is we're doing all that while also making sure we're making investments that we believe will drive future, you know, medium and long-term growth for us. And so, you know, under the covers, we'll be investing in places and we may be harvesting, you know, benefits and efficiencies in other places so that we can reinvest in the places that we know drive value. So we know we need analysts in our business and technology insights business. We're not going to stop investing there. We know adding QVH drives long-term growth. we're going to be adding there. It may mean that we are driving significant operational efficiencies in other areas, and we'll continue to do that so that we free up the appropriate resources to invest in the things that we believe will drive long-term growth.

Thank you.

Thank you. Our next question comes from Josh Chan with UBS. Please proceed.

Hi. Good morning, Jean and Craig. Thanks for taking my questions. I guess As we think about sort of the selling environment on a year-over-year basis, it's obvious that in Q1 it was worse than last year. But as we go into Q2, you know, your liberation day in the prior year, et cetera, how do you think about the year-over-year selling environment comparison as we kind of go through the rest of the year?

So what I'd say, Josh, is it kind of depends on how the world evolves.

As I sit here today, as I mentioned, a lot of the deals that clients in March said, let's wait and revisit this in a couple of weeks, actually closed in April. In fact, one of the things that went on that's interesting is that a lot of these companies, think airlines, shipping companies, other energy-intensive industries and geographies, that basically that normally a functional leader like a CIO would have the authority to make a decision. When times are tough, what will happen is they'll say, we're going to escalate that to the CFO, maybe even the CEO, depending on the decision with the company. And so we saw more of those kind of escalations. They got escalated. They said, yeah, the value is there. And then they closed. It just took longer to close. And so I think that, you know, what happens in the rest of the year is going to depend on kind of what the environment looks like. One thing I'd add, Josh, though, is we pride ourselves on adapting. And so, yes, the environment is crazy and continues to remain a little bit chaotic, but we're making sure that you know, our sales and our service people are armed, you know, with the right tools, talk tracks, backup, et cetera, you know, to be successful in any sort of environment. You know, we'll see how the world evolves, but we're going to make sure that, you know, we keep making, we're going to make sure that sales and service from our perspective are armed to, you know, deliver value, highlight the value for prospects, continue to deliver the value for clients. et cetera, moving forward. Yeah, to build on Craig's points, one of the things that I talked about about the last call is we made more change in the last year than we've ever seen occur in terms of increasing value to clients. And the assumption is the environment's going to be tough going forward, and we want to make sure we're resilient in that environment. And I think what we're seeing here is that selling cycles are longer, but they're still buying. And so that's kind of what we saw happen in March. So again, January and February, actually, we had great, very robust new business growth, as Craig and I talked about. Decisions then took longer starting March. And so I think there are good signs overall for what the selling environment, but it's probably going to take longer decision cycles if the environment continues to have the uncertainty it does today.

Sure, sure. That makes a lot of sense, and I appreciate the color there. And then maybe on your EPS CAGR outlook, Can you talk about the drivers behind that 12%? I mean, obviously, revenue growth, at least currently, is not probably at that level, so you're going to need some margins or buybacks. Can you just talk about what contributes to that level of EPS growth? Thank you. Yeah, Josh, happy to.

So, again, over a three-year period where our expectation is CV growth will reaccelerate, which will drive future revenue growth. As we noted earlier and have noted for a while, we're committed to delivering strong margins and margin expansion over time as well. And then obviously on top of that, we have significant capital to put to use on behalf of our shareholders. Over the last 12 months, I think we've bought back like $2.4 or $2.5 billion worth of stock reducing the share count significantly and, you know, obviously our intention will be to continue to do that and that's, you know, obviously one of the bigger drivers to that EPS cater as well.

Great. Thank you for the cover and thanks for your time.

Thank you. Our next question comes from Tony Kaplan with Morgan Stanley. Please proceed.

Thanks so much. Jean, just a strategic question. A number of the other info services firms have been starting to use large LLM providers as like an additional distribution channel. And I know your business is different being more weighted towards advisory, but you still have proprietary data that people want. And so I was wondering if, is there a sort of broader data distribution that you would consider or Do you think that that dilutes your value proposition too much because, you know, obviously a lot of the value isn't talking to the research analysts and the network and everything like that?

Yeah, Tony, I think you hit the nail on the head, which is what clients rely on us for is for us to proactively go to them and say, given your vision critical priorities, here's the things you should be worried about, things you may not have thought of, things that you might be surprised by, And so what they rely on us for is to be very proactive as opposed to wait and answer a question or something like that. That's not how clients work with us. That's not our value proposition. And then in addition to that, there's a big human component. And so we have our executive partners, which can function as advisors to our clients. We have our analysts, which are world-class experts. And while they publish, obviously, a lot of content and insights, the kind of rules that we have, that's only like 5% of what they know. that can be actionable and valuable. When they do an inquiry with our analysts, clients get access to that other 95% that actually isn't. We have a vast content library, but again, that's only a portion of what our analysts actually know. And then we have our conferences that they go to, which clients get to interact live. We have peer interactions. And so if you think about it, that piece of it is just a small piece for overall value proposition. And so we want to focus on what clients want from us the most to value, which is this whole Tell us what I'm not seeing. Help me see around corners. Tell me how the world is going to evolve so that I can be successful in this uncertain environment. And that doesn't really fit well with, you know, feeding into an LLM that is really answering questions, which is, you know, we have that as a partner. That's, you know, not the majority of what we're doing. That's not my client's bias.

Yeah, that makes sense. Wanted to shift to consulting. I know both the labor-based and contract optimization was down a bit year over year. And contract optimization can be volatile and the comp was tough. But on the labor-based, do you just attribute the slowdown there to just normal macro slowdown? You mentioned a lot that March was slower. Or do you think that there's something structurally worse going on right now given AI? Thanks.

Yeah, Tony, I don't think there's something structurally worse. Again, this is different behavior than we saw in Q4. So it's not something that's been kind of a long-term thing. I think basically it's what you said, which is the market environment changed a lot, and that affects it differently, both the labor part of the business as well as CFC. It affects CFC because if a client was going to buy something and they postpone that decision, we get paid when they buy something. And so with CFC, you had both a very tough comp, as Greg went through, in addition if clients, and we saw this, say, hey, I was going to do that big software deal.

I've decided to push the decision off for a month. That puts us getting paid off as well.

Thank you. Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of George Tong with Goldman Sachs. Please proceed.

Hi, thanks. Good morning. I wanted to take a step back on CV performance. Can you provide more details on the reasons why CV growth is coming below historical levels in the high single, low double-digit range? Specifically, can you outline how much of the slower growth is due to tariff-affected industries, government spending, the macro environment, and other potential unnamed factors?

Good morning, George. So, you know, I think

One, the first obvious headwind is the U.S. federal business, which we talked about in detail, and it is a 250 basis point headwind in the corridor alone. That business, we believe, is re-baselined. Our current assumptions are for it to be flat in 2026. and, you know, grow from there going forward. And so that, you know, is a temporary headwind. Obviously, we've been dealing with it for, you know, since really March of last year, but that certainly, you know, remains the most dominant headwind that we have going forward, or that we have had that have impacted the results and should right itself going forward. You know, in terms of the other areas, you know, I think it's a combination of the macro has been really, really, really challenging over the last several quarters. And, you know, whether it's those impacts that started in March of last year, you know, Josh referred to liberation day, which I remember was April 2nd of last year to lots of other geopolitical challenges over the course of the year to, you know, where we sit today. I think, you know, the, The short answer is we fully expect our CV growth rate to accelerate over the course of 2026. As I mentioned earlier, we expect it to increase across the board. So, yes, we expect the U.S. Fed growth rate to improve as we lap some of the more challenging areas. But we also expect the non-U.S.-fed business to accelerate. That includes tariff-affected and non-tariff-affected. That includes software companies and IT services companies, et cetera. And so I think, you know, from where we sit today, we expect CV growth to reaccelerate over the course of 2026. Um, you know, and again, you know, we believe the combination of, of that CV growth reacceleration, our operating expense management, our ability to invest in the right areas that drive and support, you know, future growth will allow us to drive significant free cash flow, you know, and, and earnings per share, you know, growing at a 12% compound annual growth rate.

Got it. That that's helpful. And following up on the CV growth expectations, so you noted acceleration over the course of the year. What are your CV growth expectations exiting the year, and do you expect the improvement to be relatively linear from 1Q?

So we don't guide to CV growth, George, and we're going to continue to not do that. You know, what I can tell you is we expect to accelerate over the course of this year. You know, I did note in my prepared remarks that, you know, Q1 happens to be a heavy renewal quarter and our smallest new business quarter. As we roll into Q2 and Q3, we see increasing levels of new business dollars, and we just have less support. CV that is up for renewal in those quarters. And so that certainly helps. You know, CV, though, is a rolling four-quarter number. And so, you know, we expect to continue to see improvements, you know, across the year. And, you know, we don't believe that we're done at the end of this year. But, you know, right now we're focused on making sure we're driving engagement, making sure we're delivering on all the transformations Gene outlined. And all those things should lead to CV growth accelerating over the course of this year.

And again, that should benefit us as we roll forward in 2027 and beyond. Very helpful. Thank you.

Thank you. Our next question is from Jeff Silver with BMO Capital Markets. Please proceed.

Thank you so much. You've mentioned a couple times your goal to have compounded adjusted EPS growth, I think, at or above 12% over the next three years. What kind of headcount growth do you need to get there, both from a Salesforce perspective and an analyst perspective?

Yeah, Jeff, I mean, I think it's all baked into our ability to drive the margin, to get the desired results that give us that 12% CAGR. You know, our operating model with QBH or sales headcount, is unchanged, so grow it roughly 300 bits slower than what we're growing or our expectation around CV growth. That framework still, we're still operating with that framework going forward. And on the analyst side, it's really demand driven. And because we've got such a good finger on the pulse of what our clients are most interested in, we're actually able to predict where that demand is and make sure that we've got you know, the appropriate analyst levels and analyst counts to handle that. And so it's not a specific number. And we'll do all that while also driving efficiency and improvement across the rest of the business. And so the combination of those three things is what gives us the opportunity, you know, the operating result levers to get that 12% EPS cater over time.

Okay, that's great. And just to clarify something, the base year that you're talking about, is that 2025 or 2026?

That base year is 2025. It's a great question. Thanks for clarifying that, Jeff.

No worries. That's what I thought. Thanks so much.

Thank you so much. And our next question is from Jasper Bibb with Truist Securities. Please proceed.

Hey, good morning, guys. Again, I know you don't guide for CV, but I think you mentioned on a couple earlier questions that CV should reaccelerate both total and ex-fed through the year and, you know, helpful context to around the seasonal payments of renewals and new business. I just wanted to clarify, like, do you think we see a reacceleration in the ex-fed CV growth number next quarter, or maybe are we still a little bit further away from the reacceleration in ex-fed CVs?

Hey, Jasper. So, you know, all I'll tell you, without getting into too many details, is we expect the CV growth rate to, you know, accelerate over the course of the year. You know, we're not going to get into the details of, you know, expectations by segment of business per quarter. We'll tell you all about that when we report our Q2 results. But the headline should be that we expect CV growth to accelerate.

Got it. And then maybe following up on the early pricing question, I think there was some speculation entry quarter if sales teams had made offers to sign on below the normal 50,000 ASP for new LUs. I guess, can you just clear up kind of in response to that, like if there's anything that changed on your approach to pricing or offering discounts?

Yeah, so we do not offer discounts. Our pricing strategy and focus and mechanics are unchanged. You know, we put through our normal annual price increase on November 1 of last year. That has been in place, you know, since then. And we are, you know, despite what you may be hearing, I can assure you we are not, there's no change in our discounting posture or philosophy. Okay, great. Thanks, guys.

Thank you so much. And our next question comes from Scott Wurzel with Wolf Research.

Hey, good morning, guys. Thank you for taking my question. Just one for me. Just wondering if you can talk a little bit about just the puts and takes on client versus wallet retention in the quarter with client retention ticking down a little bit, but wallet retention ticking up. Just wondering if there was any incremental, I guess, price realization or upsells that drove that expanding wallet retention while client retention ticked down. Thanks.

Yeah. Hey, Scott. Good morning. Great question. I think it's largely a function of you know, those are both rolling four-quarter numbers. In the first quarter, you know, as I noted earlier, it's our smallest, you know, new business dollar quarter, which implies it's our smallest, you know, new business enterprise quarter as well. And so, you know, we added, you know, new enterprises there, but, you know, as always, there is a lot of churn within our small tech clients. That's It's improved over the last couple of years, but that's still the most significant impact on that client retention number. And because those are typically lower spending clients, does not have as big of an impact on the wallet retention number. With wallet also, we are lapping some of the challenges from last year, but also we are holding on to more dollars than we did last year as well. And so I think that's manifesting itself in that modest improvement in the wallet retention number as well. Great.

Thanks, guys. Thank you so much. And our next question is from Ashish Sabhadra with RBC Capital Markets.

Thanks for taking my question. I just wanted to focus on the tech vendor conversation. I was wondering if you could provide any color on that front, how's that trending, and also if you could talk about some of the challenges that software companies are facing. Has that influenced any of that conversation? Thanks.

Hey, so on the tech vendor side, I think what we're seeing is consistent with what we saw the last couple quarters where our business with software companies and services companies is growing at high single-digit growth rate, and other elements of our tech vendor client universe are not performing as well. Most notably, I'd say, hardware providers and telecom carriers, which we classify as part of that tech community. But the bulk of our CV sits with software and services, and the software and services business continues to grow at high single-digit growth rates.

That's very helpful, Kalar. And then on the quota-bearing headcount, just wanted to follow up on the prior comment around hiring more incremental new business developers than account managers. How should we think about the overall QBH growth going forward, but also how do we think about that mix shift going forward and influence on productivity? Thanks.

Yeah, it's a great question. So, you know, again, it's not binary one or the other. We're obviously, as we are successful with our BDs and they sell, you know, more new business, we do need to hire account managers to catch that business, retain it, and grow it going forward. But what we've been doing is driving productivity and efficiency out of our account management teams by adding incremental clients to their territories. And again, we've studied this really intently to make sure that we're not going too far on any of those and we feel really good about the productivity gains we've driven there. And what that does is free up incremental dollars for us to invest in business developers. And, you know, when you think about the size of the addressable market opportunity, the fact that there are, you know, roughly 140,000 enterprises that we think could be clients of Gartner and we're currently doing business with 14,000 of them. The way we capture that market, that incremental market, is really through business developer investment. It's a slow shift in mix, though, because, yes, the bias is towards hiring incremental BDs, but it's not like a student body left or a student body right. And so that mix will move moderately over time, but we think it's the right combination of being able to manage, retain, and grow the existing client base while having the right size engine to be the new logo addition and increment to growth going forward as well. So we think we've got the right mix there going forward, and we'll continue to update our investors and the investment community on that incremental investment and the mix of that investment going forward. Yeah, and the vast majority of our sales force today is account executives. They do a lot of new business growth as well, and we expect that to continue. And even with our account executives, and this is true of EDC, too, under the covers, we change territories all the time. So if there's less demand in the U.S. federal government, then what we'll do is reduce territories there and move those over to places where there's higher demand.

And so there's more change going on under the covers to actually improve productivity as well.

That's very helpful, Kala. Thank you. Thanks.

Thank you. And our last question comes from Wahid Amin with Bank of America. Please proceed.

Hi. Good morning. Thank you. Just one for me. On an earlier remark, you talked about sometimes clients and budgets are tied. Maybe the selling environment is much longer than expected. How would you classify the customers that want to keep a garden subscription but may consider downselling or using a different user experience? Are you seeing a huge influx of that?

It's a great question. So in all times, we have some clients that are upgrading and some creative clients that are downgrading clients. Because while there's more concern today because of so many geopolitical things, any time there's always clients, some clients that are doing well and some that aren't. And so to your point, we often see clients that are doing really well saying, hey, I want to upgrade and get more value, or they try it at a lower price point and say, I want to get more value. Similarly, we often see clients say, hey, my CFO says I've cut half expenses. I want to keep Gartner, so let's go with the lower service level that lets me still keep Gartner. Those things actually tend to balance out, and so we see about as many upgrades as downgrades, which is why we don't talk about it that much because it actually, the two balance out almost exactly.

Thank you.

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. This will conclude the Q&A session. I will pass it back to Gene Hall for closing comments.

Well, here's what I'd like you to take away from today's discussion. Gartner has an unparalleled and enduring value proposition. We're the best, most trusted source for executives who want to succeed with their mission-critical priorities. We're transforming our business and technology insights organization processes to deliver even more client value. Clients who engage frequently with our insights receive greater value and retain higher weights. Gartner is the best source for clients looking to achieve success on their AI journeys. We are incredibly optimistic about our future. And looking ahead to the rest of the year, we expect contract value will accelerate. We will continue to draw a strong free cash flow that we can put to use to drive incremental shareholder value. And we expect to deliver adjusted EPS on a compound annual basis above 12% over the next three years. Thanks for joining us today, and I look forward to updating you again next quarter.

And this concludes our conference. Thank you for participating and you may now disconnect.