Gartner - Earnings Call - Q1 2025

Executive Summary

• Q1 2025 delivered modest top-line growth and strong cash generation: revenue $1.53B (+4.2% reported; +5.7% FX-neutral), adjusted EPS $2.98 (+1.7%), adjusted EBITDA $385M (+0.7%), and free cash flow $288M (+73.3%), ahead of internal expectations.
• Consensus comparison: EPS beat (Actual $2.98 vs $2.72 consensus*), revenue essentially in-line/slight miss (Actual $1.534B vs $1.535B consensus*). Management lifted FY25 adjusted EPS to at least $11.70 and EBITDA to at least $1.535B; EBITDA guidance raised by $25M, EPS by $0.25.
• Contract value (CV) reached $5.1B (+6.7% FX-neutral), with GTS CV $3.9B (+5.5%) and GBS CV $1.2B (+10.8%). U.S. federal renewals weighed on CV (dollar retention ~50%), lengthening sales cycles across impacted clients, while tech vendor trends continued to improve.
• Stock-relevant narrative: guidance quality (margin uplift despite lower revenue outlook), robust FCF, buyback capacity ($2.1B cash; $870M authorization), and an improving tech vendor backdrop offset uncertainty from U.S. federal renewals and tariff-driven decision delays.

What Went Well and What Went Wrong

What Went Well

• Adjusted EPS and FCF outperformed expectations; management emphasized cost agility enabling margin delivery ahead of initial guidance: “we are managing our costs to deliver Adjusted EBITDA Margin ahead of our initial guidance while also investing for future growth”.
• Tech vendor CV trends accelerated for the fourth consecutive quarter; GTS retention was 101%, and GBS wallet retention 105% in Q1.
• Conferences delivered solid same-conference growth (+~12% FX-neutral after adjusting for timing), and Contract Optimization revenue grew +36% YoY (+38% FX-neutral), bolstering segment results.

What Went Wrong

• U.S. federal renewals were a clear headwind: ~40% of contracts transacted in Q1 with dollar retention “almost 50%”, leading to CV decline vs Q4; ~$30M of term notices remain in CV but will not renew later in the year.
• Broader macro uncertainty and tariff impacts lengthened decision cycles, slowing new business velocity and upsell, pressuring wallet retention despite client retention holding up.
• Consulting labor-based revenue fell 4% YoY as reported (down 2% FX-neutral) against a tough compare, even as backlog rose +16% FX-neutral.

Transcript

David Cohen (SVP of Investor Relations)

Good morning, everyone. Welcome to Gartner's first quarter 2025 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. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. This call will include a discussion of first quarter 2025 financial results, and Gartner's outlook for 2025 is 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 EBITDA are for adjusted EBITDA, with the adjustments as described in our earnings release and supplement. All contract values and associated growth rates we discuss are based on 2025 foreign exchange rates. All growth rates in Gene'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 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 2024 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.

Gene Hall (Chairman and CEO)

Good morning, and thanks for joining us today. Gartner remains resilient in a complex environment. In Q1, contract value grew 7%. First quarter revenue, EBITDA, EPS, and free cash flow were ahead of our expectations. We increased headcount across our sales organizations by 4%. As we navigate another year of volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity, we'll continue to be agile, and we'll target our investments to support long-term, sustained double-digit growth. Research continues to be our largest and most profitable segment. Research contract value grew 7%. Excluding the U.S. federal business, contract value grew 8%. Within research, we serve executives and their teams through distinct sales channels. Global Technology Sales, or GTS, serves leaders and their teams within IT. GTS contract value grew 6%. Excluding the U.S. federal business, contract value grew 7%. Contract value with tech vendor clients improved for the fourth consecutive quarter.

Global business sales, or GBS, serves leaders and their teams beyond IT. This includes HR, Supply Chain, Finance, Marketing, Legal, Sales, and more. GBS contract value increased 11%. Gartner Conferences deliver extraordinarily valuable insights to an engaged and qualified audience. On a same conference basis, revenue grew 12%. Gartner Consulting is an extension of Gartner Research. Consulting helps clients execute their most strategic initiatives through deeper, project-based work. Consulting is an important complement to our IT research business. Consulting revenue grew 5% against a strong compare from Q1 2024. Revenue from contract optimization grew a robust 38%, and consulting backlog grew 16%. Overall, our Q1 financial results were ahead of expectations. Gartner has a unique client value proposition. We deliver actionable, objective insight, guidance, and tools that help our clients succeed with their Mission-Critical Priorities. We practice disciplined cost management while remaining agile and prudently investing for future growth.

We generate free cash flow well in excess of net income, and we return capital to our shareholders through our repurchase program. Over the past five years, we've seen persistent, elevated levels of volatility in the macroeconomic environment: the COVID-19 pandemic, the bursting of a tech spending bubble, the highest inflation in 40 years, a sharp rise in interest rates, the first ground war in Europe in 80 years. Now, government policy and tariff changes are affecting enterprises across the U.S. and around the world in different and complex ways. There's a high level of macroeconomic uncertainty. Executives know they need help. Gartner is the best, most cost-effective source for the insight, guidance, and tools they need to succeed. We help our clients make smarter decisions that address Mission-Critical Priorities such as cost optimization, managing through public policy changes, leveraging AI innovation, cybersecurity, and more.

We do this while helping them manage risk, save time, save money, and build confidence. Gartner helps Senior Executives make smarter decisions to achieve their Mission-Critical Priorities. Today, one urgent priority for the majority of our clients is harnessing the potential of artificial intelligence. Of course, Gartner is one of the world's leading experts in AI. We help thousands of end-user enterprises determine the best uses and business cases for AI. With our in-depth understanding of end-user business cases, we also advise thousands of technology vendors on how to compete in the AI marketplace. We use AI internally to support our business. We develop proprietary insight, guidance, and tools to help Senior Executives make smarter decisions on their Mission-Critical Priorities. Our 2,500 experts develop these proprietary insights, guidance, and tools by analyzing our more than 500,000 one-on-one conversations that we hold with clients every year.

In addition, we conduct proprietary primary research, which is only available through Gartner to supplement these conversations. All of this creates a valuable data set that is massive, proprietary, and constantly updated. Finally, we incorporate publicly available data where helpful, often using AI. The combination of our 2,500 experts, hundreds of thousands of conversations with end users and technology vendors, and proprietary data methodologies and processes makes our insights, guidance, and tools highly valuable, highly unique, and highly differentiated from any other source. A core element of our strategy is continuous improvement and innovation, which we will apply to further increase our value and differentiation over time. Our powerful client value proposition gives us a vast, untapped market opportunity, and we know the right things to do to capture that opportunity.

Gartner has proven best practices that address how we serve our clients, recruit, hire, train, and deploy our salespeople, create our insights, guidance, and tools, host attendees at our Conferences, and support our largest technology clients through consulting. We also have best practices that address how we approach expense management to optimize flexibility while increasing selling capacity. For the remainder of 2025, we plan to grow sales headcount in the mid-single digits, excluding directly impacted areas. This reflects our commitment to invest for future growth while delivering strong margins and free cash flow. Our plan is to exit the current environment better, faster, and stronger than before. With continued sales headcount growth and a return to historically strong productivity, we're well-positioned to accelerate growth as the external environment evolves. We expect to re-accelerate CV growth to our target of 12% to 16% when the macroeconomic environment returns to normal.

We expect EBITDA margins to expand through the natural operating leverage in the business. Gartner has a highly diversified client base. The U.S. federal government represents approximately 4% of our total Contract Value. Our U.S. federal business has been impacted by the recent policy changes. Nearly all of our U.S. federal contracts are up for renewal in 2025. Roughly 40% of these were transactioned in Q1, the largest quarter of the year, and we renewed roughly half that business. We remain laser-focused on creating and delivering value for our U.S. federal clients. As the U.S. federal government modifies and refines their priorities, we believe that we will be a core part of helping them achieve critical priorities such as cybersecurity, cost optimization, digital transformation, and more. Stock buybacks are an important way we return value to shareholders. We remain eager to repurchase shares aggressively.

Our approach is designed to optimize returns by being price-sensitive, opportunistic, and disciplined. In closing, Gartner delivered financial results ahead of expectations. Tech vendor CV growth continued to accelerate. We have a powerful client value proposition and a vast addressable market opportunity. We will continue to create value for our shareholders by providing actionable, objective insight, guidance, and tools to our clients, prudently investing for future growth, remaining agile and disciplined in our approach to expenses, and returning capital to our shareholders through our share repurchase program. We expect to deliver modest margin expansion over time alongside double-digit top-line growth, and we will continue to generate significant free cash flow well in excess of net income. All of this and more positions us to drive long-term double-digit growth and sustain our track record of success far into the future.

With that, I'll hand the call over to our Chief Financial Officer, Craig Safian.

Craig Safian (CFO)

Thank you, Gene, and good morning. First quarter contract value, or CV, grew 7% year-over-year. Revenue, EBITDA, adjusted EPS, and free cash flow were better than expected as we continued to execute well in an increasingly complex environment. We were resilient in a quarter affected by macro factors. Since we reported Q4 2024 results in early February, there were notable changes in the U.S. federal government and market. The broader selling environment also shifted during the quarter as many company decision-makers started to adjust to the evolving global macroeconomy. We are updating our guidance to reflect Q1 performance, the new macro landscape, the benefit from the move in FX rates, and our own expense agility. We repurchased $163 million of stock in the quarter, maintaining flexibility as the market digests the changes in the macro landscape. We remain eager to repurchase shares, which we will do opportunistically.

First quarter revenue was $1.5 billion, up 4% year-over-year as reported and 6% FX neutral. In addition, total contribution margin was 69%, up 20 basis points (bps) from last year. EBITDA was $385 million, up 1% as reported and 3% FX neutral versus the first quarter of 2024. Adjusted EPS was $2.98, up 2% from Q1 of last year. Free cash flow was $288 million, a very strong performance for a first quarter. Research revenue in the quarter grew 4% year-over-year as reported and 6% FX neutral. Subscription revenue grew 8% FX neutral. Non-subscription research revenue was in line with our expectations. First quarter research contribution margin was 74%, consistent with last year. Contract Value was $5.1 billion at the end of the first quarter, up 7% versus the prior year. Contract value and CV growth are FX neutral. Excluding the U.S.

Federal government, CV grew 8%. Contract value growth with Tech Vendors continued to improve. Global CV was $63 million lower than Q4 2024, with around 80% of the change attributable to the U.S. federal government and market. CV growth was broad-based across practices, industry sectors, company sizes, and geographic regions. Across our combined practices, all of the industry sectors except two grew at high single-digit rates, led by the Energy, Healthcare, and Manufacturing Sectors. CV grew at high single-digit rates across all enterprise sizes except small, which grew low single digits. We also drove double-digit or high single-digit growth in the majority of our top 10 countries. Canada, which represents about 3% of total CV, had a more challenging selling environment in the quarter. Nearly all of our U.S.

Federal contracts will come up for renewal during 2025, with about 40% having transacted in Q1, the largest quarter of this calendar year. In the first quarter, the dollar retention was almost 50%. At March 31, we had $225 million of U.S. federal CV. Global Technology Sales contract value was $3.9 billion at the end of the first quarter, up 6% versus the prior year. Excluding the U.S. federal government from both periods, GTS CV grew 7% in the quarter as the tech vendor market continued to improve. $44 million of the $58 million change in GTS CV from Q4 was due to the U.S. federal government, while retention for GTS was 101% for the quarter. GTS new business was down 4% compared to last year. GTS quarter-bearing headcount was up 3% year-over-year. Our regular full set of GTS metrics can be found in our earnings supplement.

Global business sales contract value was $1.2 billion at the end of the first quarter, up 11% year-over-year. All of our major GBS practices grew at double-digit or high single-digit rates. Growth was led by the Sales, Finance, and Legal practices. GBS CV was $5 million below the fourth quarter. Excluding the U.S. federal government, GBS CV was largely unchanged from Q4. Wallet retention for GBS was 105% for the quarter. GBS new business was down 3% compared to last year. GBS quarter-bearing headcount was up 9% year-over-year. As with GTS, our regular full set of GBS metrics can be found in our earnings supplement. Conferences revenue for the first quarter was $73 million, increasing 4% as reported and 5% FX neutral compared to Q1 of 2024. Adjusting for the two conferences, we moved to Q2 this year. Revenue increased around 12% FX neutral.

Contribution margin was 38%, consistent with typical Q1 seasonality. We held 10 destination conferences in the first quarter as planned. Q1 consulting revenue was $140 million compared with $135 million in the year-ago period, up about 4% as reported and 5% FX neutral. Consulting contribution margin was 38% in the first quarter. Labor-based revenue was $104 million. This part of the segment was down 4% versus Q1 of last year as reported and 2% FX neutral against the tough compare. Backlog at March 31 was $214 million, increasing 16% year-over-year FX neutral. This was driven by strength in multi-year contracts. In contract optimization, we delivered $36 million of revenue in the quarter, up 36% versus Q1 of last year and 38% FX neutral. The quarter was ahead of our expectations. Our contract optimization revenue is highly variable.

Consolidated Cost of Services increased 3% year-over-year in the first quarter as reported and 4% FX neutral. The biggest driver of the increase was higher compensation costs. SG&A increased 6% year-over-year in the first quarter as reported and about 7% on an FX neutral basis. SG&A increased in the quarter as a result of headcount growth. EBITDA for the first quarter was $385 million, up 1% from last year as reported and up 3% FX neutral. We outperformed in the first quarter through modest revenue upside, effective expense management, and a prudent approach to guidance. Depreciation in the quarter of $29 million was up 10% compared to 2024. Net interest expense, excluding deferred financing costs in the quarter, was $12 million. This is favorable by $5 million versus the first quarter of 2024 due to higher interest income on our cash balances.

The modest floating rate debt we have is fully hedged through the third quarter of 2025. The Q1 adjusted tax rate, which we used for the calculation of adjusted net income, was 21% for the quarter. This compares to last year's rate of 19%. The tax rate for the items used to adjust net income was 26% for the quarter. Adjusted EPS in Q1 was $2.98, up 2% compared to Q1 last year. We had 78 million shares outstanding in the first quarter. This is an improvement of over 1 million shares or about 1% year-over-year. We exited the first quarter with just under 78 million shares on an unweighted basis. Operating cash flow for the quarter was $314 million, up 66% compared with last year. CapEx was $26 million, up about $3 million year-over-year.

This was primarily due to real estate-related costs and in line with our expectations. First quarter free cash flow was $288 million, up 73% compared with Q1 in 2024. Free cash flow on a rolling four-quarter basis was 120% of GAAP net income and 97% of EBITDA. As we noted last quarter, there were several items in 2024 that affect rolling four-quarter net income and free cash flow, including after-tax insurance proceeds, a real estate lease termination payment, and tax planning benefits. Adjusting for these items, free cash flow on a rolling four-quarter basis was 20% of revenue, 82% of EBITDA, and 155% of GAAP net income. At the end of the first quarter, we had about $2.1 billion of cash. Our March 31 debt balance was about $2.5 billion. Our reported gross debt to trailing 12-month EBITDA was well under two times.

Our expected free cash flow generation, available revolver, and excess cash remaining on the balance sheet provide ample liquidity to deliver on our capital allocation strategy of disciplined share repurchases and strategic tuck-in M&A. Our balance sheet is very strong with $2.8 billion of liquidity, low levels of leverage, and effectively fixed interest rates. We repurchased $163 million of stock during the first quarter. At the end of Q1, our share repurchase authorization was approximately $870 million. As we continue to repurchase shares, our capital base will shrink. Over time, this is accretive to earnings per share and, combined with growing profits, also delivers increasing returns on invested capital. We are updating our full-year guidance to reflect recent performance and trends. Since we reported Q4 results in early February, the world has become significantly more dynamic. We are applying all the lessons we've learned from prior challenging environments.

We are shifting our focus to the things our clients need the most in an extraordinarily uncertain operating environment. We're also remaining agile in managing our cost structure while also investing for future growth. In particular, we are preserving and growing our selling capacity outside of directly impacted areas, which is a key input into our algorithm for future sustained double-digit growth. The U.S. dollar weakened significantly during Q1. We now expect FX to benefit revenue growth by about 50 basis points (bps) and EBITDA growth by about 130 basis points (bps) in 2025. We've provided both the FX-driven and operational changes to guidance in our earnings supplement. As a reminder, about one-third of our revenue and operating expenses are denominated in currencies other than the U.S. dollar.

For research subscription revenue in 2025, our guidance reflects an expectation that Q1 trends for new business and retention continue for the balance of the year. We've also incorporated the information we have about U.S. federal spending decisions to date. In addition, we've taken a prudent view of the outlook as the current environment remains very dynamic. For the non-subscription part of the research segment, we've built a continuation of recent traffic and pricing trends into the guidance. For conferences, we are basing our guidance on the 53 in-person destination conferences we have planned for 2025. We have good visibility into current year revenue with a majority of what we've guided already under contract. For consulting, we have more visibility into the next quarter or two based on the composition of our backlog and pipeline as usual.

Given the shifts in the macro environment, we have been thoughtful about the outlook for the labor-based part of the business. Contract Optimization has had several very strong years, and the business remains highly variable. We have incorporated a prudent outlook for this part of the segment. Our base level assumptions for consolidated expenses have changed to reflect the revenue outlook. We have demonstrated our ability to manage costs prudently in any market environment, and we will remain agile. We will do this while also investing for future growth. Our plan is to exit the current environment better, faster, and stronger than before. We can both deliver on our EBITDA margin commitments for this year while investing for future growth. Our plan for both GTS and GBS is for mid-single-digit sales headcount growth outside of directly impacted areas.

This reflects our commitment to invest for future growth while delivering strong margins and free cash flow. We're maintaining recruiting capacity and are prepared to go faster on the hiring based on the macro-driven demand. As the selling environment gets back to normal, we expect significant benefits from QBH productivity. Our updated 2025 guidance is as follows. We expect research revenue of at least $5.34 billion, which is FX neutral growth of about 4%. This reflects subscription research revenue growth of about 5%. We expect conferences revenue of at least $625 million, which is FX neutral growth of about 6%. We expect consulting revenue of at least $575 million, which is growth of about 2% FX neutral. The result is an outlook for consolidated revenue of at least $6.535 billion, which is FX neutral growth of 4%.

We now expect full-year EBITDA of at least $1.535 billion, up $25 million from our prior guidance. We expect 2025 adjusted EPS of at least $11.70, up about $0.25 from last quarter. For 2025, we expect free cash flow of at least $1.145 billion. This reflects a conversion from GAAP net income of 137%. Our guidance is based on 78 million fully diluted weighted average shares outstanding, which reflects the repurchases made through the end of the first quarter. For Q2, we expect adjusted EBITDA of at least $400 million. Our financial results through March were ahead of expectations, underscoring the resilience of our business model. While we updated the revenue guidance to reflect the macro landscape, we will also benefit from the latest FX rates. Our EBITDA margin outlook is now higher than it was in February.

We have successfully navigated challenging macro environments before and know the right things to do. We are running our operational best practices, including delivering exceptional value for our clients, running our sales and services best practices playbooks, investing in sales capacity, which is a key ingredient for future sustained double-digit top-line growth, managing our expenses aggressively and thoughtfully to protect profitability and cash flow, and using our strong balance sheet and cash flow to buy our stock and for tuck-in M&A. Looking out over the medium term in a normal macro environment, our financial model and expectations are unchanged. With 12% to 16% research CV growth, we will deliver double-digit revenue growth. There is operating leverage in the business, which allows us to expand margins. With gross margin expansion, sales costs growing about in line with CV growth and G&A leverage, we will deliver modest EBITDA margin expansion.

We can grow free cash flow at least as fast as EBITDA because of our modest CapEx needs and the benefits of our clients paying us upfront. We will continue to deploy our capital on share repurchases, which will lower the share count over time, and on strategic value enhancing tuck-in M&A. With that, I will turn the call back over to the operator, and we will be happy to take your questions. Operator.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. As a reminder to ask a question, please press star 11 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star 11 again. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. Our first question comes from the line of Jeff Mueller with Baird. Your line is now open.

Yeah, thank you. Good morning.

What percentage of the contract value base are you calling the directly impacted areas? How are you managing sales headcount, I guess, for U.S. federal government agency prospects or, more meaningfully, other directly impacted areas in terms of are you reassigning it to other opportunities, or are you kind of preserving some of that capacity, including to position for win-back opportunities?

Craig Safian (CFO)

Hey, Jeff, good morning. Thanks for the question. I'll start, and then Gene will finish up on your question. From a directly impacted area perspective, it is largely U.S. federal that we're talking about now.

Obviously, we're not looking to grow our QBH there, but we wanted to make sure it was really clear that outside of that directly impacted area, we were actually targeting to continue to grow the number of headcount, number of territories for both GTS and GBS in the mid-single digits.

Gene Hall (Chairman and CEO)

Yeah, basically, Jeff, as Craig said, the largest impacted area by far is U.S. federal government. There, what we're planning to do is we're not backfilling, and we're basically making sure we're controlling our headcount there very carefully. The rest of the business, the non-impact areas, as I said, we're continuing to grow in the mid-single digits this year.

You're not reassigning the U.S. federal government headcount? You're keeping them there for now.

Yeah, great question. Basically, we have some very strong public sector salespeople.

We want to make sure we retain them and those really strong salespeople. Where we can reassign them, we are absolutely reassigning them because we have plenty of sales opportunities. In some cases, it makes sense. In other cases, it does not. Wherever we can, we, of course, are retaining our great salespeople.

Got it. Where there are early cancels for convenience among U.S. federal government agency contracts, what is the rhetoric treatment, and what is the contract value treatment? Can you just give us any sense of if that is a meaningful percentage of the attrition versus just non-renewal as a contract naturally comes due?

Craig Safian (CFO)

Yeah, Jeff, it is a great question. Actually, we have got details on that in the queue, but let me just summarize for the benefit of everyone on the call.

As it stands right now, we've got about $30 million worth of termination notices related to contracts that are set to expire later in the year. One way to think about it is it's sort of just normal course. We've just been notified ahead that those things will not be renewing or we have the termination notice in hand. That $30 million remains in contract value because we are continuing to recognize the revenue on it. In the grand scheme of not only the U.S. federal business, but actually on total CV, it's a relatively small amount, but that's how we're handling it. There's a little bit more detail in the queue, I think, on page 25, if you want to search it out.

All right. I'll look for that. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Toni Kaplan with Morgan Stanley.

Toni Kaplan (Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Your line is now open. Thanks so much. I was hoping to get just maybe a little bit more color on the guidance. I know you talked about on the slide and in the remarks that the guidance reflects Q1 new business and retention trends. I know you mentioned that there was a little bit of a change during the quarter, maybe a slower back half of the quarter. I wanted to sort of understand, does the guidance reflect the complete Q1, which was maybe a little bit better or more weighted towards the more recent slower experience that you've seen?

Craig Safian (CFO)

Yeah, Toni, it's a great question. When we were together in early February talking about Q4, our commentary at that point through the month of January is we hadn't really seen a change in the selling environment, and that was the case.

Clearly, things started to change mid-February into early March. I would say from a metric perspective, though, since we are so dominated by the third month of every quarter, what we saw in the back half of February and March, and in particular in March, is reflective of the quarter. Again, we have taken that experience and rolled it forward across Q2, Q3, and Q4 to drive that update on the revenue guidance. While January was normal, it is really small, and the bulk of the volume in Q1 actually happened during the month of March.

Toni Kaplan (Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Got it. I wanted to ask, I know U.S. federal government was sort of the big impact for what has changed on the government side. I wanted to, though, broaden it out to, are you seeing anything at the state and local level or international government level that is similar to U.S.

Federal and also maybe just opportunity for win-back would be, as Jeff sort of alluded to as well, is there an opportunity there this year too? Thanks.

Craig Safian (CFO)

Toni, first on the win-back side. We believe we provide a lot of value to our clients, including our U.S. federal government clients, helping on things like having strong cybersecurity capabilities, cost optimization, use of AI, which are priorities for every enterprise, including public sector enterprises. We believe we provide a lot of value there and will, over time, continue to provide a lot of value to the federal governments. If you look at the state and local governments in the United States, there was not much change in Q1 compared to what we have seen in previous quarters.

The same is true for governments around the world outside of the U.S., whether it's at the federal level or at the provincial or state and local government level.

Toni Kaplan (Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Thanks a lot.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of George Tong with Goldman Sachs. Your line is now open.

George Tong (Senior Research Analyst)

Hi, thanks. Good morning. Your business outlook for 2025 research revenue was downwardly revised by $135 million. Can you elaborate on how much of this reflects updated views on federal contract renewals versus updated views on other customer segments like tech vendors and enterprise functional leaders?

Craig Safian (CFO)

Yeah, George, good morning. I would say the guidance is reflective of everything we've seen and everything we know. Obviously, the biggest thing or the largest impact that we saw that was sort of off-trend in Q1 was related to the U.S.

Federal government, which we just talked about with Jeff and Toni. In terms of what we're seeing more broadly, macroeconomically, that has been factored into the updated guidance. I think what I'd say is from an update on the guidance perspective, and this applies to all the revenue lines, but research in particular, is we took our Q1 experience and we flowed that through across our contract expirations for the balance of the year. We took what we knew specifically about U.S. federal government. We modeled in the new FX rates. As always, we try and take a prudent approach to how we approach our guidance for the full year. I'd say those are the four things that factored into the update of all the guidance lines and the research line in particular.

George Tong (Senior Research Analyst)

Got it.

Can you talk a little bit more about what you're seeing with tech vendors and enterprise functional leaders? Would you say that those trends are holding up better than what you're seeing with federal contract renewals?

Craig Safian (CFO)

What I'd say is with tech vendors, the market continues to improve. Our business there is accelerating, particularly the larger vendors. The smaller vendors are accelerating just at a slower pace than the larger vendors. That business is, I think, quite healthy. With enterprise functional leaders, again, you can separate into the federal government, which we talked about, and then all the other enterprise functional leaders that we have, which I think is more in trend with federal patterns.

George Tong (Senior Research Analyst)

Got it. Very helpful. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Josh Chan with UBS. Your line is now open.

Josh Chan (Executive Director and Equity Research Analyst)

Hi, good morning, Gene and Craig.

Thanks for taking my question. I was wondering if you could talk about the selling environment outside of federal. It seems like you're saying that the environment became more volatile, but I guess if I add back your NCV impact that you gave for the federal government, it seems like the CVX Federal was fairly similar to what you had in Q4. Just trying to triangulate the comment about volatility and then the relatively good ex-Federal CV growth.

Craig Safian (CFO)

Yeah, Josh, the selling environment for the federal government we talked about, and that was the main thing that impacted our results in Q1. Outside of the federal government, it's not completely uniform in terms of the impact. There are some companies that are more impacted, for example, by tariffs than others, by the way, both U.S. as well as non-U.S. companies.

The companies that do not have a lot of tariff impact or other kinds of impact from policy changes, it is kind of business as usual in terms of decision-making. The ones that are more directly impacted, decision-making has slowed. They are still buying. They are still renewing, but decision cycles have extended compared to what they were, say, Q4 of last year. They still see the value. Our pipeline is actually very robust, but decisions are taking longer to get than they did in Q4 of last year, basically.

Josh Chan (Executive Director and Equity Research Analyst)

Okay. Thanks, Craig Safian. Thank you for that. I guess, how are you thinking about your cost structure going forward? Because you clearly raised the guidance despite lowering the revenue.

Could you kind of talk to, I guess, how the lower revenue, but then offset by your more prudent cost management, is factoring into your increased margin guidance for the year?

Craig Safian (CFO)

Yeah, Josh. I mean, the way to think about that is we've proven over the last several years, given all the things Gene outlined in his prepared remarks about the craziness in the macro and geopolitical environment and just how challenging it has been, that we've been very agile in managing our expenses. What I'd say now is given the U.S.

Fed results and the impact that's having on the contract value growth, and then some of the things Gene just outlined as well in terms of longer selling cycles and things like that, we're taking the opportunity to make sure that we are managing our operating expense base super prudently and super carefully, but also making sure that we're investing in areas that we know support and drive future growth. We're in a period right now where our CV is growing, call it mid to high single digits. Obviously, we firmly believe that we can be a 12%-16% grower on the research business and a double-digit grower on the overall top line.

We want to make sure that we do not do anything that damages or impedes our ability to get back there when the economic situation is more "normal." What we are doing is, I call it like a slight belt tightening across the board as we are seeing a little bit of pressure in some areas, but also making sure that we are growing our selling capacity because we know that is a key ingredient going forward. We are not chopping anything. We are not slamming on the brakes on anything. We are just being thoughtful and prudent and careful and also making sure that we are investing in areas that we know drive and support future growth.

Josh Chan (Executive Director and Equity Research Analyst)

That makes a lot of sense. Thank you both for the time and the color.

Craig Safian (CFO)

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Faiza Alwy with Deutsche Bank. Your line is now open.

Faiza Alwy (Managing Director)

Yes, hi.

Thank you. I wanted to talk about the clients that you mentioned are anticipated or impacted by tariffs, for example, where you've seen slower decision-making. How have you seen that play out historically? Because I was saying to that, as you mentioned in your script, these clients can certainly benefit from Gartner Insights during this time. Is there this initial sort of period where folks are evaluating the situation, and are you sort of leaning in harder with these clients to explain your value proposition? How should we think about those clients going forward?

Craig Safian (CFO)

Yeah, Faiza, great question. Basically, what we've seen historically is when there's a lot of uncertainty, clients slow their decision-making, and then after a few months, they then say, "Well, we're in this world. We have to decide what to do.

Gartner's a big help. And then we actually have a burst of business from that. We continue to maintain relationships, continue to build pipeline, and clients know the value. When there's this kind of sort of shock of uncertainty, the first reaction from some companies is to sort of say, "Let's slow or stop decision-making for a period of time." That period of time goes by, and then they know they need to get they need help with cybersecurity. They need help with AI. They need help with cost optimization. All the things that are software selection. All those things that are our sweet spots are things that they know they need. There's a slowdown that then picks up over time. It's the historical pattern.

Faiza Alwy (Managing Director)

Understood.

Just on capital allocation and share buyback, I know you mentioned sort of your eagerness to buy back shares a couple of times. Is there any other perspective around that, just given what's happened with the stock and the market overall? How are you viewing the opportunity to buy back stock? Could we expect a more elevated level of share repurchases this year, just given the amount of cash that you have on the balance sheet?

Craig Safian (CFO)

Good morning, Faisal. I think our long-term capital allocation strategy is using our balance sheet, our cash flow, and excess cash to return capital to shareholders through our buyback programs and also to look for strategic value-enhancing tuck-in M&A. We continue to believe that we can do both of those things with our balance sheet and our capital allocation.

From a buyback perspective, as we've talked about historically, our strategy is to be price-sensitive, opportunistic, and disciplined. We are looking to optimize returns on our buybacks, not in a quarter or two, but over the long term. We are always looking at combinations of what's happening with the price of the stock, what's happening with overall multiples, what's happening with the market, what's happening with our stock individually, what is intrinsic value. All of those things are inputs into how we look to be price-sensitive, opportunistic, and disciplined. You rightly point out that we have $2.1 billion of cash on our balance sheet. We expect to generate another order of magnitude, $800 million of free cash flow over the course of this year. We expect to generate well over a billion dollars of free cash flow each and every year.

What that means is we have a lot of capital that we can put to use on behalf of our shareholders behind either buybacks or strategic tuck-in M&A. We continue to monitor this situation very closely, but we're going to stick to our guns and our sort of approach of being price-sensitive, opportunistic, and disciplined with a real focus on optimizing returns over the long term.

Faiza Alwy (Managing Director)

Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Jason Haas with Wells Fargo. Your line is now open.

Jason Haas (Director and Equity Research Analyst)

Hey, good morning, and thanks for taking my questions. I believe previously you were guiding the GBS quarter-bearing headcount to grow double digits this year, and I believe you said that you're now expecting it to grow mid-single digits. Can you just talk about what's the reason for the reduction in that segment specifically? Thanks.

Craig Safian (CFO)

Morning.

Yeah, I think it's part of our sort of normal agile planning around the business. Obviously, we do have U.S. federal footprint with our GBS business as well, and that has been impacted in the first quarter, as we described in our prepared remarks. We're also dealing with a more challenging macro environment, Gene referenced, longer sales cycles, things of that nature. We are always tweaking what we want and expect from a quarter-bearing headcount growth perspective over the course of the year. What I would say is what we've got dialed into our outlook right now is mid-single digit growth in both GTS and GBS. If the end market improves or the demand environment improves or sales cycles reduce, we have plenty of recruiting capacity to be able to go faster if we want to.

Essentially, right now, it's just a reflection of what we're seeing in the market and modest tapping of the brakes there just to make sure that we keep our cost structure in line with our CV growth expectations and our revenue and CV growth expectations rolling forward in 2026 and 2027.

Jason Haas (Director and Equity Research Analyst)

Got it. Thank you. That's helpful. As a follow-up, I appreciate the commentary on how you're leveraging AI. I'm curious if you've put any thought to rolling out any sort of chat functionality driven by AI, if that's something that your customers are asking for, or if there's any potential to use that to maybe make it a little bit easier for your customers to access and utilize all the primary insights from your research. Thank you.

Craig Safian (CFO)

Hey, Jason, as I mentioned in my remarks, we're really experts on AI. We know it really well.

We use AI internally. We have an application, much like you described, where internally our associates can use AI to help them navigate through our very large content base. We are planning to release that to clients, but because of the problems like hallucinations and things like that, we want to make sure that we get the bugs worked out. Our clients kind of want us not to have any hallucinations and things like that that can happen with AI. We have developed it. We use it internally. You can think about it as piloting it, but it is very broad among thousands of our associates. It is working very well, but we want to make sure that it is bulletproof before we roll it out to clients. Our clients understand that. They know we understand that they want it bulletproof.

Jason Haas (Director and Equity Research Analyst)

Got it. That makes sense. Thanks.

Operator (participant)

Thank you.

Our next question comes from the line of Andrew Nicholas with William Blair. Your line is now open.

Andrew Nicholas (Research Analyst)

Hi, good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. First, on the government side, just curious if you could provide any additional color on the timing of renewals throughout the remainder of this year. I believe I caught 40% in the first quarter, but just curious if there's anything unique about kind of the cadence throughout the rest of the year. Relatedly, I think you said half or roughly half of those contracts were renewed. Is there any reason for us to think that renewal rates will get better or worse from that level as the year goes on, maybe as you get more comfortable selling back into that group or anything like that that I'm not thinking of?

Craig Safian (CFO)

Yeah, Andrew, thanks.

Over the next three quarters, Q1 was the largest, as we mentioned, and you referenced. Q2 is less than half of what we saw in Q1. In Q3, which aligns with the U.S. Fed fiscal, is our next largest quarter, but it is probably three-quarters the size of what we saw in Q1. Q4 is really small in terms of the expirations there. The bulk is actually in Q3, which again aligns with the U.S. federal fiscal. In terms of what we have modeled in is what you highlighted, essentially what we experienced during the first quarter, which is nearly half dollar retention around 50%. We have modeled that forward. I do think, and Gene made this point earlier as well, we are intent on making sure and really helping our U.S. federal clients achieve their most important Mission-Critical Priorities.

We are not just abandoning our clients if the contract does not renew. We are there, and we want to make sure that we are there when they are ready to buy again, which we have a high degree of confidence that if they are still there, they will want to buy our services because we provide so much value. That is not baked in because, again, we have not seen it yet. Our philosophy generally is not to build forecast plans and outlooks based on what we hope is going to happen, but more along what we have seen. That is certainly a possibility. Again, we are organizing our teams to make sure we take advantage of that, probably more of a 2026 and 2027 dynamic than a 2025 dynamic. If we are able to get people back and turned on during 2025, great.

That would be that upside to what we're looking at.

Andrew Nicholas (Research Analyst)

Understood. Thank you. Changing gears for my follow-up, I just wanted to ask about the conservatism of the OpEx guide. I understand, and you gave some great reminders on the flexibility of the cost base and how you're kind of thinking about the cost structure. You've also, over the past several years, given a pretty prudent outlook in terms of spend. Just wondering if some of the cost actions that you've started to take and tightening of the belt over the past month plus maybe lowers some of the conservatism on that front, or if we should think about it being relatively consistent with previous approaches. Thank you.

Craig Safian (CFO)

Yeah, it's a great question. I mean, the environment is dynamic, as we discussed.

We are rolling with that dynamism and attempting to have as much agility around our operating expense base as possible. The reality is we're obviously managing the 2025 P&L to make sure that we're investing for the future and protecting profitability and free cash flow. In reality, as you know, we run this business for the long term, and we're making sure that our OpEx base is right-sized for 2026, that we're investing in the right areas during 2025 so that we can re-accelerate CV into the future. I wouldn't characterize the guidance or the OpEx guidance as any more prudent or conservative than normal. I would say it's sort of our normal approach to how we build our outlook and how we build our guidance.

As we mentioned earlier, we're prepared to invest more if we see positive changes in the environment, and we're prepared to tighten the belt maybe one more notch if we have to as well. We are very focused on making sure we're doing the right things for the business over the long term, but we're also going to make the right decisions in the short term as well to make sure that we are, again, making the right investments, but also protecting profitability and free cash flow.

Andrew Nicholas (Research Analyst)

Understood. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Jeff Silber with BMO Capital Markets. Your line is now open.

Jeff Silber (Managing Director)

Thanks so much. I just wanted to go back to some of the mechanics regarding a cancellation of contracts.

I know on the federal government side, most of your contracts, if not all of them, are one year, but I think you have a number of multi-year contracts outside of that. Can a client, let's say I have a two-year contract, can we as a client cancel ahead of that? How much notice do I have to give you? Does it have to be around the anniversary date? Some of the specifics around that, if you can provide, would be great.

Craig Safian (CFO)

Yeah. Generally, Jeff, a multi-year contract is a multi-year commitment with no out clauses or term for convenience rights within that contract. And so our multi-year contracts are true multi-year contracts. They can be two, three, four, even five years at some points, but the bulk of them are actually two-year contracts. And so when a client—and again, your point is right—the U.S.

Federal contracts are almost exclusively one-year contracts. Our multi-year contracts are multi-year with no true out clauses in them. We've been very focused on continuing to increase the proportion of multi-year contracts in our contract value base specifically for challenging macroeconomic times. That's part of the resilience we've baked into our business or engineered into our business so that short-term challenges from a macro perspective have a more muted impact on our overall results because of a focus on operational best practices like selling multi-year contracts.

Jeff Silber (Managing Director)

That's helpful. You were kind enough to give us kind of the seasonality on renewals for the federal government. Can we get some similarity for the non-federal government contracts? I know they vary, but any help would be great.

Craig Safian (CFO)

I'd say you can kind of see this in the external metrics as well.

Client retention is holding up really well and looks pretty good. We'd like even better or modestly better if we excluded U.S. federal from it. Retention rates broadly continue to look pretty good. I think that the challenge, and Gene alluded to this earlier, is our sales cycles from both a new logo perspective and also from an upsell perspective have lengthened, and that impacts the wallet retention numbers. You are seeing a little bit of that new business velocity impacting the wallet retention numbers. Overall, the retention numbers are holding up pretty well. Again, you can see that in both the GTS and GBS client and wallet retention numbers.

Jeff Silber (Managing Director)

Is there a specific quarter where most of these contracts renew?

Craig Safian (CFO)

Our two biggest quarters are Q1 and Q4. From an expiration perspective, Q2 and Q3 tend to be lighter quarters.

One of our practices is to, when we have the opportunity, to early renew things. That can move things around. If you just look at the pure contract term dates or end dates, overweighted to Q1 and Q4, think like 26% or 27%, and then a little underweighted in Q2 and Q3, think in the 22% to 23% of total range.

Jeff Silber (Managing Director)

That is really helpful. Thanks so much.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. I am currently showing no further questions at this time. I would like to turn the call back over to Gene Hall for closing remarks.

Gene Hall (Chairman and CEO)

Here is what I would like you to take away from today's call. Gartner delivered financial results ahead of expectations. Our Tech Vendor CV growth continues to accelerate. We have a vast addressable market opportunity. We have a strong and compelling client value proposition.

Looking ahead, we're well-positioned to drive sustained double-digit revenue growth over the long term. We'll continue to create value for our shareholders by providing actionable, objective insight, guidance, and tools to our clients, by prudently investing for future growth, by generating free cash flow well in excess of net income, and by returning capital to our shareholders through our repurchase program. Thanks for joining us today, and we look forward to updating you again next quarter.

Operator (participant)

This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.