FORR

Image source: The Motley Fool. Thursday, July 30, 2026 at 4:30 p.m. ET Chief Executive Officer and Chairman - George F. Colony Chief Financial Officer - Leo Christian Finn Vice President of Corporate Development, and Investor Relations - Ed Bryce Morris Chief Product Officer - Carrie Johnson Fanlo Chief Sales Officer - Christophe Favre Operator: Good afternoon, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to Forrester's Second Quarter 2026 Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speakers' presentation, there will be a Q&A session. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to the Vice President of Corporate Development, and Investor Relations, Ed Bryce Morris. Please go ahead. Ed Bryce Morris: Thank you, and hello, everyone, and thank you for joining today's call. Earlier this afternoon, we issued our press release for the second quarter of 2026. If you need a copy, you can find one on our website in the investors section. Here with us today to discuss our results are George F. Colony, Forrester's Chief Executive Officer and Chairman and Leo Christian Finn, Chief Financial Officer. Carrie Johnson Fanlo, our Chief Product Officer and Christophe Favre, our chief sales officer, are also here with us for the Q&A section of the call. Before we begin, I would like to remind you that this call will contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Words such as expects, believes, anticipates, intends, plans, estimates, or similar expressions are intended to identify these forward-looking statements. These statements are based on the company's current plans and expectations and involve risks and uncertainties that could cause future activities and results of operations to be materially different from those set forth in the forward-looking statements. Factors that could cause actual results to differ are discussed in our reports and filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. And the company undertakes no obligation to publicly update any forward-looking statements whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise. Lastly, consistent with previous calls, today, we will be discussing our performance on an adjusted basis. Which excludes items affecting comparability. While reporting on an adjusted basis is not in accordance with GAAP, we believe that reporting numbers on this adjusted basis provides a meaningful comparison and an appropriate basis for our discussion. You can find a detailed list of items excluded from these adjusted results in our press release. And with that, I will hand it over to George. George F. Colony: Thank you for joining Forrester's Q2 2026 Investor Call. I will be covering the following themes before turning the call over to Leo Christian Finn our chief financial officer. 1. Forrester's second quarter performance and our outlook for the second half of the year. 2. recent AI research from Forrester, 3. our flagship B2B and CX events, which were held in the second quarter. and 4. an update on Forrester AI, including adoption and usage. Trends from the first quarter continued into the second quarter as we hit our key metrics. CV decreased 3% and wallet retention was flat. Client retention was down 1%, but client count increased in the quarter. Total revenue decreased 10% with research revenue down 8% and non CV businesses down 15%. Market uncertainty drove the consulting and events declines, along with our exit of the strategy consulting business earlier in the year. Overall, our Q2 performance was aligned with our expectations, with consensus beats on revenue, margin, and EPS. Despite headwinds in our consulting and events businesses, we have confidence in attaining our plan in the second half of the year. We continue to be laser-focused on achieving CV growth in 2026, and we are maintaining our revenue margin, and EPS guidance for the full-year. AI technology continues to evolve at fast rates, stimulating our clients' need for guidance. In the quarter, we produced hundreds of new AI research frameworks, models, benchmarks, and technology blueprints I wanted to quickly reference a few here to give investors a window into how we are helping our clients. Forrester is creating a series of reports outlining how high-level corporate roles will be changed in the AI era. In Q2, we released 3: the AI CIO, the AI CMO, the AI chief information security officer. The AI CIO report envisions a world in which the CIO is managing a new way to develop software and a corporate environment where tasks are performed by autonomous agents, overseen by human intelligence, and it will be continually curating and managing outputs. In this world, the CIO will have 4 new roles. 1. architecting enterprise decision-making. Agents will make decisions, and the CIO must guarantee 24-hour availability to the company. 2. governor of autonomous systems. Agents will fail. The CIO must navigate the risk and contain the damage. 3. economist of AI value. AI will be expensive to operate. The CIO must manage costs and calculate the trade-offs between agentic and human work. And finally, 4. teacher. Boards of directors are accustomed to deterministic reporting. AI yields probabilistic outputs and the CIO must be continually educating the corporation on the risks and opportunities afforded by this approach. A narrative has emerged that companies will not need CIOs in IT in the future. Our report rejects this view. Asserting that agentic AI will present serious risks and vulnerabilities in large organizations. Firm but opportunistic centralized management of technology will be critical to maintain operations in companies as the Wild West of AI computing unfolds. Another fascinating report from the quarter revealed the state of artificial intelligence within marketing agencies in the US. AI is now pervasive across US marketing agencies, with nine of the top 10 agencies using generative AI and 50% using agentic AI for marketing execution. AI is deployed to ideate creative concepts and prep for pitches, aggregate and assemble strategic insights, and summarize media insights and reporting. Google is the No. 1 AI provider to the agencies with Adobe at No. 2 in the generative AI space, and Anthropic at No. 2 for agentic. These 3 vendors have displaced OpenAI. As is typical in the early days of AI, the agency industry is deploying the technology to increase productivity and drive cost efficiency, not for increased market effectiveness, creativity, and long-term brand growth for their customers. Forrester's research remains ahead of the market impervious to faddish narratives and unafraid to pop bubbles and take iconoclastic stands. Our clients are making multimillion-dollar decisions, They rely on Forrester's objectivity and research-based analysis to ensure that they are making the right decisions. Turning now to events. At our B2B Summit North America in Phoenix, our largest yearly event, we explored the tectonic shifts underway in how B2B companies sell and promote their products. And Forrester calls this the go-to-market singularity. The event was a clarion call to B2B leaders across marketing, sales, customer success, and product functions. To discard outmoded go-to-market practices and embrace a new augmented resilient, and collaborative GTM approach that will capture AI-centric customers and generate revenue growth. Despite years of volatility driven by changing customer behavior, most B2B firms have failed to change how they engage with buyers. They are clinging to ineffective marketing practices such as mass emailing, marketing-qualified lead obsession, gated content, and siloed teams. AI is quickly destroying these practices as it transforms buyer journeys and continues to shift power away from sellers, toward buyers. Now as the GTM singularity unfolds, B2B firms must augment sales and marketing efforts with agents. Respond to customer shifts faster, and better align marketing, sales, and product groups to act in unison. The singularity change that is happening right now is what Forrester calls the visibility vacuum. As SEO and search decline, customers are going dark. Making it impossible to gather buying signals from customers and increasing the need to adopt some form of answer engine optimization. The B2B summit saw a 9% year-over-year increase of attendees. We had 1,400 attendees, 59 sponsors, and 110 sessions. We estimate the summit influenced approximately $3.5 million of contract value bookings. Customer experience forums were held in New York San Francisco, and Amsterdam in the second quarter. At the forums, we unveiled Forrester's updated total experience score. The TX score debuted in 2025, a unique metric that combines the customer experience and brand experience of large companies to accurately forecast the growth potential of those firms. Added this year was a third component, employee experience, yielding a more complete view of where companies are tracking. The TX score places companies in 4 groups based on our data. Leading, plateauing, lagging, and churning. Our 2026 global total experience score rankings of 375 brands evaluated companies across Asia Pacific, Europe, and North America in 10 vertical markets. Looking at the U.S. automobile market, Honda was dominant in the leader category, Tesla was plateauing. Chrysler lagging, and GM churning. Overall, 41% of the organizations measured improved their scores from 2025, while only 3% declined. The Amsterdam and New York CX forums were sold out. Turning now to developments in Forrester AI. In Q2, we announced the Forrester AI agent for Microsoft Copilot. Enabling clients to access trusted Forrester research and guidance directly from their Microsoft workflows. This announcement follows Forrester's integration of Forrester AI into Microsoft Teams, continuing our efforts to make research available to our clients where they work. We are revolutionizing how clients engage with research and advisory firms. By the end of Q2, we had activated hundreds of accounts to access Forrester AI from Teams and Copilot. Forrester AI usage increased to new highs in the quarter, with total users up 33% in Q2 versus Q1, and up 69% year-over-year. Forrester AI prompts were up 58% in Q2 compared to Q1, and up 105% year-over-year. In Q2, Forrester AI eclipsed indexed search to become the dominant method used by Forrester Decisions clients to interact with our research database. We continue to work on integrating Forrester AI with other platforms, including Gemini, Claude, Slack, and others. Watch this space. I will now hand the call over to Leo Christian Finn, our CFO, for more detailed financial analysis of the quarter. Christian? Leo Christian Finn: Thanks, George, and good afternoon, everyone. In the second quarter, we saw continued momentum in our CV business. This was exhibited in our CV bookings growth for the quarter and the ongoing stabilization of metrics. The CV decline and wallet retention were consistent with the prior quarter, and in line with our expectations. Client retention dipped by one point, but we did see an increase in client count. Our performance in the second quarter gives us renewed confidence of hitting our CV plan for the year with the target of achieving CV growth as we exit 2026, In addition, we restarted our stock buyback program during the period, and we intend to continue with repurchases throughout the remainder of the year. Q2 saw a 3% CV decline in the quarter This mirrors our first-quarter performance and as stated earlier, was in line with our expectations. We believe this trajectory will improve in the second half of the year, we continue to grow CV bookings. We remain on a path for CV growth by year-end. Despite some market turbulence, we are seeing consistent demand for our products. Driven by the need for trusted AI advice continued adoption of Forrester AI, ongoing product enhancements, making Forrester more embedded in clients' workflows. For the total company, we generated $100.2 million of revenue compared to $111.7 million in the prior year period which is an overall revenue decrease of 10%. In terms of our revenue breakdown for the quarter, research revenues decreased 8% compared to the second quarter of 2025, with revenue from research products down 7%, reprints down 12%. Client retention of 77% was up three points from the prior year, and down one point from the prior quarter. Client count increased by 10 clients in the quarter, to 1,770 clients supported by new business growth. While retention of 89% was up four points from the prior year and flat from the prior quarter, Churn, down sell, and new business were all at or above expectations, while upsell was slightly below expectations, and remained flat versus prior period. We continue to see success in our AI access product. This product has delivered approximately $10 million in bookings since its launch nine months ago, and continues to gain traction in the market. We remain focused on retention improvements driven by customer success, sales, ongoing product enhancements, and believe these will continue to pay dividends in the second half of the year. Our consulting business posted revenues of $20 million, which is down 15% compared to the prior year. The majority of the decline can be ascribed to the strategy consulting business, which we stopped actively selling earlier in the year. We will continue to execute on our existing strategy consulting backlog over the coming quarters and exit this business by year-end. The decision to exit strategy consulting allows our sales force to continue to focus on the expansion of our CV offerings. The content marketing business was down 13%, and this was partially offset by strong performance in the advisory business which grew 21%. And finally, regarding our events business, we held four events in the second quarter, and posted revenues of $8.5 million, representing a decrease of 17% compared to the second quarter of 2025. Both sponsorship and ticket revenues are impacted by the shift in our event strategy. Which focuses on shorter, more intimate forums. We are receiving very positive feedback about our new event format, which prioritizes deeper in-person connection peer networking. Continuing down our P&L on an adjusted basis, operating expenses for the second quarter decreased by 8% primarily driven by lower compensation costs. Headcount was down 7%, driven by the restructuring earlier in the year. However, as we look to return to CV growth, we have started to add to our sales capacity and we did see a slight increase in our sales quota-carrying headcount number. Operating income decreased by 24% to $10.4 million, or 10.4% of revenue in the current quarter. Compared to $13.7 million, or 12.2% of revenue in the second quarter of 2025. Interest expense for the quarter was $400,000 down from $700,000 in the second quarter of 2025. Finally, net income and earnings per share decreased 21% and 22%, respectively, compared to Q2 of last year, with net income at $7.7 million and earnings per share of $0.40 for the current quarter, compared with net income of $9.8 million and earnings per share of $0.51 for the second quarter of 2025. Looking at our capital structure, cash flow from operating activities was $25 million in the first half of the year, and capital expenditures were $18.2 million $16.6 million of the capital expenditures are associated with the ongoing buildout of our Cambridge headquarters. And we have received $2.7 million of reimbursements from the landlord which is reported as a cash inflow from operating activities. Free cash flow for the first half of the year excluding the net spending on the buildout, was approximately $20.7 million. Remaining CapEx spending for the buildout will be approximately $11 million. However, we expect to receive an additional $14.5 million of reimbursements from the landlord in the second half of the year. Our balance sheet is strong with cash at the end of the quarter of over $130 million and debt of only $35 million. We did not pay down any debt in the quarter, However, we did repurchase approximately $1 million worth of shares this quarter, starting late in the period. We have over $76 million of our stock repurchase authorization intact, and we plan on accelerating our stock repurchase program in the second half of the year. Moving on to guidance. For 2026, we remain confident in our ability to execute. We are maintaining our guidance at this stage. Let me provide some additional commentary on our outlook for the year. For 2026, we continue to expect revenue to be $350 million to $360 million down 9% to 12% versus 2025. This guidance assumes the outlook for research to be a mid-single-digit decline. Consulting to be a decline in the low-20s, and events to be a decline in the mid- to high-teens for the year. We still expect our operating margins to be in the range of 6% to 6.5% for 2026, and interest expense is expected to be $2.3 million for the year, and we are guiding to a full-year tax rate of 29%. Taking all of this into account, we still expect EPS to be in the range of $0.72 to $0.82 for the full-year. We continue to execute against our goals for 2026. there has been accelerated adoption of Forrester AI, We continue to focus on retention improvement initiatives, and clients are reacting positively to our new embedded product portfolio. To capitalize on this, we will continue to innovate in the second half of the year to drive CV growth by year-end. Thank you all for taking the time today. With that, I will hand the call back to George. George F. Colony: Thank you, Christian. We met our expectations for the quarter, and reiterated our guidance for the full-year. Furthermore, we remain on track to deliver CV growth in the full-year. The era of AI computing is driving demand for Forrester's insights as our clients plan how they will build their private AI models for their customers and begin to replace their enterprise systems with a new generation of AI software. Simultaneously, Forrester's AI capabilities are enabling us to deliver better insights faster, embedded where our clients do their work. This is an extraordinary opportunity for Forrester. We are diligently working to leverage this moment for our clients and our investors. I will now turn the call over to the operator for the Q&A session. Operator: Thank you, sir. As a reminder, to ask a question, you would need to press one, one on your telephone. To withdraw your question, please press one, one again. And I show our first question comes from the line of Anja Soderstrom from Sidoti. Please go ahead. Anja Soderstrom: Hi. Thank you for taking my question. Just curious, what kind of visibility do you have for that expectation of contract value growth by the year-end? Leo Christian Finn: This is Christian. So it is a good question. Look. We have seen meaningful improvement in our retention metrics this year. We talked about it on the call. We have got a continued laser focus on retention and product innovation, and we expect those improvements to continue into the second half of the year. The pipeline continues to increase. Think the work that Christophe's been doing with the sales organization combined with, obviously, the work we have done from a product innovation standpoint. With AI access and improvements that we know are coming With additional products in the back half here that are launching in Q3. All give us confidence, as we go forward here. So we continue to look at the models and run the analysis. And we see upside as we move forward here, and that is what gives us confidence. Christophe Favre: You wanna talk about some of the changes? We had CV bookings growth. In Q2 with really pockets of momentum one of them was tech research that grew by double digits. as well as continued positive CV in the international markets in EMEA as well as in APAC. Of course, they are areas of challenges and the North American government segment was one of them. However, I see a turning point, in Q3 in that segment. Anja Soderstrom: Okay. And what do you anticipate to drive that turning point? For the government? Yes. Christophe Favre: We expect a turning point in the government, in the federal area. Where we have built up a very nice pipeline. In the area of AI access. as well as the overall portfolio that we have around our executive leader seats. So we have seen some very interesting opportunities there, and we will know more by the end of Q3. George F. Colony: I was in Washington two weeks ago with clients, and the overall mood there is getting they are getting back to business. Obviously, these are not typical times. But it is after the doldrums of a year ago. People these agencies have to get their work done. So they are getting back to work. Anja Soderstrom: Okay. Great. Thank you. And also in terms of the Salesforce, you said you added some headcount there. How do you expect to add more, and how is the current work? Are they up to are they ramped, or are they still building up experience? Christophe Favre: We had in Q2 a small increase in headcount. However, my focus right now is about improving the productivity of the Salesforce. as well as their performance. I will review at the end of Q3 if we add additional growth headcount for the back half of the year. Anja Soderstrom: Thank you. That was all for me. George F. Colony: Anja, thank you. Operator: Thank you. Thank you. And I show our next question comes from the line of Vincent Colicchio from Barrington Research. Please go ahead. Vincent Colicchio: Yeah. Christophe, to be clear, so when you say pipeline has expanded for CV, you are talking sequentially. Correct? Christophe Favre: I am speaking year-over-year. Vincent Colicchio: Okay. Christophe Favre: Booking growth year-over-year. For Q2. Here's your question. Vincent Colicchio: But pipe--you said that pipe-- yeah. Yeah. Christophe Favre: And the pipeline as well. Vincent Colicchio: And what sales process changes would you say are having the most impact? Vincent Colicchio: Yeah. Christophe Favre: So 1 is the change that we made in our go-to-market strategy. Having organized the North American sales organization around 6 vertical industries. as well as the work we do in preparing our sales organization to take advantage of the new AI era, and, as well, of course, is working closely with our product organizations and we see great uptake. Around our new product portfolio. Especially around AI access. as well as our embedded solutions especially the Microsoft Copilot solutions. Because what we see is customers now want to bring Forrester proprietary expertise where they work. They want to have Forrester embedded in their tools. They really want to make decisions to move faster with higher confidence. And Forrester is very well positioned to help them do that and help them take action faster. George F. Colony: You may also wanna mention the balanced scorecard. As a tool here. Christophe Favre: Yes. We also we implemented what I call the salesforce balanced scorecard. In order to make the salesforce and the sales leaders more accountable for the quality of the work they do and we look much more carefully at areas linked to the pipeline, as well as the pipeline performance. Vincent Colicchio: And in terms of verticals, I know you said the Fed should improve in Q3. Any change in terms of other verticals that are improving in the Q2 period? Christophe Favre: We see really an uptick in the tech industry. In Q2. We believe it will continue in Q3. as well as, interestingly, also in the industry manufacturing area. We see those B2B companies willing to transform their go-to-market strategy and taking advantage of this new AI era. These are companies like Siemens or Honeywell. Vincent Colicchio: that is it for me. And as far as your integration into workflows, is this-- are you ahead of the competition in that regard? What does that look like? Carrie Johnson Fanlo: Hi, Vincent. it is Carrie. We are the first research company in our competitive set to have a presence in Microsoft Teams, and we are the first to have an agent an AI agent in Copilot. We know from the conversations that we are having that we are on the front line of this, and that is what our customers expect us to be. So we will continue to be that moving forward as well. Vincent Colicchio: Okay. Thank you. George F. Colony: Thanks, Vincent. Operator: Thank you. That concludes our Q&A session. At this time, I would like to turn the conference back to Leo Christian Finn, Chief Financial Officer, for closing remarks. Leo Christian Finn: Thanks, all, for joining today. Appreciate it. Any questions or follow-up, just reach out to Edward or myself. Thank you. Operator: Thank you. This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect. Before you buy stock in Forrester Research, consider this: The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the 10 best stocks for investors to buy now… and Forrester Research wasn’t one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut are built for long-term growth and could produce monster returns in the coming years. Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $386,727!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $1,232,139!* That performance is why people listen. With a track record of beating the S&P 500 by 4x, Stock Advisor offers a distinct advantage. Don't miss the latest top 10 list, available with Stock Advisor, and join an investing community built for the long haul. See the 10 stocks » *Stock Advisor returns as of August 3, 2026. This article is a transcript of this conference call produced for The Motley Fool. While we strive for our Foolish Best, there may be errors, omissions, or inaccuracies in this transcript. As with all our articles, The Motley Fool does not assume any responsibility for your use of this content, and we strongly encourage you to do your own research, including listening to the call yourself and reading the company's SEC filings. Please see our Terms and Conditions for additional details, including our Obligatory Capitalized Disclaimers of Liability. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy. Forrester (FORR) Q2 2026 Earnings Call Transcript was originally published by The Motley Fool

This article first appeared on GuruFocus. Total Revenue: $100.2 million, a decrease of 10% year-over-year. Research Revenue: Decreased 8% year-over-year, with research products down 7% and reprints down 12%. Consulting Revenue: $20 million, down 15% year-over-year, primarily due to the exit of the strategy consulting business. Events Revenue: $8.5 million, a decrease of 17% year-over-year. Contract Value (CV) Decline: 3% in Q2, consistent with Q1 performance. Client Retention: 77%, up 3 points from the prior year and down 1 point from the prior quarter. Wallet Retention: 89%, up 4 points from the prior year and flat from the prior quarter. Client Count: Increased by 10 clients in the quarter to 1,770 clients. Operating Income (Adjusted): $10.4 million, or 10.4% of revenue, down 24% from $13.7 million in Q2 2025. Net Income (Adjusted): $7.7 million, down 21% year-over-year. Earnings Per Share (Adjusted): $0.40, down 22% from $0.51 in Q2 2025. Cash Flow from Operations: $25 million in the first half of the year. Capital Expenditures: $18.2 million in the first half of the year, with $16.6 million related to the Cambridge headquarters build-out. Free Cash Flow: Approximately $20.7 million for the first half, excluding net spending on the build-out. Cash and Debt: Cash over $130 million and debt of $35 million at quarter end. Stock Repurchases: Approximately $1 million worth of shares repurchased in Q2, with over $76 million of authorization remaining. Forrester AI Usage: Total users up 33% in Q2 versus Q1 and up 69% year-over-year; prompts up 58% quarter-over-quarter and up 105% year-over-year. AI Access Product Bookings: Approximately $10 million in bookings since launch nine months ago. B2B Summit Attendance: 1,400 attendees, a 9% year-over-year increase, with an estimated $3.5 million of contract value bookings influenced. Warning! GuruFocus has detected 7 Warning Signs with FORR. Is FORR fairly valued? Test your thesis with our free DCF calculator. Release Date: July 30, 2026 For the complete transcript of the earnings call, please refer to the full earnings call transcript. Forrester Research Inc (NASDAQ:FORR) reported Q2 2026 results that beat consensus expectations on revenue, margin, and EPS, with performance aligned with its internal plan. Forrester AI adoption is accelerating rapidly, with total users up 33% quarter-over-quarter and 69% year-over-year, and prompts up 58% quarter-over-quarter and 105% year-over-year. Forrester AI has become the dominant method for clients to interact with its research database, surpassing indexed search, and the AI access product has generated approximately $10 million in bookings since its launch nine months ago. The company is innovating with new product integrations, such as the Forrester AI Agent for Microsoft Copilot and Microsoft Teams, positioning it as a leader in embedding research into client workflows. Forrester Research Inc (NASDAQ:FORR) is confident in achieving contract value (CV) growth by year-end 2026, supported by strong CV bookings growth in Q2, a growing pipeline, and improvements in retention metrics. The company's B2B Summit North America saw a 9% year-over-year increase in attendees, with the event estimated to influence approximately $3.5 million in contract value bookings. Forrester Research Inc (NASDAQ:FORR) has a strong balance sheet with over $130 million in cash and only $35 million in debt, and has restarted its stock buyback program with over $76 million in authorization remaining. Total revenue decreased 10% year-over-year in Q2 2026, with research revenue down 8% and non-CV businesses down 15%. The consulting business posted revenues of $20 million, down 15% year-over-year, largely due to the exit from the strategy consulting business, which will continue to impact results through year-end. The events business saw revenues decline 17% year-over-year to $8.5 million, impacted by a shift in event strategy towards shorter, more intimate formats. Client retention dipped by 1 point to 77% in Q2, and upsell performance was slightly below expectations, remaining flat versus the prior period. Market uncertainty continues to drive declines in consulting and events businesses, and the North American government segment remains a challenge, though a turning point is expected in Q3. Operating income decreased 24% to $10.4 million, and net income and earnings per share decreased 21% and 22% respectively compared to Q2 of last year. The company is maintaining its full-year 2026 guidance, which still projects a revenue decline of 9% to 12% versus 2025, indicating ongoing headwinds. Q: What kind of visibility do you have for that expectation of contract value (CV) growth by the year end?A: Chris Finn (CFO) stated that the company has seen meaningful improvement in retention metrics this year and expects those improvements to continue into the second half. Pipeline continues to increase, driven by sales organization changes and product innovation like AI access. Christophe Favre (Chief Sales Officer) added that Q2 saw CV bookings growth with double-digit growth in tech research and positive new client value in EMEA and APAC. While the North American government segment was a challenge, he sees a turning point in Q3 for that segment. Q: What do you anticipate to drive that turning point in the government segment?A: Christophe Favre (Chief Sales Officer) explained that they have built a strong pipeline in the Fed area, particularly around AI access and executive leader seats. George Colony (CEO) added that after the DOGE efforts a year ago, federal agencies are getting back to business and need to get their work done, which is creating renewed demand. Q: In terms of the sales headcount you added, do you anticipate adding more and are they ramped or still building experience?A: Christophe Favre (Chief Sales Officer) said that while there was a small increase in headcount in Q2, his current focus is on improving the productivity and performance of the existing sales force. He will review at the end of Q3 whether to add additional growth headcounts for the back of the year. Q: Christophe, to be clear, when you say a pipeline is expanded for CV, you're talking sequentially, correct?A: Christophe Favre (Chief Sales Officer) clarified that he is speaking year over year. The company saw booking growth year over year for Q2 and the pipeline is also up year over year. Q: What sales process changes would you say are having the most impact?A: Christophe Favre (Chief Sales Officer) cited the reorganization of the North American sales organization around six vertical industries, preparing the sales force for the AI era, and working closely with product organizations. He highlighted the success of new products like AI access and the Microsoft Copilot solutions, as customers want Forrester's expertise embedded in their tools. George Colony (CEO) added that the implementation of a "balanced scorecard" has made the sales force and leaders more accountable for pipeline health and performance. Q: In terms of verticals, I know you said the Fed should improve in Q3, any change in terms of other verticals that are improving in the Q2 period?A: Christophe Favre (Chief Sales Officer) noted a strong uptake in the tech industry in Q2, which he believes will continue into Q3. He also sees interesting trends in the industry and manufacturing area, where B2B companies are looking to transform their go-to-market strategies and take advantage of the AI era. George Colony (CEO) specified these are companies like Siemens or Honeywell. Q: As far as your integration into workflows, are you ahead of the competition in that regard? What does that look like?A: Carrie Johnson (Chief Product Officer) confirmed that Forrester is ahead of the competition. They are the first research company in their competitive set to have a presence in Microsoft Teams and the first to have an AI agent in Copilot. She stated that customers expect Forrester to be on the front line of this integration, and they will continue to be so moving forward. For the complete transcript of the earnings call, please refer to the full earnings call transcript.

Image source: The Motley Fool. Thursday, July 30, 2026 at 4:30 p.m. ET Chief Executive Officer and Chairman - George F. Colony Chief Financial Officer - Leo Christian Finn Vice President of Corporate Development, and Investor Relations - Ed Bryce Morris Chief Product Officer - Carrie Johnson Fanlo Chief Sales Officer - Christophe Favre Operator: Good afternoon, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to Forrester's Second Quarter 2026 Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speakers' presentation, there will be a Q&A session. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to the Vice President of Corporate Development, and Investor Relations, Ed Bryce Morris. Please go ahead. Ed Bryce Morris: Thank you, and hello, everyone, and thank you for joining today's call. Earlier this afternoon, we issued our press release for the second quarter of 2026. If you need a copy, you can find one on our website in the investors section. Here with us today to discuss our results are George F. Colony, Forrester's Chief Executive Officer and Chairman and Leo Christian Finn, Chief Financial Officer. Carrie Johnson Fanlo, our Chief Product Officer and Christophe Favre, our chief sales officer, are also here with us for the Q&A section of the call. Before we begin, I would like to remind you that this call will contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Words such as expects, believes, anticipates, intends, plans, estimates, or similar expressions are intended to identify these forward-looking statements. These statements are based on the company's current plans and expectations and involve risks and uncertainties that could cause future activities and results of operations to be materially different from those set forth in the forward-looking statements. Factors that could cause actual results to differ are discussed in our reports and filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. And the company undertakes no obligation to publicly update any forward-looking statements whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise. Lastly, consistent with previous calls, today, we will be discussing our performance on an adjusted basis. Which excludes items affecting comparability. While reporting on an adjusted basis is not in accordance with GAAP, we believe that reporting numbers on this adjusted basis provides a meaningful comparison and an appropriate basis for our discussion. You can find a detailed list of items excluded from these adjusted results in our press release. And with that, I will hand it over to George. George F. Colony: Thank you for joining Forrester's Q2 2026 Investor Call. I will be covering the following themes before turning the call over to Leo Christian Finn our chief financial officer. 1. Forrester's second quarter performance and our outlook for the second half of the year. 2. recent AI research from Forrester, 3. our flagship B2B and CX events, which were held in the second quarter. and 4. an update on Forrester AI, including adoption and usage. Trends from the first quarter continued into the second quarter as we hit our key metrics. CV decreased 3% and wallet retention was flat. Client retention was down 1%, but client count increased in the quarter. Total revenue decreased 10% with research revenue down 8% and non CV businesses down 15%. Market uncertainty drove the consulting and events declines, along with our exit of the strategy consulting business earlier in the year. Overall, our Q2 performance was aligned with our expectations, with consensus beats on revenue, margin, and EPS. Despite headwinds in our consulting and events businesses, we have confidence in attaining our plan in the second half of the year. We continue to be laser-focused on achieving CV growth in 2026, and we are maintaining our revenue margin, and EPS guidance for the full-year. AI technology continues to evolve at fast rates, stimulating our clients' need for guidance. In the quarter, we produced hundreds of new AI research frameworks, models, benchmarks, and technology blueprints I wanted to quickly reference a few here to give investors a window into how we are helping our clients. Forrester is creating a series of reports outlining how high-level corporate roles will be changed in the AI era. In Q2, we released 3: the AI CIO, the AI CMO, the AI chief information security officer. The AI CIO report envisions a world in which the CIO is managing a new way to develop software and a corporate environment where tasks are performed by autonomous agents, overseen by human intelligence, and it will be continually curating and managing outputs. In this world, the CIO will have 4 new roles. 1. architecting enterprise decision-making. Agents will make decisions, and the CIO must guarantee 24-hour availability to the company. 2. governor of autonomous systems. Agents will fail. The CIO must navigate the risk and contain the damage. 3. economist of AI value. AI will be expensive to operate. The CIO must manage costs and calculate the trade-offs between agentic and human work. And finally, 4. teacher. Boards of directors are accustomed to deterministic reporting. AI yields probabilistic outputs and the CIO must be continually educating the corporation on the risks and opportunities afforded by this approach. A narrative has emerged that companies will not need CIOs in IT in the future. Our report rejects this view. Asserting that agentic AI will present serious risks and vulnerabilities in large organizations. Firm but opportunistic centralized management of technology will be critical to maintain operations in companies as the Wild West of AI computing unfolds. Another fascinating report from the quarter revealed the state of artificial intelligence within marketing agencies in the US. AI is now pervasive across US marketing agencies, with nine of the top 10 agencies using generative AI and 50% using agentic AI for marketing execution. AI is deployed to ideate creative concepts and prep for pitches, aggregate and assemble strategic insights, and summarize media insights and reporting. Google is the No. 1 AI provider to the agencies with Adobe at No. 2 in the generative AI space, and Anthropic at No. 2 for agentic. These 3 vendors have displaced OpenAI. As is typical in the early days of AI, the agency industry is deploying the technology to increase productivity and drive cost efficiency, not for increased market effectiveness, creativity, and long-term brand growth for their customers. Forrester's research remains ahead of the market impervious to faddish narratives and unafraid to pop bubbles and take iconoclastic stands. Our clients are making multimillion-dollar decisions, They rely on Forrester's objectivity and research-based analysis to ensure that they are making the right decisions. Turning now to events. At our B2B Summit North America in Phoenix, our largest yearly event, we explored the tectonic shifts underway in how B2B companies sell and promote their products. And Forrester calls this the go-to-market singularity. The event was a clarion call to B2B leaders across marketing, sales, customer success, and product functions. To discard outmoded go-to-market practices and embrace a new augmented resilient, and collaborative GTM approach that will capture AI-centric customers and generate revenue growth. Despite years of volatility driven by changing customer behavior, most B2B firms have failed to change how they engage with buyers. They are clinging to ineffective marketing practices such as mass emailing, marketing-qualified lead obsession, gated content, and siloed teams. AI is quickly destroying these practices as it transforms buyer journeys and continues to shift power away from sellers, toward buyers. Now as the GTM singularity unfolds, B2B firms must augment sales and marketing efforts with agents. Respond to customer shifts faster, and better align marketing, sales, and product groups to act in unison. The singularity change that is happening right now is what Forrester calls the visibility vacuum. As SEO and search decline, customers are going dark. Making it impossible to gather buying signals from customers and increasing the need to adopt some form of answer engine optimization. The B2B summit saw a 9% year-over-year increase of attendees. We had 1,400 attendees, 59 sponsors, and 110 sessions. We estimate the summit influenced approximately $3.5 million of contract value bookings. Customer experience forums were held in New York San Francisco, and Amsterdam in the second quarter. At the forums, we unveiled Forrester's updated total experience score. The TX score debuted in 2025, a unique metric that combines the customer experience and brand experience of large companies to accurately forecast the growth potential of those firms. Added this year was a third component, employee experience, yielding a more complete view of where companies are tracking. The TX score places companies in 4 groups based on our data. Leading, plateauing, lagging, and churning. Our 2026 global total experience score rankings of 375 brands evaluated companies across Asia Pacific, Europe, and North America in 10 vertical markets. Looking at the U.S. automobile market, Honda was dominant in the leader category, Tesla was plateauing. Chrysler lagging, and GM churning. Overall, 41% of the organizations measured improved their scores from 2025, while only 3% declined. The Amsterdam and New York CX forums were sold out. Turning now to developments in Forrester AI. In Q2, we announced the Forrester AI agent for Microsoft Copilot. Enabling clients to access trusted Forrester research and guidance directly from their Microsoft workflows. This announcement follows Forrester's integration of Forrester AI into Microsoft Teams, continuing our efforts to make research available to our clients where they work. We are revolutionizing how clients engage with research and advisory firms. By the end of Q2, we had activated hundreds of accounts to access Forrester AI from Teams and Copilot. Forrester AI usage increased to new highs in the quarter, with total users up 33% in Q2 versus Q1, and up 69% year-over-year. Forrester AI prompts were up 58% in Q2 compared to Q1, and up 105% year-over-year. In Q2, Forrester AI eclipsed indexed search to become the dominant method used by Forrester Decisions clients to interact with our research database. We continue to work on integrating Forrester AI with other platforms, including Gemini, Claude, Slack, and others. Watch this space. I will now hand the call over to Leo Christian Finn, our CFO, for more detailed financial analysis of the quarter. Christian? Leo Christian Finn: Thanks, George, and good afternoon, everyone. In the second quarter, we saw continued momentum in our CV business. This was exhibited in our CV bookings growth for the quarter and the ongoing stabilization of metrics. The CV decline and wallet retention were consistent with the prior quarter, and in line with our expectations. Client retention dipped by one point, but we did see an increase in client count. Our performance in the second quarter gives us renewed confidence of hitting our CV plan for the year with the target of achieving CV growth as we exit 2026, In addition, we restarted our stock buyback program during the period, and we intend to continue with repurchases throughout the remainder of the year. Q2 saw a 3% CV decline in the quarter This mirrors our first-quarter performance and as stated earlier, was in line with our expectations. We believe this trajectory will improve in the second half of the year, we continue to grow CV bookings. We remain on a path for CV growth by year-end. Despite some market turbulence, we are seeing consistent demand for our products. Driven by the need for trusted AI advice continued adoption of Forrester AI, ongoing product enhancements, making Forrester more embedded in clients' workflows. For the total company, we generated $100.2 million of revenue compared to $111.7 million in the prior year period which is an overall revenue decrease of 10%. In terms of our revenue breakdown for the quarter, research revenues decreased 8% compared to the second quarter of 2025, with revenue from research products down 7%, reprints down 12%. Client retention of 77% was up three points from the prior year, and down one point from the prior quarter. Client count increased by 10 clients in the quarter, to 1,770 clients supported by new business growth. While retention of 89% was up four points from the prior year and flat from the prior quarter, Churn, down sell, and new business were all at or above expectations, while upsell was slightly below expectations, and remained flat versus prior period. We continue to see success in our AI access product. This product has delivered approximately $10 million in bookings since its launch nine months ago, and continues to gain traction in the market. We remain focused on retention improvements driven by customer success, sales, ongoing product enhancements, and believe these will continue to pay dividends in the second half of the year. Our consulting business posted revenues of $20 million, which is down 15% compared to the prior year. The majority of the decline can be ascribed to the strategy consulting business, which we stopped actively selling earlier in the year. We will continue to execute on our existing strategy consulting backlog over the coming quarters and exit this business by year-end. The decision to exit strategy consulting allows our sales force to continue to focus on the expansion of our CV offerings. The content marketing business was down 13%, and this was partially offset by strong performance in the advisory business which grew 21%. And finally, regarding our events business, we held four events in the second quarter, and posted revenues of $8.5 million, representing a decrease of 17% compared to the second quarter of 2025. Both sponsorship and ticket revenues are impacted by the shift in our event strategy. Which focuses on shorter, more intimate forums. We are receiving very positive feedback about our new event format, which prioritizes deeper in-person connection peer networking. Continuing down our P&L on an adjusted basis, operating expenses for the second quarter decreased by 8% primarily driven by lower compensation costs. Headcount was down 7%, driven by the restructuring earlier in the year. However, as we look to return to CV growth, we have started to add to our sales capacity and we did see a slight increase in our sales quota-carrying headcount number. Operating income decreased by 24% to $10.4 million, or 10.4% of revenue in the current quarter. Compared to $13.7 million, or 12.2% of revenue in the second quarter of 2025. Interest expense for the quarter was $400,000 down from $700,000 in the second quarter of 2025. Finally, net income and earnings per share decreased 21% and 22%, respectively, compared to Q2 of last year, with net income at $7.7 million and earnings per share of $0.40 for the current quarter, compared with net income of $9.8 million and earnings per share of $0.51 for the second quarter of 2025. Looking at our capital structure, cash flow from operating activities was $25 million in the first half of the year, and capital expenditures were $18.2 million $16.6 million of the capital expenditures are associated with the ongoing buildout of our Cambridge headquarters. And we have received $2.7 million of reimbursements from the landlord which is reported as a cash inflow from operating activities. Free cash flow for the first half of the year excluding the net spending on the buildout, was approximately $20.7 million. Remaining CapEx spending for the buildout will be approximately $11 million. However, we expect to receive an additional $14.5 million of reimbursements from the landlord in the second half of the year. Our balance sheet is strong with cash at the end of the quarter of over $130 million and debt of only $35 million. We did not pay down any debt in the quarter, However, we did repurchase approximately $1 million worth of shares this quarter, starting late in the period. We have over $76 million of our stock repurchase authorization intact, and we plan on accelerating our stock repurchase program in the second half of the year. Moving on to guidance. For 2026, we remain confident in our ability to execute. We are maintaining our guidance at this stage. Let me provide some additional commentary on our outlook for the year. For 2026, we continue to expect revenue to be $350 million to $360 million down 9% to 12% versus 2025. This guidance assumes the outlook for research to be a mid-single-digit decline. Consulting to be a decline in the low-20s, and events to be a decline in the mid- to high-teens for the year. We still expect our operating margins to be in the range of 6% to 6.5% for 2026, and interest expense is expected to be $2.3 million for the year, and we are guiding to a full-year tax rate of 29%. Taking all of this into account, we still expect EPS to be in the range of $0.72 to $0.82 for the full-year. We continue to execute against our goals for 2026. there has been accelerated adoption of Forrester AI, We continue to focus on retention improvement initiatives, and clients are reacting positively to our new embedded product portfolio. To capitalize on this, we will continue to innovate in the second half of the year to drive CV growth by year-end. Thank you all for taking the time today. With that, I will hand the call back to George. George F. Colony: Thank you, Christian. We met our expectations for the quarter, and reiterated our guidance for the full-year. Furthermore, we remain on track to deliver CV growth in the full-year. The era of AI computing is driving demand for Forrester's insights as our clients plan how they will build their private AI models for their customers and begin to replace their enterprise systems with a new generation of AI software. Simultaneously, Forrester's AI capabilities are enabling us to deliver better insights faster, embedded where our clients do their work. This is an extraordinary opportunity for Forrester. We are diligently working to leverage this moment for our clients and our investors. I will now turn the call over to the operator for the Q&A session. Operator: Thank you, sir. As a reminder, to ask a question, you would need to press one, one on your telephone. To withdraw your question, please press one, one again. And I show our first question comes from the line of Anja Soderstrom from Sidoti. Please go ahead. Anja Soderstrom: Hi. Thank you for taking my question. Just curious, what kind of visibility do you have for that expectation of contract value growth by the year-end? Leo Christian Finn: This is Christian. So it is a good question. Look. We have seen meaningful improvement in our retention metrics this year. We talked about it on the call. We have got a continued laser focus on retention and product innovation, and we expect those improvements to continue into the second half of the year. The pipeline continues to increase. Think the work that Christophe's been doing with the sales organization combined with, obviously, the work we have done from a product innovation standpoint. With AI access and improvements that we know are coming With additional products in the back half here that are launching in Q3. All give us confidence, as we go forward here. So we continue to look at the models and run the analysis. And we see upside as we move forward here, and that is what gives us confidence. Christophe Favre: You wanna talk about some of the changes? We had CV bookings growth. In Q2 with really pockets of momentum one of them was tech research that grew by double digits. as well as continued positive CV in the international markets in EMEA as well as in APAC. Of course, they are areas of challenges and the North American government segment was one of them. However, I see a turning point, in Q3 in that segment. Anja Soderstrom: Okay. And what do you anticipate to drive that turning point? For the government? Yes. Christophe Favre: We expect a turning point in the government, in the federal area. Where we have built up a very nice pipeline. In the area of AI access. as well as the overall portfolio that we have around our executive leader seats. So we have seen some very interesting opportunities there, and we will know more by the end of Q3. George F. Colony: I was in Washington two weeks ago with clients, and the overall mood there is getting they are getting back to business. Obviously, these are not typical times. But it is after the doldrums of a year ago. People these agencies have to get their work done. So they are getting back to work. Anja Soderstrom: Okay. Great. Thank you. And also in terms of the Salesforce, you said you added some headcount there. How do you expect to add more, and how is the current work? Are they up to are they ramped, or are they still building up experience? Christophe Favre: We had in Q2 a small increase in headcount. However, my focus right now is about improving the productivity of the Salesforce. as well as their performance. I will review at the end of Q3 if we add additional growth headcount for the back half of the year. Anja Soderstrom: Thank you. That was all for me. George F. Colony: Anja, thank you. Operator: Thank you. Thank you. And I show our next question comes from the line of Vincent Colicchio from Barrington Research. Please go ahead. Vincent Colicchio: Yeah. Christophe, to be clear, so when you say pipeline has expanded for CV, you are talking sequentially. Correct? Christophe Favre: I am speaking year-over-year. Vincent Colicchio: Okay. Christophe Favre: Booking growth year-over-year. For Q2. Here's your question. Vincent Colicchio: But pipe--you said that pipe-- yeah. Yeah. Christophe Favre: And the pipeline as well. Vincent Colicchio: And what sales process changes would you say are having the most impact? Vincent Colicchio: Yeah. Christophe Favre: So 1 is the change that we made in our go-to-market strategy. Having organized the North American sales organization around 6 vertical industries. as well as the work we do in preparing our sales organization to take advantage of the new AI era, and, as well, of course, is working closely with our product organizations and we see great uptake. Around our new product portfolio. Especially around AI access. as well as our embedded solutions especially the Microsoft Copilot solutions. Because what we see is customers now want to bring Forrester proprietary expertise where they work. They want to have Forrester embedded in their tools. They really want to make decisions to move faster with higher confidence. And Forrester is very well positioned to help them do that and help them take action faster. George F. Colony: You may also wanna mention the balanced scorecard. As a tool here. Christophe Favre: Yes. We also we implemented what I call the salesforce balanced scorecard. In order to make the salesforce and the sales leaders more accountable for the quality of the work they do and we look much more carefully at areas linked to the pipeline, as well as the pipeline performance. Vincent Colicchio: And in terms of verticals, I know you said the Fed should improve in Q3. Any change in terms of other verticals that are improving in the Q2 period? Christophe Favre: We see really an uptick in the tech industry. In Q2. We believe it will continue in Q3. as well as, interestingly, also in the industry manufacturing area. We see those B2B companies willing to transform their go-to-market strategy and taking advantage of this new AI era. These are companies like Siemens or Honeywell. Vincent Colicchio: that is it for me. And as far as your integration into workflows, is this-- are you ahead of the competition in that regard? What does that look like? Carrie Johnson Fanlo: Hi, Vincent. it is Carrie. We are the first research company in our competitive set to have a presence in Microsoft Teams, and we are the first to have an agent an AI agent in Copilot. We know from the conversations that we are having that we are on the front line of this, and that is what our customers expect us to be. So we will continue to be that moving forward as well. Vincent Colicchio: Okay. Thank you. George F. Colony: Thanks, Vincent. Operator: Thank you. That concludes our Q&A session. At this time, I would like to turn the conference back to Leo Christian Finn, Chief Financial Officer, for closing remarks. Leo Christian Finn: Thanks, all, for joining today. Appreciate it. Any questions or follow-up, just reach out to Edward or myself. Thank you. Operator: Thank you. This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect. Before you buy stock in Forrester Research, consider this: The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the 10 best stocks for investors to buy now… and Forrester Research wasn’t one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years. Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $397,081!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $1,166,221!* Now, it’s worth noting Stock Advisor’s total average return is 889% — a market-crushing outperformance compared to 203% for the S&P 500. Don't miss the latest top 10 list, available with Stock Advisor, and join an investing community built by individual investors for individual investors. See the 10 stocks » *Stock Advisor returns as of July 30, 2026. This article is a transcript of this conference call produced for The Motley Fool. While we strive for our Foolish Best, there may be errors, omissions, or inaccuracies in this transcript. As with all our articles, The Motley Fool does not assume any responsibility for your use of this content, and we strongly encourage you to do your own research, including listening to the call yourself and reading the company's SEC filings. Please see our Terms and Conditions for additional details, including our Obligatory Capitalized Disclaimers of Liability. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy. Forrester (FORR) Q2 2026 Earnings Call Transcript was originally published by The Motley Fool

Our analysts just identified a stock with the potential to be the next Nvidia. Tell us how you invest and we'll show you why it's our #1 pick. Tap here. Performance was driven by stabilization in the core Contract Value (CV) business, with client count increasing despite a 3% CV decline and flat wallet retention. The 15% decline in non-CV business was driven by market uncertainty and the company's strategic exit from the strategy consulting business. to refocus the sales force on expansion of CV offerings. Management attributes the 17% events revenue decline to a deliberate shift toward smaller, more intimate forums designed to foster deeper peer networking and in-person connections. The 'Go-to-Market Singularity' framework identifies a 'visibility vacuum' where traditional SEO and lead generation are failing, necessitating a shift to 'answer engine optimization.' Forrester AI has become the dominant research interaction method, with usage up 69% year-over-year as CIOs must educate their organizations on the shift from deterministic reporting to probabilistic AI outputs. The new Total Experience (TX) score was expanded to include employee experience, providing a more predictive metric for brand growth potential across global markets. Management maintains full-year 2026 guidance, targeting a return to CV growth by year-end supported by a growing year-over-year sales pipeline. The strategy consulting business will be fully exited by the end of 2026 as the company works through its remaining backlog to allow the sales force to focus on the expansion of CV offerings. Guidance assumes a mid-single-digit decline in research, a low-20s decline in consulting, and a mid-to-high-teens decline in the events business for the full year. Future product integration will expand beyond Microsoft to include Gemini, Claude, and Slack to further embed Forrester research into client workflows. The company plans to accelerate its stock repurchase program in the second half of the year, utilizing over $76 million in remaining authorization. The exit from strategy consulting is a structural pivot intended to eliminate distractions for the sales force and improve focus on the core subscription model. Capital expenditures of $18.2 million were primarily driven by the Cambridge headquarters buildout, though $14.5 million in landlord reimbursements are expected in H2. Management flagged the North American government segment as a recent headwind, though they anticipate a 'turning point' in Q3 as federal agencies return to work and the company builds its opportunity pipeline. The shift in marketing agency AI usage toward Google and Adobe at the expense of OpenAI was noted as a significant competitive dynamic in the AI provider space. One stock. Nvidia-level potential. 30M+ investors trust Moby to find it first. Get the pick. Tap here. Confidence is based on meaningful improvements in retention metrics and double-digit growth in tech research CV bookings during Q2. Management cited a turning point in the federal government segment and the success of the 'AI access' product, which has generated approximately $10 million in bookings. Current focus is on improving productivity through a new 'salesforce balanced scorecard' that increases accountability for pipeline quality. While headcount saw a small increase in Q2, further growth hires will be evaluated at the end of Q3 based on performance trends. The tech industry and manufacturing sectors (e.g., Siemens, Honeywell) are showing increased demand as they seek to transform GTM strategies for the AI era. The North American sales organization has been restructured around six vertical industries to better align with specific market needs. Management claims to be the first in their competitive set to launch a presence in Microsoft Teams and an AI agent for Copilot. The strategy is to move faster than competitors by embedding proprietary expertise directly into the tools where clients already work.

Interested in Forrester Research, Inc.? Here are five stocks we like better. Q2 revenue fell 10% year over year to $100.2 million, while adjusted operating income declined 24% to $10.4 million. Contract value declined 3%, but client count increased and management maintained its full-year guidance. Forrester expects full-year revenue of $350 million to $360 million, with continued declines in research, consulting and events, alongside a 6%–6.5% operating margin and EPS of $0.72–$0.82. The company plans to accelerate share buybacks after repurchasing about $1 million in Q2. AI adoption and bookings showed momentum: AI Access generated roughly $10 million in bookings since launch, Forrester AI users rose 69% year over year, and Q2 contract-value bookings grew year over year, particularly in technology research and international markets. Is Vimeo worth another look as it turns profitable? Forrester Research (NASDAQ:FORR) reported second-quarter results that met its internal expectations as the company continued to manage declining revenue while pursuing contract value growth by the end of 2026. Management maintained its full-year guidance and pointed to improving bookings trends, product adoption and a growing sales pipeline as support for its outlook. Chief Executive Officer and Chairman George Colony said contract value, or CV, declined 3% during the quarter, matching the first-quarter rate of decline. Wallet retention was flat, while client retention declined by one percentage point sequentially. Client count increased during the quarter. → Why SK hynix Could Be the Best AI Chip Stock to Buy Now UiPath is a Cheaper and More Profitable AI Stock Revenue fell 10% year over year to $100.2 million from $111.7 million. Research revenue declined 8%, while non-CV businesses declined 15%. Colony attributed consulting and events pressure to market uncertainty as well as Forrester's decision to exit strategy consulting. “Overall, our Q2 performance was aligned with our expectations, with consensus beats on revenue, margin, and EPS,” Colony said. “Despite headwinds in our consulting and events businesses, we have confidence in attaining our plan in the second half of the year.” → 3 Value ETFs to Consider as Growth Stocks Lag Behind On an adjusted basis, operating expenses declined 8%, primarily reflecting lower compensation costs. Headcount fell 7% following restructuring earlier in the year, although the company modestly increased quota-carrying sales headcount as it works toward renewed CV growth. Adjusted operating income declined 24% to $10.4 million, or 10.4% of revenue, compared with $13.7 million, or 12.2% of revenue, in the prior-year quarter. Net income decreased to $7.7 million from $9.8 million, while earnings per share fell to $0.40 from $0.51. → 5 AI Stocks Are Pulling Back—Which Growth Catalysts Still Look Strongest? Research revenue declined 8%, including a 7% reduction in research-product revenue and a 12% decline in reprints. Client retention was 77%, up three percentage points from a year earlier but down one point from the first quarter. Client count rose by 10 during the quarter to 1,770, and retention of 89% was up four percentage points year over year and unchanged sequentially. Chief Financial Officer Chris Finn said churn, down-sell and new-business performance met or exceeded expectations, while upsell was slightly below expectations and flat from the prior period. Consulting revenue totaled $20 million, down 15% from the prior year. Finn said the majority of that decline reflected the strategy consulting business, which Forrester stopped actively selling earlier this year and expects to exit by year-end. Content marketing revenue fell 13%, partly offset by 21% growth in advisory services. Events revenue decreased 17% to $8.5 million as sponsorship and ticket sales were affected by Forrester's move toward shorter and more intimate forums. For the full year, the company maintained its forecast for revenue of $350 million to $360 million, representing a decline of 9% to 12% from 2025. It continues to expect: Research revenue to decline by a mid-single-digit percentage. Consulting revenue to decline in the low 20% range. Events revenue to decline in the mid- to high-teens percentage range. Operating margin of 6% to 6.5%. Full-year earnings per share of $0.72 to $0.82. The company generated $25 million in operating cash flow in the first half. Cash at quarter-end exceeded $130 million, while debt was $35 million. Forrester resumed share repurchases late in the quarter, buying about $1 million of stock, and said it plans to accelerate buybacks in the second half. More than $76 million remained under its repurchase authorization. Management highlighted increasing adoption of Forrester AI and its AI Access product. Finn said AI Access generated approximately $10 million in bookings since its launch nine months ago. Forrester introduced an AI agent for Microsoft Copilot during the quarter, following its prior integration of Forrester AI into Microsoft Teams. By the end of the quarter, hundreds of client accounts had been activated to access Forrester AI through Teams and Copilot. Colony said total Forrester AI users increased 33% sequentially and 69% year over year, while prompts rose 58% from the first quarter and 105% from the prior-year period. During the quarter, Forrester AI surpassed indexed search as the primary way Forrester Decisions clients interacted with the company’s research database. Chief Product Officer Carrie Johnson said Forrester was the first research company among its competitors to establish a presence in Microsoft Teams and the first to introduce an AI agent in Copilot. The company is also working on integrations with Gemini, Claude and Slack, according to Colony. Chief Sales Officer Christophe Favre said CV bookings grew year over year in the second quarter, with double-digit growth in technology research and continued positive CV performance in Europe, the Middle East and Africa and the Asia-Pacific region. North American government remained a challenged area, though Favre said he expects a potential turning point in the federal segment during the third quarter as the company has developed a pipeline around AI Access and executive-leader offerings. Favre also cited the company’s reorganization of North American sales around six vertical industries and a sales-force balanced scorecard intended to improve accountability for pipeline quality and performance. He said technology, industrial and manufacturing customers were showing increased interest in transforming their go-to-market strategies and using AI-related offerings. Forrester’s B2B Summit North America in Phoenix drew 1,400 attendees, up 9% year over year, along with 59 sponsors and 110 sessions. The company estimated that the event influenced about $3.5 million in CV bookings. The summit focused on what Forrester calls the “go-to-market singularity,” or changes in buyer behavior and sales and marketing practices driven by AI. Colony said the company believes businesses need to augment sales and marketing with AI agents, respond more quickly to customer changes and better align marketing, sales and product organizations. Forrester also held customer-experience forums in New York, San Francisco and Amsterdam, with the New York and Amsterdam events selling out. At those forums, the company introduced an updated Total Experience score that incorporates customer experience, brand experience and employee experience. Colony said Forrester released hundreds of AI research frameworks, models, benchmarks and technology blueprints in the quarter, including reports examining how the roles of chief information officers, chief marketing officers and chief information security officers may change in the AI era. Forrester Research, Inc is a leading global research and advisory firm that provides insights and guidance to business and technology leaders. Founded in 1983 and headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the company offers a wide range of services designed to help clients understand market dynamics, evaluate technology investments and develop customer-centric strategies. Forrester's core offerings include syndicated research reports, bespoke advisory services, consulting engagements and data-driven analytics. Through its extensive research practice, Forrester produces in-depth analyses of emerging technologies, industry trends and best practices across sectors such as information technology, marketing, customer experience and digital business. This instant news alert was generated by narrative science technology and financial data from MarketBeat in order to provide readers with the fastest reporting and unbiased coverage. Please send any questions or comments about this story to [email protected]. The article "Forrester Research Q2 Earnings Call Highlights" was originally published by MarketBeat. View MarketBeat's top stocks for July 2026.

Forrester Research (FORR) came out with quarterly earnings of $0.4 per share, beating the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $0.27 per share. This compares to earnings of $0.51 per share a year ago. These figures are adjusted for non-recurring items. This quarterly report represents an earnings surprise of +48.15%. A quarter ago, it was expected that this technology research company would post earnings of $0.12 per share when it actually produced a loss of $0.04, delivering a surprise of -133.33%. Over the last four quarters, the company has surpassed consensus EPS estimates two times. Forrester Research, which belongs to the Zacks Computer - Services industry, posted revenues of $100.23 million for the quarter ended June 2026, surpassing the Zacks Consensus Estimate by 3.42%. This compares to year-ago revenues of $111.66 million. The company has topped consensus revenue estimates two times over the last four quarters. The sustainability of the stock's immediate price movement based on the recently-released numbers and future earnings expectations will mostly depend on management's commentary on the earnings call. Forrester Research shares have added about 26.3% since the beginning of the year versus the S&P 500's gain of 6.9%. While Forrester Research has outperformed the market so far this year, the question that comes to investors' minds is: what's next for the stock? There are no easy answers to this key question, but one reliable measure that can help investors address this is the company's earnings outlook. Not only does this include current consensus earnings expectations for the coming quarter(s), but also how these expectations have changed lately. Empirical research shows a strong correlation between near-term stock movements and trends in earnings estimate revisions. Investors can track such revisions by themselves or rely on a tried-and-tested rating tool like the Zacks Rank, which has an impressive track record of harnessing the power of earnings estimate revisions. Ahead of this earnings release, the estimate revisions trend for Forrester Research was mixed. While the magnitude and direction of estimate revisions could change following the company's just-released earnings report, the current status translates into a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold) for the stock. So, the shares are expected to perform in line with the market in the near future. You can see the complete list of today's Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here. It will be interesting to see how estimates for the coming quarters and the current fiscal year change in the days ahead. The current consensus EPS estimate is $0.27 on $83.72 million in revenues for the coming quarter and $0.77 on $356.51 million in revenues for the current fiscal year. Investors should be mindful of the fact that the outlook for the industry can have a material impact on the performance of the stock as well. In terms of the Zacks Industry Rank, Computer - Services is currently in the top 30% of the 250 plus Zacks industries. Our research shows that the top 50% of the Zacks-ranked industries outperform the bottom 50% by a factor of more than 2 to 1. Another stock from the same industry, PDF Solutions (PDFS), has yet to report results for the quarter ended June 2026. The results are expected to be released on August 6. This provider of software and services for semiconductor makers is expected to post quarterly earnings of $0.26 per share in its upcoming report, which represents a year-over-year change of +36.8%. The consensus EPS estimate for the quarter has remained unchanged over the last 30 days. PDF Solutions' revenues are expected to be $61 million, up 17.9% from the year-ago quarter. Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report Forrester Research, Inc. (FORR) : Free Stock Analysis Report PDF Solutions, Inc. (PDFS) : Free Stock Analysis Report This article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com). Zacks Investment Research

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., July 30, 2026--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Forrester Research, Inc. (Nasdaq: FORR) today announced financial results for the second quarter ended June 30, 2026, with contract value at $283.2 million, down 3% compared with the prior year. "We delivered revenue, margin, and EPS above consensus, are seeing accelerated adoption of Forrester AI, and saw the ongoing stabilization of our metrics," said CEO and Chairman George F. Colony. "As a result, we are maintaining our guidance for 2026. We have restarted our stock buyback program, and we plan to accelerate our repurchases. "We are reinventing the research and advisory business for the AI era through our technology innovation and partnerships. In the second half of the year, we will follow our Microsoft Teams and Copilot integration efforts with additional new products and capabilities. We will focus on enhancing the capabilities of Forrester AI to enable our clients to access our research insights effortlessly — in their own work environments. Our goal is to improve client retention and drive CV growth." Second-Quarter Consolidated Results Total revenues for the second quarter of 2026 were $100.2 million, compared with $111.7 million for the comparable quarter in 2025. On a GAAP basis, net income was $15.3 million, or $0.78 per diluted share, for the second quarter of 2026, compared with net income of $3.9 million, or $0.20 per diluted share, for the same period in 2025. On an adjusted basis, net income was $7.7 million, or $0.40 per diluted share, for the second quarter of 2026, reflecting an adjusted effective tax rate of 29%. Adjusted net income excludes stock-based compensation of $2.9 million, amortization of acquisition-related intangible assets of $2.1 million, restructuring costs of $2.1 million, and a credit loss on the note receivable from the divestiture of a product line in 2024 of $0.9 million. This compares with adjusted net income of $9.8 million, or $0.51 per diluted share, for the same period in 2025, which reflects an adjusted tax rate of 29%. Adjusted net income for the second quarter of 2025 excludes stock-based compensation of $4.0 million, amortization of acquisition-related intangible assets of $2.2 million, and restructuring costs of $0.5 million. Additional details regarding key metrics can be found in the investor presentation on the investor relations section of the company’s website. A reconciliation of GAAP results to adjusted results may be found in the attached financial tables. Forrester is providing guidance for 2026 as follows: Full-Year 2026 (GAAP): Total revenues of approximately $350.0 million to $360.0 million, or a decline of 11.8% to 9.3% versus the prior year Operating margin of approximately negative 3.5% to negative 3.0% Interest expense of approximately $2.3 million An effective tax rate of negative 20% to negative 10% Diluted loss per share of approximately $0.84 to $0.74 Full-Year 2026 (Adjusted): Adjusted financial guidance for full-year 2026 excludes the goodwill impairment charge of $10.8 million, stock-based compensation expense of $10.0 million to $11.0 million, amortization of acquisition-related intangible assets of approximately $8.3 million, restructuring costs of $4.2 million to $4.5 million, a credit loss on the note receivable from the divestiture of a product line in 2024 of $0.9 million, and any investment gains or losses. Adjusted operating margin of approximately 6.0% to 6.5% Adjusted effective tax rate of 29% Adjusted diluted earnings per share of approximately $0.72 to $0.82 About ForresterForrester (Nasdaq: FORR) is one of the most influential research and advisory firms in the world. We empower leaders in technology, customer experience, digital, marketing, revenue, and product functions to make confident decisions in an AI-driven world and accelerate growth through customer obsession. Our unique research and continuous guidance model helps executives and their teams achieve their initiatives and outcomes faster and with confidence. To learn more, visit Forrester.com. This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements include, but are not limited to, Forrester’s financial guidance for the full-year 2026, statements about planned actions relating to AI, innovation and stock repurchases, statements about Forrester’s product portfolio, and statements regarding Forrester’s future financial performance and financial condition. These statements are based on Forrester’s current plans and expectations and involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual future activities and results of operations to be materially different from those set forth in the forward-looking statements. Important factors that could cause actual future activities and results to differ include, among others, Forrester’s ability to retain and enrich memberships for its research products and services; Forrester’s ability to fulfill existing or generate new consulting engagements and advisory services; any adverse economic conditions, including from trade policies and tariffs, that result in a reduction in technology spending or demand for Forrester’s products or services; the risks and challenges inherent in international business activities; the use of generative AI in Forrester’s business and by Forrester’s clients and competitors; Forrester’s ability to offer new products and services; Forrester’s dependence on key personnel; Forrester’s ability to attract and retain professional staff; Forrester’s ability to respond to business and economic conditions and market trends; Forrester’s business with the US government; the impact of Forrester’s outstanding debt obligations; competition and industry consolidation; possible variations in Forrester’s quarterly operating results; the actual cost of capital expenditures that Forrester undertakes; concentration of ownership of Forrester; the possibility of network disruptions and security breaches; any failure to enforce and protect Forrester’s intellectual property rights; compliance with privacy laws; taxation risks; any weakness in Forrester’s system of internal controls; and any future impairment charge Forrester incurs. Forrester undertakes no obligation to update publicly any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise. For further information, please refer to Forrester’s reports and filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The consolidated statements of operations and the table of key financial data are attached. © 2026, Forrester Research, Inc. All rights reserved. Forrester is a trademark of Forrester Research, Inc. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260730876852/en/ Contacts Ed Bryce MorrisVP, Corporate Development & Investor RelationsForrester Research, Inc.+1 [email protected] Shweta AgarwalVP, Corporate CommunicationsForrester Research, Inc.+1 [email protected]

Our analysts just identified a stock with the potential to be the next Nvidia. Tell us how you invest and we'll show you why it's our #1 pick. Tap here. Management attributes improving retention metrics to the execution of the 'retention life cycle' program, which has accelerated client onboarding and engagement. The company is pivoting to become an 'AI research company,' predicting that 70% of future AI revenue will stem from private models due to data sensitivity and regulatory pressures. Consulting revenue weakness is a direct result of the strategic decision to exit the strategy consulting business by the end of 2026 to focus on core research and AI. Forrester is embedding its AI capabilities directly into client workflows, specifically through integrations with Microsoft Teams and Microsoft Copilot to reduce friction in accessing insights. Sales productivity per rep increased 6% year-over-year following a reorganization of the North American sales force into six specific industry verticals. The 'all-seasons research' initiative aims to provide actionable guidance, such as initiative blueprints, that remains relevant regardless of whether a client is undergoing a major transformation. Management expects Contract Value (CV) to be slightly up for the full year, driven by demand for AI advice and stronger sponsorship bookings for upcoming events. Revenue guidance assumes a mid-single-digit decline in research and a low 20s decline in consulting as the strategy consulting backlog is cleared through year-end. The company anticipates AI Access products will grow from under 5% of the CV portfolio to approximately 10% as they exit 2026 and enter 2027. Future product roadmaps include expanding 'where you work' integrations to other third-party tools beyond the Microsoft ecosystem. Operating margins are projected to remain between 6% and 6.5% for the full year despite one-time litigation and headquarters relocation costs. The strategy consulting business is being sunsetted, with active selling halted early in Q1 to focus resources on higher-margin research products. One-time capital expenditures of $5.4 million were incurred for the Cambridge headquarters build-out, with an additional $4 million to $5 million expected. Operating income was impacted by one-time costs associated with now-concluded litigation, resulting in a negative 1% operating margin for the quarter. Research found that 'low AI Quotient' among client employees is a primary barrier to turning AI investments into measurable business impact. One stock. Nvidia-level potential. 30M+ investors trust Moby to find it first. Get the pick. Tap here. Growth is expected to be driven by the events business, where attendee volume is up 10% and sponsorship bookings are significantly stronger than in previous years. The shift to more localized and customized event formats is cited as a key driver for increased client engagement. Management is focusing on providing more optionality in how clients buy research, including senior analyst access and AI-only tiers. Adoption of the Microsoft Copilot integration has seen double the traction of the initial Teams launch, validating the strategy of removing access friction. The North American sales team was reorganized around six industries to align top reps with high-potential accounts. Early momentum is being seen specifically in the high-tech, financial services, and government sectors. AI Access is meeting expectations as a win-back tool for former clients and an expansion tool for existing accounts. Management confirmed no cannibalization of premium services, as CV per client has remained stable in the $160 to $162 range.