IT

It has been about a month since the last earnings report for Gartner (IT). Shares have added about 9.1% in that time frame, outperforming the S&P 500. Will the recent positive trend continue leading up to its next earnings release, or is Gartner due for a pullback? Before we dive into how investors and analysts have reacted as of late, let's take a quick look at its most recent earnings report in order to get a better handle on the important catalysts. Gartner has delivered first-quarter 2026 adjusted earnings of $3.32 per share, beating the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $2.99 by 11%. Adjusted earnings increased 11.4% from the year-ago quarter. Total revenues were $1.51 billion, falling 1.5% year over year and lagging the consensus estimate of $1.52 billion by 0.6%. Still, Gartner exited the quarter with a global contract value of $5.3 billion, up 1% on a foreign-currency-neutral basis at 2026 rates, signaling steadier subscription demand even as reported revenues faced pressure. Global Technology Sales contract value ended the quarter at $4 billion, up 0.4% year over year on a foreign-currency-neutral basis at 2026 rates. Global Business Sales contract value was $1.3 billion, rising 3.2%, pointing to better relative momentum in functional-leader demand outside core technology spending. Retention metrics stayed supportive. Wallet retention was 97.7% for global sales, while client retention was 85%, reflecting a base of recurring relationships even with a softer renewal and expansion environment than earlier periods. Insights remained the largest profit engine. Segment revenues increased 3.1% year over year to $1,294.2 million, supported by a contribution margin of 78.2%, translating into $1,012 million of segment contribution. Conferences posted another year-over-year increase, with revenues up 7.9% to $78.3 million. Consulting continued to weigh on growth, with revenues declining 14.7% to $119.1 million, reflecting pressure across both labor-related work and contract optimization revenue streams. Despite the modest decline in GAAP revenues, profitability held up well. The consolidated contribution margin increased to 71.6%, a notable step up from the prior-year level shown in the quarterly financial summary, reflecting improved delivery efficiency and mix. Expense trends were also constructive in the GAAP bridge. Cost of services and product development fell...

Track your investments for FREE with Simply Wall St, the portfolio command center trusted by over 7 million individual investors worldwide. Gartner (IT) is back in focus after its latest Q1 earnings, where the company reported revenue and profit above expectations, stronger cash generation, higher full year targets, and highlighted AI as a key business priority. See our latest analysis for Gartner. That stronger Q1 update has helped the share price regain some ground, with a 1-day share price return of 2.8% and a 7-day share price return of 9.69%. However, year to date the share price return has fallen 33.15%, and the 1-year total shareholder return is down 64.22%, so recent momentum is improving from a much weaker longer term picture. If AI is central to your thesis after Gartner’s update, it can be useful to compare it with other opportunities using our screener of 44 AI infrastructure stocks With the stock down sharply over 1 and 3 years, yet trading at roughly a 51% discount to some intrinsic value estimates, the key question now is simple: is this a genuine opportunity, or is the market already pricing in future growth? Gartner's most followed narrative points to a fair value of $183.69, compared with the last close of $158.46, framing the stock as modestly undervalued in that lens. Read the complete narrative. Want to see what is baked into that fair value gap? The narrative focuses on measured revenue growth, firmer margins, and a future earnings multiple that follows a defined rationale. Result: Fair Value of $183.69 (UNDERVALUED) Have a read of the narrative in full and understand what's behind the forecasts. However, you still need to weigh up risks such as pressure on subscription growth from generative AI tools and the securities fraud class action challenging Gartner’s past disclosures. Find out about the key risks to this Gartner narrative. The SWS DCF model paints a very different picture, with Gartner trading at roughly a 51% discount to its estimated future cash flow value of $325.31 per share, compared with the more modest 13.7% gap to analyst fair value. As an investor, which signal do you trust more? Look into how the SWS DCF model arrives at its fair value. Sentiment so far looks mixed, with both risks and rewards on the table, so move quickly, review the data, and weigh the 2 key rewards and 2 important warning signs. If you stop with j...

What a brutal six months it’s been for Gartner. The stock has dropped 35.4% and now trades at $146.13, rattling many shareholders. This may have investors wondering how to approach the situation. Is now the time to buy Gartner, or should you be careful about including it in your portfolio? Dive into our full research report to see our analyst team’s opinion, it’s free. Even though the stock has become cheaper, we're sitting this one out for now. Here are three reasons we avoid IT and a stock we'd rather own. In addition to reported revenue, constant currency revenue is a useful data point for analyzing IT Services & Consulting companies. This metric excludes currency movements, which are outside of Gartner’s control and are not indicative of underlying demand. Over the last two years, Gartner’s constant currency revenue averaged 4.1% year-on-year growth. This performance slightly lagged the sector and suggests it might have to lower prices or invest in product improvements to accelerate growth, factors that can hinder near-term profitability. Forecasted revenues by Wall Street analysts signal a company’s potential. Predictions may not always be accurate, but accelerating growth typically boosts valuation multiples and stock prices while slowing growth does the opposite. Over the next 12 months, sell-side analysts expect Gartner’s revenue to stall, a deceleration versus its 9.1% annualized growth for the past five years. This projection doesn't excite us and suggests its products and services will face some demand challenges. Free cash flow isn't a prominently featured metric in company financials and earnings releases, but we think it's telling because it accounts for all operating and capital expenses, making it tough to manipulate. Cash is king. As you can see below, Gartner’s margin dropped by 6.3 percentage points over the last five years. If its declines continue, it could signal increasing investment needs and capital intensity. Gartner’s free cash flow margin for the trailing 12 months was 19.4%. Gartner isn’t a terrible business, but it isn’t one of our picks. Following the recent decline, the stock trades at 9.9× forward P/E (or $146.13 per share). While this valuation is reasonable, we don’t really see a big opportunity at the moment. We're fairly confident there are better investments elsewhere. We’d suggest looking at one of our all-time favorite...

Gartner’s first quarter results were marked by a modest 1.5% decline in sales year over year, but market reaction was positive due to stronger-than-expected profitability. Management attributed the quarter’s performance to disciplined expense management and improved operating margins, even as new business momentum slowed in March because of geopolitical uncertainty. CEO Eugene Hall highlighted, “New business with enterprise leaders was strong in the first 2 months of the quarter,” but acknowledged that some client decisions were delayed until April. Programs to increase client engagement and retention were credited as supporting stable contract value performance. Is now the time to buy IT? Find out in our full research report (it’s free). Revenue: $1.51 billion vs analyst estimates of $1.51 billion (1.5% year-on-year decline, in line) Adjusted EPS: $3.32 vs analyst estimates of $2.92 (13.6% beat) Adjusted EBITDA: $400.3 million vs analyst estimates of $373.4 million (26.5% margin, 7.2% beat) Operating Margin: 20.9%, up from 18.1% in the same quarter last year Constant Currency Revenue fell 1.5% year on year (5.7% in the same quarter last year) Market Capitalization: $10.3 billion While we enjoy listening to the management's commentary, our favorite part of earnings calls are the analyst questions. Those are unscripted and can often highlight topics that management teams would rather avoid or topics where the answer is complicated. Here is what has caught our attention. Jeffrey Meuler (Baird) asked about the pace of client decision-making following March’s slowdown. CEO Eugene Hall indicated most delayed deals closed in April, with both new and existing clients contributing to the rebound. Faiza Alwy (Deutsche Bank) inquired about regional differences in geopolitical impacts. Hall explained that slowdowns were broad-based but particularly acute in transportation, financial institutions, and Gulf countries. Andrew Nicholas (William Blair) queried the timeline for U.S. federal government headwinds to subside. CFO Craig Safian stated that the most significant challenges would be lapped starting in the second quarter, with expectations for stabilization thereafter. Toni Kaplan (Morgan Stanley) asked if there were plans to distribute proprietary data via large language models. Hall reaffirmed that Gartner’s differentiated value relies on proactive, tailored insigh...

Free Half-Day Virtual Event Features Gartner® Keynote and Real-World Playbooks for Scaling Agentic AI Across Banking, Telecom, and Customer Engagement BOSTON, May 14, 2026--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Engageware, the most used AI-powered customer engagement platform for regulated industries, today announced the AI in CX Summit 2026, a free digital event taking place on May 19, 2026, from 1:00 - 4:00 PM EDT. The summit will bring together executives from banking, telecommunications, and fintech to share the real-world strategies, decisions, results, and hard lessons of moving AI from proof of concept to measurable business value. "This event is built for the leaders inside banks, telcos, and fintechs who own the outcome, the ones responsible for making AI actually deliver results," said Dan O'Malley, CEO of Engageware. "Whether you're deploying agentic AI to resolve customer issues faster or using it to streamline internal operations, the challenge is the same: moving from a working pilot to measurable business impact. The leaders at this summit have done it, and they're sharing exactly how." Executive Speakers and Sessions The summit will feature an executive keynote from Gartner VP Analyst Adrian Lee on what separates conversational AI deployments that deliver meaningful business outcomes from the ones stuck in pilot purgatory, and what Gartner sees across the market that's actually moving the needle on CX. Speakers sharing real-world deployment stories from across the Americas include: Jesica Cardozo, Digital Bank AI Agent Expert, Bancor — launched the first customer-facing generative AI agent in Argentina, leading the migration from traditional bot to GenAI, innovating under strict regulatory oversight and turning customer resistance into adoption. Gilbert Minionis, Chairperson, NetUno — scaled AI-driven CX across a major Latin American telecom provider, reaching 84% autonomous AI agent resolution while growing the customer base 2.3x with only 15% additional headcount. Aimee Ten Eyck-Schaffer, Learning & Development Manager, OnPoint Community Credit Union — deployed a generative AI-powered internal search, automatically answering 71% of employee questions and surfacing the knowledge gaps their team didn't know they had. The event will be hosted by Alice Milligan, former CMO of Morgan Stanley, former Chief Customer Officer of E*TRADE, and current board director and a...

Insperity, Inc. NSP delivered adjusted earnings of $1.31 per share in the first quarter of 2026, down 17% from the year-ago quarter but surpassing the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $1.24 by 5.7%. Revenues came in at $1.90 billion, up 2% year over year and beating the consensus mark of $1.89 billion by 0.4%. Results reflected improving profitability trends as management executed a margin recovery plan, even as average paid worksite employees slipped 1% to 303,049. Insperity, Inc. price-consensus-eps-surprise-chart | Insperity, Inc. Quote Total gross profit declined 3% year over year to $302 million, but the performance marked a notable sequential improvement from the margin pressure seen late last year. On a unit basis, gross profit per worksite employee was $332 per month, reflecting better-than-expected benefit cost outcomes that helped offset softer unit volume. Benefits costs per covered employee increased 5% from the prior-year period, an improvement from the higher trend encountered through much of 2025. Management attributed the progress to a favorable shift in client mix tied to pricing and renewal actions, plan design changes and updated contract terms with UnitedHealthcare, which included a pooling level change that is expected to shift more claim reimbursements to later quarters. Operating expenses decreased 1% to $240 million and included a $9-million restructuring charge related largely to severance from a workforce realignment. Excluding that charge, operating expenses fell 5%, underscoring tighter cost discipline alongside ongoing investments tied to the Workday strategic partnership. In the quarter, Insperity invested $13 million in HRScale, including $8 million in operating expenses and $5 million in capitalized costs. A higher effective tax rate of 41% (versus 29% a year ago) weighed on the adjusted earnings comparison, led by a lower stock price reducing the tax benefit associated with stock-based compensation vesting that is concentrated in the first quarter. Capital return remained a focus. The company paid out $23 million in dividends and repurchased 171,000 shares for $4 million during the quarter, continuing its regular shareholder return program even amid ongoing operating adjustments. Insperity ended the period with $36 million of adjusted cash, with management citing seasonal working capital timing items as a driver of the decline. Li...

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 identifies a market shift where AI conversations have pivoted from simple productivity gains to 'enterprise trust,' focusing on the ability to govern and operate autonomous agents safely. The company is positioning its platform as the 'trust layer' for AI, arguing that existing productivity tools like Microsoft 365 were designed for human use rather than autonomous AI execution. Performance attribution is centered on the 'See, Govern, Recover' framework, which addresses data sprawl and unmanaged agents that can lead to runaway costs and security risks. Strategic differentiation was highlighted by Gartner, citing AvePoint's platform strategy as superior to native offerings like Microsoft's Agent 365 for comprehensive data governance. The 'land and expand' strategy is being driven by multi-cloud demand, with customers increasingly requiring consistent governance across Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, and Salesforce environments. Growth in the enterprise segment accelerated, with customers over $100,000 in ARR growing 25% year-over-year, driven by complex organizations seeking single-platform vendors. Full-year ARR guidance was raised to $523.4M–$529.4M, reflecting healthy demand despite a $2.2 million headwind from a strengthening U.S. dollar. Management expects an acceleration in constant currency ARR growth from 23% to 26% by year-end, primarily driven by a recovery in the U.S. public sector and federal pipeline. Revenue guidance assumes a continued shift toward SaaS mix over term licenses, which creates a short-term headwind to reported revenue due to ratable recognition versus upfront recognition. The company reiterated its long-term strategic goal of reaching $1 billion in ARR by 2029, supported by the relentless growth of unstructured data and AI deployment needs. Future capital allocation will prioritize a three-pillar approach: internal investment, M&A opportunities, and an aggressive share repurchase program recently replenished to $150 million. Foreign exchange fluctuations remain a significant headwind, with the strengthening dollar offsetting the operational outperformance in the updated full-year guidance. Migration products continue to act as a 2-point headwind to gross retention rate...

Avis Budget Group, Inc. CAR posted a first-quarter 2026 loss of $8.01 per share, narrower than the year-ago loss of $14.35. However, results missed the Zacks Consensus Estimate of a $6.82 loss by 17.5%. Quarterly revenues came in at $2.53 billion, up 4.1% year over year and beating the consensus mark of $2.44 billion by 3.7%. Operationally, vehicle utilization reached 70.1% companywide, a first-quarter record for both segments in more than 15 years. Avis Budget Group, Inc. price-consensus-eps-surprise-chart | Avis Budget Group, Inc. Quote Avis Budget reported a net loss of $234 million in the quarter compared with a $504 million net loss a year ago. On an adjusted basis, the company posted an adjusted EBITDA loss of $113 million compared with an adjusted EBITDA loss of $93 million in the prior-year period. Expense lines remained heavy for an asset-intensive model. Vehicle depreciation and lease charges, net, totaled $664 million, while selling, general and administrative expenses were $341 million. Vehicle interest, net, rose to $229 million, reflecting the financing load tied to the fleet. CAR’s revenue performance reflected better pricing and a more selective approach to volume. Total rental days dipped 1% year over year to 39.08 million, while revenues per day, excluding exchange rate effects, improved 3% to $63.43. Segment results stayed constructive on the top line. Americas’ revenues rose 2.9% year over year to $1.96 billion, supported by improved pricing in the core U.S. rental car business. International revenues increased 8.6% to $568 million, even as the business continued to refine its revenue mix. Management pointed to early progress from fleet reduction and supply discipline, with the benefits starting to appear in operational performance. In the Americas, rental days were essentially flat year over year, while revenues per day increased 2.8%, marking the first quarter of positive pricing in that region since late 2022. The company also leaned into fleet right-sizing as used vehicle demand came in stronger than expected. Monthly depreciation in the Americas averaged about $380 for the quarter, starting above $500 in January and improving into the mid-$300s by March. Management said it exited the quarter with its healthiest fleet position since the pandemic and a fleet that is roughly 20% younger. CAR ended March 31 with $915 million in total liq...

Gartner, Inc. IT has delivered first-quarter 2026 adjusted earnings of $3.32 per share, beating the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $2.99 by 11%. Adjusted earnings increased 11.4% from the year-ago quarter. Total revenues were $1.51 billion, falling 1.5% year over year and lagging the consensus estimate of $1.52 billion by 0.6%. Still, Gartner exited the quarter with a global contract value of $5.3 billion, up 1% on a foreign-currency-neutral basis at 2026 rates, signaling steadier subscription demand even as reported revenues faced pressure. Gartner, Inc. price-consensus-eps-surprise-chart | Gartner, Inc. Quote Global Technology Sales contract value ended the quarter at $4 billion, up 0.4% year over year on a foreign-currency-neutral basis at 2026 rates. Global Business Sales contract value was $1.3 billion, rising 3.2%, pointing to better relative momentum in functional-leader demand outside core technology spending. Retention metrics stayed supportive. Wallet retention was 97.7% for global sales, while client retention was 85%, reflecting a base of recurring relationships even with a softer renewal and expansion environment than earlier periods. Insights remained the largest profit engine. Segment revenues increased 3.1% year over year to $1,294.2 million, supported by a contribution margin of 78.2%, translating into $1,012 million of segment contribution. Conferences posted another year-over-year increase, with revenues up 7.9% to $78.3 million. Consulting continued to weigh on growth, with revenues declining 14.7% to $119.1 million, reflecting pressure across both labor-related work and contract optimization revenue streams. Despite the modest decline in GAAP revenues, profitability held up well. The consolidated contribution margin increased to 71.6%, a notable step up from the prior-year level shown in the quarterly financial summary, reflecting improved delivery efficiency and mix. Expense trends were also constructive in the GAAP bridge. Cost of services and product development fell to $429.3 million from $475 million a year ago, while selling, general and administrative expenses were essentially flat at $726.3 million. Operating income rose to $316 million from $278 million, helping net income increase to $222.3 million. IT continued to convert earnings into cash at a strong clip. The free cash flow was $371 million for the quarter, supported by $390.9...

Performance in Q1 was driven by strong new business with enterprise leaders in January and February, though client decision-making slowed in March due to geopolitical shifts. Management attributes long-term growth to the enduring nature of mission-critical priorities for C-suite executives, which remain constant despite macroeconomic volatility. The company is undergoing a transformation of its Business and Technology Insights organization, focusing on increasing the impact, volume, and timeliness of proprietary research. Strategic positioning in AI is centered on Gartner's role at the nexus of technology providers and business leaders, leveraging proprietary data from over 500,000 annual executive conversations. Operational agility was demonstrated through effective expense management and the ability to reallocate sales territories from lower-demand areas, like U.S. Federal, to higher-growth sectors. Retention is being driven by a proactive engagement model where clients who interact more frequently with digital and human insights retain at significantly higher rates. Management expects contract value (CV) growth to accelerate throughout 2026 as the company laps significant headwinds in the U.S. Federal business starting in Q2. The company is committed to delivering a compound annual adjusted EPS growth rate of at least 12% over the next three years, using 2025 as the base year. Sales hiring strategy is shifting toward a higher proportion of new business developers (BDs) versus account managers to capture a larger share of the 140,000-enterprise addressable market. Guidance assumes a reacceleration of the non-U.S. Federal base and continued high single-digit growth within the software and services tech vendor segments. Capital allocation will prioritize share repurchases and strategic, value-enhancing tuck-in M&A to drive incremental shareholder value. The U.S. Federal business remained a 250-basis-point headwind to total CV growth in Q1, though management believes this segment has now rebaselined. Geopolitical uncertainty in March led to longer decision cycles and increased executive-level escalations for deal approvals, particularly in energy-intensive industries and the Gulf region. Consulting revenue was impacted by clients postponing large software deals and labor-based projects in response to the changing macroeconomic environment. Contract optimizati...

Image source: The Motley Fool. Tuesday, May 5, 2026 at 8 a.m. ET Chief Executive Officer — Eugene Hall Chief Financial Officer — Craig Safian Need a quote from a Motley Fool analyst? Email [email protected] Eugene Hall: Good morning. Thanks for joining us today. First quarter insights, revenue, EBITDA, adjusted EPS and free cash flow were ahead of expectations. New business with enterprise leaders was strong in the first 2 months of the quarter. Due to changes in the geopolitical environment, client decisions slowed somewhat in March. Year-over-year contract value growth accelerated in the first quarter. We were agile in managing expenses, and we continue to deliver unparalleled value to our clients. Gartner's strategy is to guide executives on their journeys to achieve their mission-critical priorities. Our clients are the senior most executives and their teams who lead every major enterprise function. For example, Chief Information Officers and Senior IT leaders, Chief Supply Chain Officers and Heads of Logistics, Chief Financial Officers and Corporate Controllers and more. These roles are enduring regardless of change in the world. The executives who lead these roles will always have priorities that are mission critical to the success of their enterprise, their functions and their personal careers. Priorities that are mission-critical tend to be long, complex journeys. They take time and effort to achieve. Executives want and need help. In today's environment, most executives face information overload. It could be challenging to differentiate authoritative sources from others. Trust is at a premium. Gartner is the best, most trusted source for the help executives need to achieve success. We proactively deliver insights that guide smarter decisions and stronger outcomes on mission-critical priorities. Gartner insights are derived from a vast pool of highly proprietary data. Every year, we hold more than 0.5 million 2-way conversations with more than 80,000 executives across every major function and in every industry. We conduct more than 27,000 briefings with the executives from technology providers. We also leverage data from proprietary surveys, tools, models, benchmarks and more. This gives us a deep understanding of what executives care about most, what's working and what isn't. Our insights are independent and objective. They reflect the latest information...

For the quarter ended March 2026, Gartner (IT) reported revenue of $1.51 billion, down 1.5% over the same period last year. EPS came in at $3.32, compared to $2.98 in the year-ago quarter. The reported revenue compares to the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $1.52 billion, representing a surprise of -0.58%. The company delivered an EPS surprise of +11.21%, with the consensus EPS estimate being $2.99. While investors closely watch year-over-year changes in headline numbers -- revenue and earnings -- and how they compare to Wall Street expectations to determine their next course of action, some key metrics always provide a better insight into a company's underlying performance. As these metrics influence top- and bottom-line performance, comparing them to the year-ago numbers and what analysts estimated helps investors project a stock's price performance more accurately. Here is how Gartner performed in the just reported quarter in terms of the metrics most widely monitored and projected by Wall Street analysts: Revenue- Insights: $1.29 billion versus $1.28 billion estimated by two analysts on average. Compared to the year-ago quarter, this number represents a -2.1% change. Revenue- Conferences: $78 million versus $74.59 million estimated by two analysts on average. Compared to the year-ago quarter, this number represents a +6.9% change. Revenue- Consulting: $119 million compared to the $138.97 million average estimate based on two analysts. The reported number represents a change of -15% year over year. View all Key Company Metrics for Gartner here>>> Shares of Gartner have returned -5.2% over the past month versus the Zacks S&P 500 composite's +9.5% change. The stock currently has a Zacks Rank #4 (Sell), indicating that it could underperform the broader market in the near term. 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 Gartner, Inc. (IT) : Free Stock Analysis Report This article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com). Zacks Investment Research