Calls
Source: S&P Capital IQ transcripts via Xpressfeed · latest indexed call 2026-05-05 · generated 2026-07-19.
Latest call digest
Gartner, Inc., Q1 2026 Earnings Call, May 05, 2026 · 2026-05-05T12:00:00
Q1 FY2026 call — May 5, 2026. Management opened on a beat: first-quarter insights revenue, EBITDA, adjusted EPS ($3.32) and free cash flow all ran ahead of plan, and Gartner raised its full-year EBITDA, adjusted-EPS and free-cash-flow guidance while repurchasing $535 million of stock. Contract value grew 1% year-over-year (3.5% excluding the U.S. federal government), which the CFO framed as an acceleration off the fourth quarter.
The prepared-remarks story was continuity and confidence: the four-dimension business-and-technology-insights (BTI) transformation, AI as the highest-demand client topic, and a reiterated commitment to compound adjusted EPS above 12% over the next three years off a 2025 base. The Q&A reality was more guarded. Gene Hall disclosed that new business was strong in January and February but that client decisions slowed in March on geopolitics, with purchase decisions escalated to the CFO or CEO and longer cycles; he said many March-deferred deals closed in April. Analysts pressed hardest on when CV actually reaccelerates — magnitude, exit rate and per-segment cadence — and management declined to quantify beyond accelerating over the course of the year, notably no longer repeating the high-single-digit 2026 figure it gave in mid-2025. On pricing, management was firm: no discounting and no change to the November price increase, rebutting intra-quarter chatter about below-$50k new-license deals. The ~250bp U.S. federal drag is expected to begin lapping in Q2.
Participant coverage from the latest call.
| Group | Participants | Count |
|---|---|---|
| Management | David Cohen — Senior Vice President of Investor Relations, Gartner, Inc.; Eugene Hall — CEO & Chairman, Gartner, Inc.; Craig Safian — Executive VP & CFO, Gartner, Inc.; Operator | 4 |
| Analysts | Jeffrey Meuler — Senior Research Analyst, Robert W. Baird & Co. Incorporated, Research Division; Faiza Alwy — Research Analyst, Deutsche Bank AG, Research Division; Andrew Nicholas — Analyst, William Blair & Company L.L.C., Research Division; Jason Haas — Executive Director & Senior Equity Analyst, Wells Fargo Securities, LLC, Research Division; Surinder Thind — Equity Analyst, Jefferies LLC, Research Division; Joshua Chan — Analyst, UBS Investment Bank, Research Division; Toni Kaplan — Senior Analyst, Morgan Stanley, Research Division; Keen Fai Tong — Research Analyst, Goldman Sachs Group, Inc., Research Division; Jeffrey Silber — MD & Senior Equity Analyst, BMO Capital Markets Equity Research; Jasper Bibb — VP of Equity Research, Truist Securities, Inc., Research Division; Scott Wurtzel — Research Analyst, Wolfe Research, LLC; Ashish Sabadra — Analyst, RBC Capital Markets, Research Division; Wahid Amin — Research Analyst, BofA Securities, Research Division | 13 |
Curated latest-call exchanges; one row per analyst topic.
| Analyst | Firm | Topic | What changed in Q&A |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jeffrey Meuler | Robert W. Baird | March slowdown and April recovery | Asked whether March-deferred deals are converting in April; Hall said many delayed deals closed in April and new-business softness was broad-based across new logo and existing clients. |
| Faiza Alwy | Deutsche Bank | Geopolitics and pricing | Pressed on the regional spread of the slowdown (worse in GCC/airlines/transport) and whether pricing is being reworked; management said pricing is appropriate and tiered, and that lost deals are about broad cost-cutting, not price. |
| Andrew Nicholas | William Blair | U.S. federal headwind | Asked when the ~250bp federal drag eases; Safian said Q2 begins lapping the DOJ-driven declines that started in March 2025, with ~$114M of federal CV remaining. |
| Keen Fai (George) Tong | Goldman Sachs | Sub-double-digit CV and exit rate | Pushed for a decomposition of below-historical CV growth and the year-exit rate; Safian named federal as the dominant ~250bp headwind but declined to guide CV, reaffirming only acceleration over 2026. |
| Toni Kaplan | Morgan Stanley | LLM distribution and consulting | Asked whether Gartner would distribute proprietary data through LLM providers and if labor-based consulting weakness is structural; Hall said that is not the value proposition and sees no structural AI damage, only macro deferral. |
| Jasper Bibb | Truist Securities | Discounting speculation | Asked about rumored below-$50k ASP new-license deals; Safian said Gartner does not offer discounts and there is no change to pricing mechanics or the November 1 increase. |
Theme tracker
Themes are curator-classified across supplied calls.
| Theme | Status | Quarters mentioned | Read-through |
|---|---|---|---|
| AI as the highest-demand client topic | persisted | Q2 2024, Q1 2025, Q2 2025, Q3 2025, Q4 2025, Q1 2026 | Evolved from one disruption among many into the single largest demand area across every role, plus an internal productivity lever and the AskGartner product rolled out through 2025. |
| AI as a substitution/disintermediation risk | persisted | Q2 2025, Q3 2025, Q4 2025, Q1 2026 | A recurring analyst worry (LLMs, deep-research tools, data distribution). Management consistently reports, from its per-deal loss tracking, that AI-as-substitute is immaterial to churn. |
| U.S. federal government / DOGE headwind | persisted | Q1 2025, Q2 2025, Q3 2025, Q4 2025, Q1 2026 | Emerged in Q1 2025 and has been the dominant CV drag every quarter since (~250bp in Q1 2026); nearly all one-year federal contracts repriced in 2025, and management expects the base to stabilize and lap from Q2 2026. |
| Tariff-affected industries and cost-cutting escalation | persisted | Q1 2025, Q2 2025, Q3 2025, Q4 2025, Q1 2026 | ~35-40% of CV sits in tariff-exposed industries; recurring symptoms are longer sales cycles and purchase decisions escalated to the CFO/CEO. Management frames it as cyclical macro behavior, not lost demand. |
| CV deceleration and the reacceleration promise | persisted | Q1 2025, Q2 2025, Q3 2025, Q4 2025, Q1 2026 | Contract value slid from 7% (Q1 2025) to 1% (Q4 2025 and Q1 2026). Management has promised reacceleration on every call, while the double-digit target has been pushed out to 2027 and beyond. |
| Business & Technology Insights (BTI) transformation | emerged | Q4 2025, Q1 2026 | Given comprehensive framing at Q4 2025 across four dimensions — impact, volume, timeliness, user experience — and pitched as a multi-year step-change in client engagement and retention; described as the most change in company history. |
| Share repurchases and capital return | persisted | Q1 2025, Q2 2025, Q3 2025, Q4 2025, Q1 2026 | ~$2 billion repurchased in 2025 (share count down roughly 8-10% year-over-year), funded partly by an inaugural investment-grade bond; a central pillar of the EPS-growth algorithm. |
| Digital Markets / non-subscription business | dropped | Q3 2025, Q4 2025, Q1 2026 | A recurring soft spot reclassified into Other at Q3 2025, sold under a definitive agreement announced at Q4 2025, and excluded from all Q1 2026 figures — pruned to refocus on the core Insights business. |
Guidance ledger
Quotes, calls, and speakers are source-verified; outcomes are curator-classified.
| Verbatim guidance | Call | Speaker | Curator outcome | Outcome note |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| “For Q4, we expect adjusted EBITDA of at least $400 million.” | Gartner, Inc., Q3 2025 Earnings Call, Nov 04, 2025 · 2025-11-04T13:00:00 | Craig Safian | kept | Q4 2025 adjusted EBITDA came in at $436 million, above the floor. |
| “For Q1, we expect adjusted EBITDA of $370 million or more.” | Gartner, Inc., Q4 2025 Earnings Call, Feb 03, 2026 · 2026-02-03T13:00:00 | Craig Safian | kept | Q1 2026 adjusted EBITDA was $395 million, above the guide. |
| “We expect 2026 adjusted EPS of $12.30 or more.” | Gartner, Inc., Q4 2025 Earnings Call, Feb 03, 2026 · 2026-02-03T13:00:00 | Craig Safian | pending | Raised to at or above $13.25 at Q1 2026 on higher EBITDA and a lower share count; full-year result not yet known. |
| “We expect 2026 adjusted EPS at or above $13.25, an increase from last quarter” | Gartner, Inc., Q1 2026 Earnings Call, May 05, 2026 · 2026-05-05T12:00:00 | Craig Safian | pending | Full-year 2026 figure with only Q1 reported (adjusted EPS $3.32 in the quarter). |
| “All these factors would get us to at least high single-digit growth in 2026, well on our way back to double-digit growth in 2027 and beyond.” | Gartner, Inc., Q2 2025 Earnings Call, Aug 05, 2025 · 2025-08-05T12:00:00 | Craig Safian | pending | 2026 CV grew 1% year-over-year in Q1 (3.5% excluding U.S. federal), below a high-single-digit pace; by Q1 2026 management no longer repeats the high-single-digit figure. Full year not complete. |
| “we would exit this year with CV growth in the low to mid-single digits.” | Gartner, Inc., Q2 2025 Earnings Call, Aug 05, 2025 · 2025-08-05T12:00:00 | Craig Safian | missed | Total CV exited 2025 up 1% in Q4, below the low-to-mid-single-digit range; excluding U.S. federal it was about 4%, within range. |
| “we expect to deliver adjusted EPS on a compound annual basis above 12% over the next 3 years.” | Gartner, Inc., Q1 2026 Earnings Call, May 05, 2026 · 2026-05-05T12:00:00 | Eugene Hall | pending | Three-year compound commitment off a 2025 base year; too early to assess. |
Q&A pressure map
Question counts and firms are curator tallies; analyst coverage shown above.
| Topic | Questions | Firms | Pressure / response |
|---|---|---|---|
| CV reacceleration trajectory and drivers | 6 | Robert W. Baird, Wells Fargo, Jefferies, Goldman Sachs, Truist Securities | The dominant line of questioning. Analysts pushed for the magnitude, exit rate and per-segment cadence of the promised 2026 acceleration; management declined to quantify, repeating that CV accelerates over the course of the year and citing its policy of not guiding CV. |
| March / geopolitical selling slowdown | 3 | Robert W. Baird, Deutsche Bank, UBS | Probing the depth, regional spread and durability of the March air-pocket and whether March-deferred deals recovered in April. |
| Sales headcount and BD-vs-AE mix | 3 | William Blair, RBC Capital Markets, BMO Capital Markets | Cadence of quota-bearing headcount growth (low-single GTS, mid-single GBS) and the deliberate tilt toward hiring business developers over account executives. |
| Pricing and discounting | 2 | Deutsche Bank, Truist Securities | Pricing power and rumored below-$50k ASP new-license discounts; management denied any change to discounting or pricing mechanics. |
| U.S. federal headwind lapping | 2 | William Blair, Goldman Sachs | Timing of the ~250bp federal drag easing; management points to Q2 2026 as the lapping point with the base assumed flat for the year. |
Language shifts
Only language evidence verified against the referenced component is shown.
| Observation | Verbatim evidence | Call ID | Component |
|---|---|---|---|
| First explicit call-out of a mid-quarter demand air-pocket: management said January-February new business was strong but that decisions slowed in March on geopolitics — a specific caution not present in prior calls. | “Due to changes in the geopolitical environment, client decisions slowed somewhat in March.” | 1996258445 | 1 |
| In mid-2025 management attached a specific number to the 2026 reacceleration, framing CV as reaching at least high-single-digit growth. | “All these factors would get us to at least high single-digit growth in 2026, well on our way back to double-digit growth in 2027 and beyond.” | 1954175581 | 2 |
| By Q1 2026 the same reacceleration is asserted without a figure; the high-single-digit framing has dropped out of both prepared remarks and Q&A. | “we expect contract value will accelerate.” | 1996258445 | 1 |
| Escalating, defensive framing around the overhaul — management stresses this is the most change in company history, signaling how much is riding on the transformation. | “we made more change in the last year than we've ever made in the history of Gartner in terms of increasing value to clients.” | 1996258445 | 37 |
The through-line of the last five quarters is a steady contract-value deceleration (7% to 1%) set against a reacceleration management keeps promising and keeps deferring — now framed for 2026 without the specific high-single-digit number it used in 2025. Profitability, buybacks and guidance beats have been dependable; the question the call history sharpens is whether the BTI transformation converts into a CV inflection before the 2027 double-digit target arrives.