'Challenging Year' for Forrester as Revenue Drops 11%

In the US, technology researcher Forrester has reported full year 2023 revenue of $480.8m, down 11% on 2022. Adjusted net income was $36.6m, down from $47.2m a year earlier.

Full year revenue in the Research division, which represents almost 70% of the total, and in the Events division fell by less than ten percent each (down 5.7% to to $334m and down 8.4% to $28.1m, respectively), while the Consulting division saw a steeper drop of around 22.5% to $118.2m.

Q4 revenues fell nearly 14% to $118.1m, and adjusted net income of $4.8m was down from $8.5m last year.

CEO and Chairman George F. Colony (pictured) said it had been 'a challenging year', but pointed to 'steady progress' in areas including improvement of the Forrester Decisions platform, upskilling the sales organization, and readying genAI tool Izola for general release. Colony said the firm had also 'achieved our goal of migrating two-thirds of our contract value into our new research platform, Forrester Decisions', with 2024 scheduled to be the final year of the transition. He added: 'We expect pressures throughout the year on CV [contract value], key retention metrics, and revenue. However, we have built the product, go-to-market, and organizational foundations to enable the company to return to CV growth in 2025'.

Forrester says it expects revenues of c.$430 - 450m in the coming year, representing a decline of 6% to 11%.

Web site: www.forrester.com .

All articles 2006-23 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas, 2024- by Nick Thomas, unless otherwise stated.