Image source: The Motley Fool.
DATE
Thursday, May 7, 2026 at 5 p.m. ET
CALL PARTICIPANTS
- Chief Executive Officer — Kevin D. Coop
- Chief Financial Officer — Casey Heller
TAKEAWAYS
- Total Revenue -- $55.9 million, representing a 6% decrease year over year and finishing at the high end of guidance.
- Adjusted EBITDA -- $15.3 million, with a 27% margin and expanding 260 basis points year over year.
- Adjusted Gross Profit -- $45.2 million, down 4% year over year, with margin expanding 150 basis points to 81%.
- Subscription Revenue -- $53.6 million, a 7% decline year over year, while professional services revenue increased 25% versus last year.
- Unlevered Free Cash Flow -- $18 million in the quarter and $50 million on a trailing 12-month basis, with a 70% conversion rate from adjusted EBITDA over the period.
- Deferred Revenue -- $99 million, marking a 12% decline year over year at quarter-end.
- Remaining Performance Obligations (RPO) -- Declined 18% year over year; current RPO at $161 million, down 12% over the same period, primarily due to a shift toward single-year contracts.
- Guidance for Q2 2026 -- Expected total revenue of $55 million to $56 million, an 8%-9% year-over-year decrease, with adjusted EBITDA of $13 million to $14.5 million (24%-26% margin).
- Full-Year 2026 Guidance -- Revenue anticipated at $220 million to $226 million, reflecting a 6%-9% year-over-year decline; adjusted EBITDA expected at $55 million to $59 million (25%-26% margin).
- Goodwill Impairment -- A further $197 million goodwill impairment charge was recorded as of March 31, triggering a $6.6 million gain on TRA remeasurement and a $3.6 million deferred income tax benefit.
- Strategic Volume Trends -- Diversified and provider business lines combined for modest growth, comprising over 60% of revenue, while life sciences continued to decline due to prior claims disruption and macro factors.
- Operational Improvements -- Average integration timeline improved from over 100 days to approximately 45 days year over year, with a 75% increase in completed integrations over the past six months compared to the previous six months.
- AI Initiatives -- First AI-enabled solutions planned for launch later in the quarter, with a focus on a next-generation, natural language-driven platform interface.
- Customer Metrics -- Net dollar retention improved both year over year and quarter over quarter on a trailing 12-month basis; Q1 delivered the highest win-back count in more than three years.
Need a quote from a Motley Fool analyst? Email [email protected]
RISKS
- Life sciences segment declined further, as management cited ongoing pressures from claims disruption and customers reallocating spend to early-stage R&D, with "second-stage commercialization efforts somewhat muted."
- Deferred revenue and RPO showed pronounced year-over-year declines, attributed to a continued shift from multiyear to single-year agreements, affecting future revenue visibility.
- A $197 million non-cash goodwill impairment was recognized, following a significant stock price decline during the quarter.
SUMMARY
Definitive Healthcare (DH 2.43%) reported revenue at the high end of guidance but posted a 6% year-over-year decline, driven by ongoing headwinds in its life sciences segment and declining multi-year contract signings. Adjusted EBITDA margin expanded to 27%, benefiting from operational efficiencies and capitalized software investments, though longer-term revenue visibility was reduced as RPO and deferred revenue both declined over 10%. Major operational gains included significantly faster customer integration timelines, broad adoption of AI modernization efforts, and the highest quarterly customer win-back count in three years, with management signaling confidence in sustaining net dollar retention improvements. Q2 and full-year guidance were reaffirmed, projecting lower annual revenue but raising the midpoint of adjusted EBITDA, reflecting a strategic shift toward margin optimization and targeted investments in digital and AI-driven growth initiatives.
- Management emphasized that diversification and provider business lines produced modest growth despite company-wide revenue pressure, offsetting ongoing declines in the life sciences segment.
- Casey Heller noted, "Starting with CRPO, it is declining 12 points year over year, consistent with where we exited Q4. A significant portion is driven by having sold fewer multiyear deals and seeing a shift toward single-year deals, creating about a $15 million headwind year over year, which is about half of the total CRPO decline," highlighting the impact of customer contracting trends on forward revenue.
- The upcoming launch of next-generation AI-driven product capabilities was positioned primarily as a retention and upsell driver, with Kevin D. Coop stating, "Even the democratization layer improves renewal value and has a positive impact to the revenue profile."
- Sales cycle improvements were quantified: integration times decreased from over 100 days to 45 days while the number of completed integrations rose 75% over the prior six months.
- Non-cash accounting items, including a $197 million goodwill impairment, were recorded with no anticipated impact to debt covenants or adjusted operating results.
- Q2 2026 revenue is expected to decline 8%-9% year over year, with sequential revenue trends stabilizing after the anniversary of a major data partnership's contributions.
- Analyst questions centered on the pace of recovery in the life sciences vertical, prospects for multi-year contracting stabilization, AI monetization strategy, and the timeline for full claims dataset restoration, all directly addressed by the executives with supporting data.
INDUSTRY GLOSSARY
- RPO (Remaining Performance Obligations): The total contracted revenue yet to be recognized, providing forward visibility into revenue from signed deals.
- CRPO (Current Remaining Performance Obligations): The portion of RPO expected to be recognized as revenue in the next twelve months.
- Adjusted EBITDA Margin: Adjusted EBITDA expressed as a percentage of total revenue, reflecting profitability from core operations.
- Win-back: Regaining a former customer who had previously churned, indicative of competitive positioning or product improvement.
Full Conference Call Transcript
Kevin D. Coop, our Chief Executive Officer, and Casey Heller, our Chief Financial Officer. Before we begin, I would like to remind you that today's discussion may include forward-looking statements within the meaning of the federal securities laws, including the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements include, among others, statements about our market opportunity, future performance, growth and financial guidance, the benefits of our data and healthcare commercial intelligence solutions, our competitive position, customer behavior, adoption, growth, renewals and retention, planned investments and operating strategy, value creation for customers and shareholders, and the expected impact of macroeconomic conditions on our business, customers, and the healthcare industry.
Forward-looking statements are based on our current expectations and assumptions as of today, and are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially. For more information, please refer to the cautionary statement in today's earnings release as well as the risk factors and other information included in our filings with the SEC, including our most recent Form 10-Ks and Form 10-Q. You should not place undue reliance on these statements, and Definitive Healthcare Corp. undertakes no obligation to update them except as required by law. During the call, we will also discuss certain non-GAAP financial measures.
Reconciliations to the most directly comparable GAAP measures, along with related definitions and limitations, are included in today's earnings release and investor presentation, each of which is available on the Investor Relations section of our website. For any forward-looking non-GAAP measures, the earnings release also explains why a quantitative reconciliation is not available without unreasonable efforts and identifies the relevant unavailable items. With that, I turn the call over to Kevin D. Coop. Kevin?
Kevin D. Coop: Thank you, Jonathan, and thanks to all of you for joining us this afternoon to review Definitive Healthcare Corp.'s first quarter 2026 financial results. On today's call, I will provide highlights from our first quarter performance and give an update on the progress we continue to make on our key strategic priorities for this year. Let me begin by reviewing our financial results for the first quarter, which were at or above the high end of our guidance ranges on both the top and bottom line. Total revenue was $55.9 million, down 6% year over year. Adjusted EBITDA was $15.3 million, representing a margin of 27%, which was $2.3 million above the high end of our guidance.
The outperformance is a reflection of our ongoing success in driving expense discipline across the business while investing in initiatives that we believe will return the business to top-line growth. Additionally, the quarter benefited from a timing benefit that will be neutral to the year and slightly lower R&D expense in the P&L as we shifted more investment to innovation, which is reflected in the capitalized software development spend. We continue to generate solid cash flow, delivering approximately $50 million of unlevered free cash flow for the trailing 12 months.
We are off to a solid start for 2026 that puts us on track to meet or exceed the full-year financial targets we provided to investors at the beginning of the year. Before getting into specifics, let me give you a high-level overview of where the business stands. Our diversified and provider businesses, which combined represent over 60% of total revenue, have again demonstrated modest growth after returning to growth last quarter. This is an important achievement and gives us confidence that our efforts are having the expected impact, and we are investing to make this growth durable.
Conversely, our life sciences businesses, which make up the remaining portion of revenue, continue to decline and are seeing slower response to the changes we are making. This segment has disproportionately been impacted by the claims disruption we have highlighted in the past, as well as a challenging macro environment. We continue to see positive data points in critical areas. First, net dollar retention rate improved year over year in the first quarter on a trailing 12-month basis, and we are increasingly confident that this will continue to be sustained for the full year.
Second, we had our highest win-back quarter in over three years in the first quarter, which we believe is another positive sign that our product, go-to-market, and customer success investments are making the expected impact. Several six-figure win-backs in diversified and medtech highlight common themes we see emerging. First, other vendors continue to fall short in matching the breadth and quality of our datasets, leaving customers with an incomplete view of the market and an unacceptable trust deficit. Second, even customers who were particularly price sensitive and thought alternative vendors would be “good enough” recognize that the cost of an inferior dataset far outweighed the trade-off, and this reinforces the need to remain vigilant on both data quality and service.
While there is still more to be done to achieve our objective of returning to overall growth, these data points strengthen our conviction that we are focusing on the right things and that those areas of focus are responding. Importantly, these are areas of focus that are within our control. I would now like to provide an update on our operational progress against our four strategic pillars. As a reminder, these pillars are data differentiation, integrations, customer success, and innovation. Let me begin with data differentiation. Our fall expansion pack release improved the breadth and quality of our claims data, and its release was met with overwhelmingly positive feedback.
As you know, data is at the heart of our value proposition, and we are continuing to make investments to source new proprietary data types and extend our lead with our core reference and affiliation datasets. We are increasingly focused on leveraging AI to increase the velocity of data collection and quality assurance. Our data differentiation was key in a six-figure, multi-year win with a life sciences customer who had previously been using a generic multi-vertical data source to target providers treating oncology and rheumatology patients. This customer was frustrated by its limited visibility into affiliation data, prescription patterns, and key opinion leader identification.
By deploying Definitive Healthcare Corp., they have meaningfully reduced time spent on research, improved their KOL identification efforts, and improved their sales strategy through better physician targeting. Our second pillar is focused on seamless integrations. Making it as fast and simple as possible for customers to access our data alongside any other data source they need is critical in delivering value and creating durable customer relationships. In the first quarter, we completed nearly 50 new integrations for customers and reduced the time to integrate by nearly 50% year over year. We are continuing our investments in developing new and enhanced integrations.
We recently introduced a new HubSpot integration that will enable HubSpot users to access Definitive Healthcare Corp.'s reference, affiliation, financial, and clinical data directly within their HubSpot CRM, giving sales teams a detailed view of contacts and accounts. This is in addition to the enhancements we added in Q4, where we enhanced Salesforce integrations to include our healthcare provider data directly into a customer's Salesforce instance, thereby improving their sales team's ability to identify, segment, and engage physicians. Our data continues to show that customers who integrate Definitive Healthcare Corp. directly into their systems of record and systems of insight utilize Definitive Healthcare Corp. more often.
We become a stickier, more strategic component of their day-to-day operations, which in turn strengthens our renewal rates. Turning to our third pillar, customer success. We are witnessing the impact of investments in this area bear fruit. The alignment of all functional teams that support the customer journey has led us to be a more proactive and engaged organization with our customers, which in turn has led to earlier identification of issues before they become problems and a better understanding and responsiveness in identifying opportunities where we can do more for customers. A great example of this in action was an upsell win this quarter with a biopharma customer who is an existing MONACO user.
This customer was recently acquired by a larger organization, which gave our team the opportunity to educate the acquirer on the value we are delivering and how it can help the integration efforts of the two organizations by streamlining data sharing across the two groups. Finally, we continue to make progress against our fourth pillar, innovation, and our focus on digital engagement, which is a critical component to our return-to-growth strategy. With the progress made in our first pillar, which fortified our foundation in quality and service, we are shifting more effort to this pillar in 2026. We continue to make progress developing our AI capabilities and expect to launch our first AI-enabled solutions to market later this quarter.
Our focus is on embedding a next-gen AI-driven interface in our existing platform that will leverage natural language to allow customers to simply and intuitively query our data to uncover new insights that can then be actioned through our persona-driven workflows. Let me give you a couple of examples. To effectively identify top physicians, a requirement is access to highly accurate reference and affiliation data to resolve treating doctors and verification of roles. Then claims data, leveraging both Rx and MX data, is needed for procedure volumes and patient journeys. Our human-in-the-loop research data, which is also being enhanced with AI, confirms the HCP and HCE status and job functions.
It is this breadth and depth, coupled with architectural expertise, that makes this possible. Claims vendors alone, which use modeled reference and affiliation data tied to billing IDs, not treating MDs, or horizontal event data vendors which lack clinical activity entirely, would not be able to achieve the same result. To give customers the right answers to these types of questions requires that contextual expertise as well as longitudinal data, and only our data can provide this. This is the foundation on which our AI-native investments will begin to enhance this coming quarter. In the digital activation area, we now have more than 30 agencies signed up, with more than half of them actively generating bookings for Definitive Healthcare Corp.
This is up from roughly a third over the last quarter. Importantly, we are also seeing increased utilization from existing direct and agency customers alongside continued new customer adoption. We are encouraged by the very positive market feedback on audience performance, and with a recent benchmark by a leading biopharma solutions company which showed our audiences delivered a 63% higher click-through rate than a leading competitor. While it takes time for this agency activity to generate revenue, the growing number of active customers gives us confidence that we will be able to start scaling our activation business later this year in 2026 and beyond.
To summarize, we are off to a solid start in 2026, and we are tracking well against our full-year objectives. We remain focused on those things within our control, and we are driving improvement across all aspects of the business. We will continue to be opportunistic in investing in high-value areas that we believe will best position Definitive Healthcare Corp. to improve retention and return the company to consistent, predictable revenue growth over time. With that, let me turn the call over to Casey to review the financials in more detail. Casey?
Casey Heller: Thank you, Kevin. In all my remarks, I will be discussing our results on a non-GAAP basis unless otherwise noted. As Kevin mentioned, we delivered a solid quarter with our performance at or above expectations across our key metrics. I will walk through the financial results in more detail, including our revenue trends, margin performance, and outlook.
In the first quarter, we delivered revenue of $55.9 million, down 6% year over year, adjusted EBITDA of $15.3 million reflecting a 27% margin and expanding approximately 260 basis points year over year, and adjusted net income was $8.5 million resulting in $0.06 of non-GAAP earnings per share in the period, all of which were at or above the high end of our guidance for the quarter. We also delivered $18 million of unlevered free cash flow in the quarter, and nearly $50 million on a trailing 12-month basis. Turning to our results in more detail. Revenue of $55.9 million was at the upper end of our guidance range and represents a 6% decline year over year.
Consistent with last quarter, the revenue decline is driven by life sciences. Both diversified and provider end markets, which make up 60% of our business, continue to grow year over year. Overall subscription revenues of $53.6 million declined 7% year over year. Given the timing of when we began revenue recognition on our data partnership agreement last year, we still had about two points of benefit in the first quarter and will be fully wrapped on the benefit in Q2.
We did deliver improvement in our renewal rates in the first quarter year over year and quarter over quarter, and we are pleased to share that we saw improvement year over year in our net dollar retention on a trailing 12-month basis, as Kevin mentioned earlier. Professional services revenue in the quarter was strong, up 25% year over year, driven by a combination of delivering on traditional analytics engagements as well as a ramp-up in our digital activations activity. Adjusted gross profit in the quarter was $45.2 million, which is down 4% year over year.
As a percentage of revenue, the adjusted gross profit margin of 81% expanded nearly 150 basis points year over year, primarily benefiting from the short-term gap between removing one data source and onboarding an additional source that I mentioned last quarter. And as I mentioned earlier, adjusted EBITDA was $15.3 million and reflects a 27% margin, expanding 260 basis points versus prior year. Despite the continued top-line pressures, we have continued to prudently manage the business and focus investments on the initiatives that will return Definitive Healthcare Corp. to revenue growth over time.
Q1 adjusted EBITDA margin expansion was driven by the timing gap on the data source changes I mentioned just moments ago, and the shift in our product development efforts, which is driving a reduction in R&D expense but an increase in capitalized software development spend. Broader operating efficiencies also supported margin expansion and exceeded expectations. This provides additional flexibility to accelerate investments for growth as opportunities arise as we move through the year. Turning to cash flow. Our business continues to generate strong free cash flow due to our high margin model, upfront billing, and low recurring CapEx requirements.
Operating cash flows on a trailing 12-month basis were $39.3 million, and we generated nearly $50 million of unlevered free cash flow over a trailing 12-month basis. Our conversion rate of trailing 12-month adjusted EBITDA to unlevered free cash flow was 70%, which is down about 20 points year over year, primarily reflecting unique items that benefited the prior year. This cash generation provides flexibility to continue investing in growth. Consistent with last quarter, we continue to make organic product investments with an emphasis on expanding our AI capabilities, and saw another quarter of increased capitalized software development spend, totaling nearly $3 million, up over $1.5 million from the prior year.
At the end of Q1, deferred revenue of $99 million was down 12% year over year, and total remaining performance obligations declined 18% year over year. Current remaining performance obligations of $161 million declined 12% year over year. Total remaining performance obligations and current RPO year-over-year declines are similar to what we reported exiting Q4 and continue to be driven by the shift towards single-year deals versus multiyear commitments that we discussed last quarter. To quickly recap the drivers behind the RPO decline: in 2025, we saw a greater percentage of our new logo additions sign one-year versus multiyear commitments than in prior years. This impacts both RPO as well as CRPO.
Last quarter, we explained that if you went back to the end of 2024, there was approximately $100 million of RPO on our books related to commitments that extended beyond 2025. As the year progressed, a portion of this would flow into CRPO this quarter as the contracts progressed. Now, as we fast forward to a year later at the end of 2025, we have $15 million less CRPO tied to multiyear deals expiring after 2026. This makes up a substantial portion of the CRPO year-over-year decline, and this dynamic holds true as we exit Q1. Before moving to our guidance discussion, there is one additional accounting item to mention.
The recent stock price decline has caused us to book a further $197 million goodwill impairment charge as of March 31. That write-down also generated approximately $6.6 million of gain on the remeasurement of the TRA liability and a $3.6 million deferred income tax benefit. As a reminder, these are non-cash accounting charges and do not impact our debt covenants and are excluded from our adjusted earnings. We had a solid start to the year and continue to make progress against our financial and operational objectives. Now turning to guidance for the second quarter. We expect total revenue of $55 million to $56 million, a revenue decrease of 8% to 9% year over year compared to Q2 2025.
The year-over-year decline worsens modestly versus what we just reported for Q1 largely as a result of the full wrap on the initial contributions from the data partnership. Within the revenue guide, we expect to continue to deliver double-digit professional services revenue growth through the year. This results in expected adjusted operating income of $10.5 million to $11.5 million, adjusted EBITDA of $13 million to $14.5 million, or 24% to 26% adjusted EBITDA margin in the second quarter, and adjusted net income of $5 million to $6 million, or approximately $0.03 to $0.04 per diluted share on 144.2 million weighted average shares outstanding.
For the full year 2026, we expect revenue of $220 million to $226 million for a 6% to 9% decline year over year. This remains consistent with the guidance provided on our last call. We have continued to proactively manage our cost base, making targeted investments in growth areas. As we just discussed, higher capitalized software development spend is shifting costs from development spend to CapEx. This is a classification shift and is cash neutral. Translating that into dollars in 2026, we now expect adjusted operating income of $43.5 million to $47.5 million, adjusted EBITDA of $55 million to $59 million for a full-year margin of 25% to 26%.
This guide increases the midpoint by $1.5 million and reflects the strong start to the year and our ongoing commitment to maintaining strong margins while investing in our key growth areas. Adjusted net income is expected to be between $23 million to $27 million, and earnings per share are expected to be $0.16 to $0.19 on 144.9 million weighted average shares outstanding. As we wrap up, I want to reiterate that while we are navigating ongoing top-line pressures, we remain focused on sustaining non-GAAP profitability and a strong margin profile while continuing to invest thoughtfully to support a return to growth.
We believe our strategy is sound, and we are making steady progress against our key initiatives, which we expect will enhance retention, reaccelerate growth, and drive long-term shareholder value. We will now open the call for questions.
Operator: If you would like to ask a question, please press 1 on your phone now, and you will be placed into the queue in the order received. Please be prepared with your question and please limit yourself to only one question and one follow-up. Our first question today comes from Morgan Stanley.
Analyst: Hi. This is Jay on for Craig Hettenbach. Thanks for taking my question. Just on the growth side, I understand that life sciences continues to be pressured while diversified and provider have seen some modest growth. So just wondering if you can share your thoughts on whether 2027 could be a return to growth, and if you expect some margin improvement from there?
Kevin D. Coop: Yes. Our growth prospects and the progress that we have made on our strategic pillars give us a great deal of confidence that we are focusing on the right things. While improvement has actually occurred across all verticals, it is especially showing up initially in provider and diversified, and that reinforces that confidence. While life sciences is taking a little longer, we think that the shift now from our original focus on data quality, integrations, and service—which is translating into these improved results—toward innovation and digital efforts will help us address some of the challenges that still remain in our life sciences segment.
In particular, we think digital is going to start to impact that, and the claims remediation with our fall pack going into the data supply chain—which has put us back to at or above historical levels on claims data—will start to show up in that channel as well. As Casey mentioned, we have seen early indications most pronounced initially in provider and diversified, and we expect life sciences to be a fast follow.
Operator: Next, we have Brian Peterson of Raymond James.
Johnathan M. McCary: Hi. Thank you. This is Johnathan M. McCary on for Brian. One for you, Kevin. On the integrations, it is good to hear the HubSpot progress building on the Salesforce work last quarter. How far along are we in terms of taking care of those integrations? Are we basically through the low-hanging fruit now and in the later stages, or how would you characterize the progress thus far?
Kevin D. Coop: As you know, we have talked about materially higher retention rates in customers that are integrated versus those that are not, which is why we made this such a big focus area. A couple of data points are particularly helpful. First was improving the speed of our integrations. Last quarter, we mentioned we had brought down the average days for integration from over 100 days to 73 days in Q4, and we are pleased to report that continued to improve. Our average number of days in Q1 was approximately 45 days. So we have radically improved the integration timeline from over 100 days to 45 days.
In addition, by making this more of a focus with our go-to-market and customer-facing teams, our velocity has also improved. We have completed 75% more integrations over the last six months than we had in the prior six months. So not only are we doing more integrations, we are doing them faster and getting that in the hands of our customers. On productizing integrations, most recently with HubSpot, that enables HubSpot users to access Definitive Healthcare Corp.'s reference, affiliation, financial, and clinical data directly from their HubSpot CRM, giving a quicker, detailed view of contacts and accounts. That adds to bringing physicians data into Salesforce last quarter, and we are continuing to make that a priority.
So it is a combination of speed and velocity, making sure integrations happen much faster, and increasing the number of ways customers can access our data in the most effective and efficient way possible.
Johnathan M. McCary: Very helpful. And maybe this could be for Casey or Kevin. On the new AI tools you are rolling out later this quarter, how are you thinking about monetization? Is it more of a retention driver, an incremental SKU, or more of a pricing lever?
Kevin D. Coop: Great question. We know this will allow us to democratize access more effectively across users. Even though the product is intuitive, it still requires some training to use our UI/UX today, and if customers are getting data through an API or lake-to-lake, that is a different path. With SaaS access, the AI agentic layer allows more people to more easily access that data, which will unlock more value. The most immediate impact will be improved retention and increased value. Since we have always licensed based on value, that fits our model. In the second stage, as we bring out more feature functionality over time, we expect to see more pricing power.
Even the democratization layer improves renewal value and has a positive impact to the revenue profile. There is no downside. Retention improves, we deliver more value supporting higher yield on existing solutions, and as we bring new solutions online, they will be easily integrated into the installed base, driving upsell and cross-sell opportunities.
Operator: From BTIG, we have David Larson.
Jenny Shen: Hi. This is Jenny Shen on for Dave. Thanks for taking my question. On the biopharma demand environment, a large CRO we cover commented that they are seeing green shoots on the emerging biopharma side, with some of the smaller players seeing improved funding, while spending remains more conservative at large pharma. Have you seen that dynamic or any notable changes on your side, or has it been pretty consistent?
Kevin D. Coop: Thanks, Jenny. It is helpful to segment the space appropriately. Some providers cover both first-stage and second-stage clinical assets—early-stage R&D and drug trials versus later commercialization. Definitive Healthcare Corp. primarily plays in second-stage commercialization. We have a marquee installed base with very large biopharma customers, which is great, but even if there are green shoots with smaller emerging providers, it is difficult to offset larger customers who are shifting dollars from commercialization to early-stage clinical investment and R&D. We are still seeing second-stage commercialization efforts somewhat muted, which is natural in this type of macro environment and happens cyclically in biopharma.
We see more incremental dollars invested in R&D budgets to bulk back up product portfolios, with factors like patent expirations also impacting spend. This presents a potential growth opportunity, as those assets move toward commercialization over time—that is when demand returns for us. In the meantime, our focus on the integration pillar, which seamlessly integrates our data without sacrificing data quality, allows us to offset bundled offerings from other vendors by combining higher quality with ease of use. The fact that we won back 160 customers last year and moved more than 50 this quarter demonstrates that the strategy is working.
As those integrated customers move into commercialization, that will start to show up in our life sciences segment as well.
Operator: Next, we will hear from Stephens Inc.
Jeffrey Garro: Yes, good afternoon. Thanks for taking the question. I want to go further on the life sciences end market. The two highlighted wins in the release are both life sciences or biopharma-related, and you also gave several more examples on the call. Clearly, you have proof points of value with large and sophisticated customers, which contrasts with the broader decline you have described for that segment. Could you elaborate on the overall demand environment, the recent win rate within that segment, and lastly, when the claims disruption will stop being a factor?
Kevin D. Coop: I will start with the last point. We have returned to historical levels of claims data and, in the first quarter, are now above historical levels. Often, customers were buying data based on records and size of data payload; when you have, for example, a 30% decline in records, that drove down-sell pressure, which we have largely worked through. Now that we have returned to those historical levels, we expect customers we are entitling today will not experience the same level of down pressure when they come up for renewal.
We started to see that shift as we were repairing the claims dataset later last year, but many buying decisions were made earlier than we were able to get that into market. We think we are seeing the tail of it now. We have repaired the data supply chain, and going forward it should be significantly improved. On commercialization, you have to work through the R&D Stage 1 cycle to get to Stage 2, and we do not control that. What we can do is make sure that customers still actively working with our data to commercialize current products—including through our digital activation and ad tech—are maximizing value in the short term while we wait for that spending to return.
Operator: From Deutsche Bank, we have George Hill.
George Robert Hill: Hey, good afternoon. Thanks for taking the question. There is a lot of talk about AI. How are you using AI to change how you package and productize the data assets that you have? How does it change how clients consume or ingest that data? And do you expect AI to have an inflationary or deflationary impact on your ASPs?
Kevin D. Coop: In healthcare, the technology itself is not sufficient to maneuver effectively in a very complex environment. Domain and contextual expertise matter a lot, along with proprietary data. That combination is a durable advantage for Definitive Healthcare Corp. The complexity includes understanding relationships among physicians, practice locations, affiliated locations, pathways to surgery centers and other care sites, and mapping reference data to technographics, insurance networks, and consumer personas. With domain expertise and differentiated, longitudinal data, we are applying AI initially to accelerate what we already do, both internally and externally. Internally, our engineering and development teams are extensively using AI and ML, and we have deployed AI in operational efficiencies for customer success and internal teams.
On product, the first elements are coming out this quarter, with more later this year. We have a tremendous amount of diverse data used in multiple ways—e.g., HCP targeting and market share analysis. Our next-generation product architecture that leverages AI will enable customers to more rapidly unlock insights they already rely on, in a more democratic fashion. We believe this will increase usage and access, thereby driving more value, which at the very least protects current revenue and, as we bring more capabilities online, allows for incremental pricing through cross-sell and upsell rather than deflation.
Operator: And we will hear from Stifel.
David Michael Grossman: Great, thank you. I think there are various dynamics affecting year-over-year compares as we move through the year—on revenue, margin, and also CRPO and RPO. Can you briefly summarize what those are to make sure we have them all?
Casey Heller: Sure, David. Starting with CRPO, it is declining 12 points year over year, consistent with where we exited Q4. A significant portion is driven by having sold fewer multiyear deals and seeing a shift toward single-year deals, creating about a $15 million headwind year over year, which is about half of the total CRPO decline. That explains why CRPO is declining at a greater rate than our top-line outlook.
Another component of the disconnect between CRPO and revenue is that we continue to expect double-digit growth throughout the year in professional services revenue—a combination of professional services and analytics plus digital activation—which generally does not show up in CRPO because we do not see those bookings until much closer to recognizing that revenue. From a top-line perspective, in Q1 we still had a couple of points of benefit from the data partnership we signed back in 2024; we did not start revenue recognition on that until partway through Q1 last year, so there was a little lift in Q1. We now fully anniversary that, so it is no longer a compare element as we hit second quarter and beyond.
David Michael Grossman: Is that reflected in the sequential revenue in the second quarter—the two-point benefit you got in 1Q? Are you losing about that sequentially?
Casey Heller: We are not actually losing revenue sequentially because that was the way it showed up last year, from a compare standpoint. If you look at the midpoint of our guide, total revenue is roughly flat as you move through the remainder of the year, with more of a sequential increase at the higher end of the guide.
David Michael Grossman: Right, got it. So that is just in the base last year and had nothing to do with the first quarter, right?
Kevin D. Coop: Correct.
David Michael Grossman: On the CRPO duration dynamic, when do you think you comp out the shift toward shorter duration?
Casey Heller: We expect that to live with us for the next several quarters. We can provide more color as we get closer to the end of the year, but we do continue to expect double-digit declines in CRPO for the next couple of quarters, given the multiyear dynamic and when that laps.
David Michael Grossman: Does that mix shift continue into 2027 in terms of the year-over-year compare?
Casey Heller: It depends on the mix of signings we deliver in the back end of this year and whether there are more multiyear components. If the current shift holds, we are probably another couple of quarters of this, and then I would expect more stabilization and a tighter correlation of CRPO to revenue.
David Michael Grossman: Final one on claims disruption. Kevin, you said you are back above historical levels. Does that suggest it is no longer a headwind as we move through 2026?
Casey Heller: The new claims data source came online in the early part of Q4, and by then many customers had already made renewal decisions. We do over 30% of our annual renewals in December and January, so adding the new data source did not really have the ability to influence those decisions. In addition to bringing on an additional new data source that will come into product shortly, we think it certainly will not be the headwind it has been as we move forward. We need to see how the next couple of quarters of renewals play out, but we are confident we have taken the right actions to get incremental claims data back into product and into customer hands.
Operator: We have no further questions at this time. I will turn the program back over to our host for any additional or closing comments.
Casey Heller: Thank you, everybody, for joining this afternoon. We appreciate the questions and look forward to talking to you again in 90 days.
Operator: That concludes our meeting for today. You may now disconnect.
