Earnings call transcript: Booz Allen Hamilton Q3 FY2025 beats forecasts, stock dips

Booz Allen Hamilton reported its financial results for the third quarter of fiscal year 2025, showcasing strong performance with earnings and revenue exceeding analyst expectations. The company, which maintains a robust financial health score according to InvestingPro data, demonstrated its operational strength with a healthy current ratio of 1.56. Despite this, the company’s stock experienced a decline in the pre-market session, reflecting broader market concerns.

Key Takeaways

• Booz Allen Hamilton’s Q3 FY2025 revenue grew by 14% year-over-year to $2.9 billion.
• The company’s earnings per share (EPS) surpassed forecasts, reaching $1.55 against an expected $1.51.
• Despite strong financial results, the stock price fell by 2.6% in pre-market trading.
• The company raised its FY2025 revenue growth guidance to 12-13%.
• Booz Allen Hamilton continues to lead in AI and cybersecurity within the federal government sector.

Company Performance

Booz Allen Hamilton demonstrated robust performance in Q3 FY2025 with significant revenue growth of 14% compared to the same period last year. The company has maintained its position as a leader in advanced technology solutions for the federal government, particularly in areas such as artificial intelligence and cybersecurity. This growth is attributed to the company’s strategic focus on innovation and expanding partnerships with key players like Palantir and AWS.

Financial Highlights

• Revenue: $2.9 billion, a 14% increase year-over-year.
• Earnings per share: $1.55, up from $1.45 in the previous year.
• Adjusted EBITDA: $332 million, reflecting a 14% improvement.
• Net income: $187 million, a 28% increase year-over-year.

Earnings vs. Forecast

Booz Allen Hamilton’s Q3 FY2025 earnings per share of $1.55 exceeded the forecast of $1.51, marking a positive surprise of approximately 2.6%. This performance continues the company’s trend of surpassing market expectations, showcasing its strong operational efficiency and strategic execution.

Market Reaction

Despite the positive earnings surprise, Booz Allen Hamilton’s stock price fell by 2.6% in pre-market trading. The decline might be attributed to broader market concerns or profit-taking by investors after a period of strong performance. The stock’s current price remains closer to its 52-week low of $121.03, indicating potential investor caution. According to InvestingPro analysis, the stock appears undervalued based on its Fair Value calculation, with analyst targets ranging from $135 to $210 per share, suggesting potential upside opportunity.

Outlook & Guidance

Looking ahead, Booz Allen Hamilton has raised its revenue growth guidance for fiscal year 2025 to 12-13%, reflecting confidence in its strategic initiatives and market demand. The company projects adjusted EPS guidance between $6.25 and $6.40, underscoring its optimistic outlook despite potential market headwinds. Notable strengths identified by InvestingPro include a 9-year track record of consecutive dividend increases and strong profitability metrics, with a return on equity of 72% in the last twelve months.

Executive Commentary

CEO Horacio Rozanski highlighted the company’s technological leadership, stating, "Booz Allen is the advanced technology company known for speed to outcomes." CFO Matt Calderon emphasized the company’s proactive approach, saying, "We are always better when we’re on offense."

Risks and Challenges

• Presidential transition procurement slowdown could impact future contract awards.
• Geopolitical complexities may affect technology investment and market dynamics.
• Potential agency priority shifts might require rapid redeployment of talent.
• Global advancements in AI, particularly from China, pose competitive challenges.

Q&A

During the earnings call, analysts inquired about the impact of recent executive orders on contracts, to which the company responded that the effects were minimal. The management also addressed concerns about potential shifts in agency priorities, expressing confidence in their ability to adapt swiftly.

Booz Allen Hamilton’s strong financial performance and strategic initiatives position it well for future growth, although market volatility and geopolitical factors remain challenges to navigate.

Full transcript - Booz Allen Hamilton Holding Corp (NYSE:BAH) Q3 2025:

Carmen, Call Moderator: Good morning, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to Bruce Allen Hamilton’s Earnings Call covering 3rd Quarter Fiscal Year 2025 Results. At this time, all participants are in a listen only mode. Later, there will be an opportunity for questions. I’d now like to turn the call over to the Head of Investor Relations, Dustin Darensberg.

Dustin Darensberg, Head of Investor Relations, Booz Allen Hamilton: Thank you. Good morning, and thank you for joining us for Booz Allen’s Q3 fiscal year 2025 earnings call. We hope you’ve had an opportunity to read the press release we issued earlier this morning. We have also provided presentation slides on our website and are now on Slide 2. With me today to talk about our business and financial results are Horacio Rozanski, our Chairman, Chief Executive Officer and President and Matt Calderon, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer.

As shown in the disclaimer on Slide 3, please keep in mind that some of the items we will discuss this morning are forward looking and may relate to future events or our future financial performance and involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause our actual results to differ materially from forecasted results discussed in our SEC filings and on this call. All forward looking statements are expressly qualified in their entirety by the foregoing cautionary statements and speak only as of the date made. Except as required by law, we undertake no obligation to update or revise publicly any forward looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. During today’s call, we will also discuss some non GAAP financial measures and other metrics, which we believe provide useful information for investors. We include an explanation of adjustments and other reconciliations of our non GAAP measures to the most comparable GAAP measures in our Q3 fiscal year 2025 earnings release and slides.

Numbers presented may be rounded and as such may vary slightly from those in our public disclosure. It is now my pleasure to turn the call over to our Chairman, CEO and President, Horacio Rozanski. We are now on Slide 4.

Horacio Rozanski, Chairman, CEO and President, Booz Allen Hamilton: Thank you, Dustin. Welcome to the team. We’re glad to have you on board. And good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining the call.

This morning, Matt and I are excited to share excellent financial results for the Q3 of fiscal year 2025, including double digit growth at both the top and bottom lines. Booz Allen continues to achieve the strategic and operational momentum we aim for this fiscal year. This performance is particularly important in the current industry environment. Consistent with many other presidential transitions, we see some agencies taking time to assess and align priorities with their new agendas. This creates some slowing and uncertainty in the procurement environment as funding shifts in line with those priorities.

We anticipated this adjustment period and have managed our business accordingly. We are running our operations tightly. This is reflected in the strong results we are discussing today. And because of our unique business model, we are able to accelerate investments in priority growth areas. Much of the new administration’s agenda relies on the ability to apply advanced technologies to move faster, disrupt outdated processes and protect our nation’s technological supremacy.

We believe Vault, which stands for Velocity, Leadership and Technology has positioned us to capture this moment. In a few minutes, Matt will take you through the full details of the quarter and our outlook for the rest of the fiscal year. But first, I would like to put our optimism for the future into some additional context. For more than a century, Booz Allen has continuously anticipated and catalyzed change for our clients and our business. Our institution’s journey aligns with some of the most significant moments in our nation’s history.

This include winning World War II and the space race and the successive waves of change driven by the dawn of the digital age. Booz Allen has always been prepared for the technological, societal and geopolitical changes that shape the times. We anticipate the trends that define our future and move our business to the center of that change. Today, in Booz Allen’s 20th presidential transition, we believe we are on the precipice of another transformative era. We know from experience that large scale change always includes a period of uncertainty and disruption.

We also know that these times create major opportunities. The work Booz Allen has done over the last decade and accelerated through Vault has positioned us as the advanced technology company delivering outcomes at the center of our nation’s most important missions. We have a truly unique vantage point for understanding and driving the changes that will bring better, faster innovation into government. Our tech scouting function has been key to identifying the technologies that shape the future. We accelerate the journey from breakthrough to outcome in areas like advanced manufacturing, quantum cryptography and autonomy.

For decades, we have invested in disruptive technologies that are changing the world. We made early bets in cloud, cybersecurity, space and AI that are now core to essential missions. And our venture fund and commercial partnerships help bring leading dual use technologies into civil, defense and national security missions to achieve faster, more effective outcomes. Let me share a few examples that further highlight how Booz Allen is well positioned for this moment. We now have the largest AI business in the federal government and one of the largest cyber businesses in the world.

We are developing and delivering trusted, secure and responsible AI across missions, including for the Defense Department’s largest data platform. And with Thunderdome, we have also built and deployed the largest integrated Zero Trust solution at scale. We are developing and operating premier space systems built with scalable, secure AI powered data solutions to support national security missions. Over the past 2 decades, we have driven massive modernization of technology at the VA. This has accelerated outcomes for our veterans, including faster claims processing and benefits delivery and reduce fraud, waste and abuse.

Using an outcomes based acquisition model, we designed, built and continue to operate Recreation dotgov. Its advanced technical infrastructure delivers a customer experience on par with the most successful commercial platforms. And we are delivering digital battlespace technologies to significantly improve real time situational awareness for war fighters, even in the most disrupted environments. This is the power of Vault. This is the power of Booz Allen.

We also recognize the importance of partnerships to generate speed to outcomes. Booz Allen’s ability to collaborate with a network of innovative commercial technology partners helps speed the impact of emerging and dual use technologies. For example, we know that in the most challenging national security environment in half a century, we need to move faster. We must push boundaries and disrupt long standing barriers to innovation. We recently announced an expanded partnership with Palantir Technologies (NASDAQ:PLTR) to co create solutions to help the U.

S. Maintain superiority against its adversaries. In only 45 days, our teams created a prototype with the capacity to rapidly accelerate integrated war fighting operations. This solution is already being tested in large scale exercises. It will improve collaboration and combine mission planning for the U.

S. And our allies and partners. Last week, we also announced an expanded partnership with Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) Web Services to jointly invest, create and collaborate to accelerate outcomes across U. S. Federal missions.

We will jointly develop and deliver enterprise solutions at scale in areas like cloud migration, cybersecurity and generative AI. This partnership is force multiplier. We are co investing to build on top of our technology platforms and create new solutions to existing problems and capability gaps. I’m tremendously excited about the potential of our ongoing collaboration with both of these companies and with others we are not ready to announce quite yet. As we put it all together, we find ourselves in an excellent position to support the priorities of the new administration.

1st, our multi year effort to become faster at everything allows us to match the velocity of change underway. 2nd, we are one of the few technology companies able to both innovate and deliver at scale. We have long been advocates of maximizing dual use commercial technologies and increasing the use of AI to generate efficiencies. The combination of our own technology, our highly productive partnerships across tech and our extraordinary people give us the edge on speed to outcome. And 3rd, speaking of outcomes, for quite some time now we have prepared and advocated for a move towards outcome based contracting as a model to create both efficiency and faster impact across the missions we support.

We expect this trend to accelerate in the current environment. For all these reasons and more, I am excited about what’s ahead. Booz Allen is the advanced technology company known for speed to outcomes. From the Pacific to orbit and here at home, we are investing in the technologies and the talent necessary to succeed in the coming years decades. And as the new administration’s priorities and team continue to take shape, we look forward to the opportunity to work with them to help enhance our national security and how our government serves our citizens.

And with that, Matt, I’ll turn the call over to you.

Matt Calderon, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Booz Allen Hamilton: Thank you, Horacio, and good morning, everyone. I’m really pleased with our Q3 performance. We had a number of objectives for the quarter and we delivered on all of them. Our leaders simultaneously delivered very strong results, improved the efficiency of our business, maintained momentum into the future and continued to accelerate the core elements of our Voalte strategy that are squarely in line with the change agenda of the new administration: innovation, efficiency, AI, dual use technology and generating speed to outcome. Here are the headlines for the quarter.

We delivered about 14% top line growth, roughly 13% organic with solid performance across all three sectors. We ran the business efficiently, generating $332,000,000 in adjusted EBITDA at an 11.4 percent adjusted EBITDA margin. We maintained a 1.41 times trailing 12 month book to bill. This is our highest at calendar year end in the last 6 years. And we continue to deploy capital to generate long term value for shareholders, including almost $150,000,000 in share repurchases.

Based on this performance, we are tightening towards the upper end of our guidance ranges for this fiscal year. We are poised to deliver another year of double digit growth in revenue and adjusted EBITDA. And as we approach our final quarter of our 3 year investment thesis, we are positioned to exceed our target of $1,200,000,000 to $1,300,000,000 of adjusted EBITDA almost entirely through organic performance. Booz Allen remains a premier compounder and continues to deliver outstanding performance year after year. I’m exceptionally proud of what our Booz Allen team has accomplished and excited about the potential we see for the future.

I’ll now cover our quarterly results in more detail. Please turn to Slide 6. In the Q3, revenue increased roughly 14% year over year to $2,900,000,000 Organic revenue grew about 13% year over year and revenue excluding billable expenses was up 12%. We continue to see solid growth across all of our government and commercial markets. Our defense business had another stellar quarter with 19% year over year revenue growth.

Our intelligence business continued to accelerate, posting 11% growth over the prior year period. And our Civil business grew at a healthy 8% rate year over year. Pivoting now to demand, please turn to Slide 7. Net bookings for the Q3 totaled $1,100,000,000 Our quarterly book to bill was 0.37 times, right in line with our 5 year average of 0.4 times for the 3rd quarter. We maintained a trailing 12 month book to bill of 1.41 times, our highest Q3 trailing 12 month book to bill in 6 years.

Our current backlog of $39,000,000,000 is our highest ever at this point in the year. Our total backlog is up 15% year over year. Looking forward, as Horacio noted, we expect the industry will see a short term slowdown of funding and award activity as the new administration and Congress establish our agenda and as federal government agencies pivot to enact it. This occurs with all presidential transitions and the incoming team clearly is working at a brisk pace. Typically, the short term effect on procurements and contracts is more pronounced for civilian agencies.

We have prepared for this by building momentum, flexibility and resilience into our business model. And looking past this, we are bullish about how our strategy aligns with the change agenda of the incoming administration. We are aggressively leaning into this opportunity. We believe we have the backlog, proposal pipeline for next fiscal year and most important, the technology, the commercial relationships and the innovative ideas for change needed to remain on a strong growth factor. Transitioning now to headcount.

In the Q3, we placed a heavy focus on improving productivity of existing staff, both to provide a more robust employee experience and to give us more operating flexibility going forward. This focus worked, but it did result in us maintaining a roughly flat client staff headcount for the quarter. Frusan finished the 3rd quarter with total client staff headcount of over 32,000, a 6% increase from a year ago. Since the start of the fiscal year, total client staff headcount has grown 4.4%. This puts us in good shape relative to our full year target of 3% to 5% client facing headcount growth.

Going forward, we aim to increase headcount at a consistent pace to support the ramp up of recent wins and to meet our growth aspirations. On the bottom line, we delivered $332,000,000 in adjusted EBITDA in the 3rd quarter, a 14% improvement over the prior year quarter. Our 3rd quarter adjusted EBITDA margin was 11.4%, up 10 basis points year over year. For our fiscal year to date, adjusted EBITDA margin was 11.1%. I’m really pleased with how we are operating the business, which affords us the flexibility to react to this evolving environment.

Working down the P and L, our net income was $187,000,000 28% higher year over year. Adjusted net income grew 7% year over year to $198,000,000 Diluted earnings per share increased to $1.45 per share, up about 31% year over year. Adjusted diluted earnings per share grew to $1.55 per share, up approximately 10% year over year. This increase in ADEPS was driven by our overall profitability as well as a reduction in share count, which was partially offset by a higher tax rate compared to the prior year. Turning now to the balance sheet.

We ended the Q3 with $454,000,000 of cash on hand, net debt of approximately $2,900,000,000 and a net leverage ratio of 2.3 times adjusted EBITDA for the trailing 12 months. Free cash flow for the quarter is $134,000,000 the result of $151,000,000 of cash from operations, plus $17,000,000 of CapEx. Moving now to capital deployment on Slide 8. In the Q3, we deployed a total of $228,000,000 to generate value for shareholders. This included $149,000,000 in share repurchases at an average price of $157.74 per share.

This brings our total repurchase activity to 2.3% of outstanding shares since the beginning of the fiscal year. In addition, we deployed $65,000,000 in quarterly dividends, dollars 9,000,000 in strategic investments through our Corporate Venture Capital Fund and $4,000,000 related to the Parr Government acquisition. Today, we are pleased to announce that our Board of Directors has approved a $0.04 increase to our quarterly dividend. This dividend of $0.55 per share will be payable on March 4 to stockholders of record as of February 14. Our Board has also approved an increase of $500,000,000 to our share repurchase authorization, bringing our available capacity to approximately $1,000,000,000 Our balance sheet remains strong, providing us the capacity and the flexibility to opportunistically deploy capital to create shareholder value.

Now for a look ahead. Please turn to Slide 9 for our updated guidance. We are tightening towards the upper end of our guided ranges across all principal metrics for fiscal year 2025. At the top line, we now expect revenue growth of 12% to 13%, almost all of which is organic. We are narrowing our adjusted EBITDA guidance to a range of $1,310,000,000 to $1,330,000,000 The impact of our recently announced $15,900,000 settlement with the Department of Justice, net of insurance reimbursements will be immaterial to the year.

This implies an adjusted EBITDA margin of about 11%. Additionally, we are raising our ADEPS guidance to a range of $6.25 to $6.40 per share. This includes an anticipated $15,000,000 gain from the expected close of the sale of Snap Attack, in which we have a minority investment in the 4th quarter. Lastly, we now expect operating cash flow between $950,000,000 dollars 1,025,000,000 and free cash flow in the range of $850,000,000 to $925,000,000 In closing, I am bullish about the state of our business. Booz Allen has maintained its momentum and built the flexibility to rapidly adapt and thrive in an evolving environment.

As Horacio said, we have navigated 20 presidential administration transitions, and we are approaching this one with both ideas and optimism. While the transition phase for a new presidential administration always creates a period of recalibration, we view this transition as a unique opportunity. Booz Allen is always on the side of change and we look forward to continuing to bring change to government. We are the clear leader in advanced technology for the federal government, driving speed to outcome better than anyone else.

Carmen, Call Moderator: And I will now turn the call back over to the Chairman, CEO and President Horacio Rozanski.

Horacio Rozanski, Chairman, CEO and President, Booz Allen Hamilton: Thank you, Carmen. Before we begin Q and A this morning, I hope you’ll allow me to take a moment to acknowledge the tragic air collision that took the lives of 67 people yesterday in our nation’s capital. We grieve for the victims and for their families. For those of us who live in the DC area, DC is both a big city and a small town, and we all know someone who’s personally affected by the tragedy. So I wanted to take a moment to again acknowledge the loss.

May all the victims memories before a blessing. Thank you for listening and for allowing me to do this. Carmen, let’s begin Q and A please.

Carmen, Call Moderator: Of course. And as a reminder to our audience, It comes from the line of Marina Perez with Bank of America.

Marina Perez, Analyst, Bank of America: Good morning, everyone.

Horacio Rozanski, Chairman, CEO and President, Booz Allen Hamilton: Hola, Marina.

Marina Perez, Analyst, Bank of America: Hola. So my first question is going to be about hiring. I understand that you’re preparing for this uncertainty as the government and the agencies also adjust to what they’re going to do, what they have to do in awarding. But you guys have been preparing for this change towards technology, towards outcomes for a long time. You launched your Bolt strategy 4 years ago.

And the way I’m going to oversimplify it, but the way I think about those and efficiencies is just putting that on full speed. So how do you think about investing towards being prepared to absorb most of that opportunity on headcount and hiring and how much you prepare to be just like, I don’t know, brace for impact and how the government absorbs this impact, near term uncertainty type of thing?

Horacio Rozanski, Chairman, CEO and President, Booz Allen Hamilton: You know us too well. So let me take a minute to unpack what you say you said because I really agree with everything you pointed out. Let’s start with the short term. As we expected and we talked about it on the last call, we are seeing some of the short term disruption that is not atypical of a presidential transition and especially with a fast moving agenda, again, we expected it and we’re seeing it. Some agencies are already full speed ahead.

Some agencies are taking a little time for the new team to come in and reevaluate. At this point, we have not seen a material impact on our business. But we because we anticipated this, we are managing the business accordingly financially, operationally and strategically. At the financial level, we have a really strong balance sheet. It gives us a lot of opportunity to invest in different ways and be prepared to take advantage of the potential churn in the industry.

At the operational level, as you pointed out, this is a time to run the business tightly, so that we can actually create investment capacity as the priorities begin to clarify and accelerate. And then strategically, as you pointed out, Voalte has prepared us for this. We are fast, we’re flexible and we are in the middle of driving technology to outcome and create change. So we’re uniquely positioned. I will tell you we have already a dozen big ideas that we are shaping that are very much in line with what we believe is the administration’s intent and priorities and we’ve even begun some of these discussions with some clients.

So while we’re managing the business, I think prudently to create investment capacity, we’re very excited about the future.

Marina Perez, Analyst, Bank of America: And then I’m curious if you could discuss on the other side of the world, right, not the customers and the contracting officers and the agencies, but like how the commercial companies also prepare to a government that’s expected to be willing to work with them. Have you seen those companies reach out to you to also have these type of partnerships to also be able to offer their commercial technologies to a government that is not that the easiest customer to deal with?

Horacio Rozanski, Chairman, CEO and President, Booz Allen Hamilton: Absolutely. No, I think you’re right on that too. We’ve been talking about this and we’ve been doing it for quite some time. We have an active partnership program. We’ve talked on the prepared remarks about a couple of the most recent things, but our CVC, our venture fund was aimed at bringing all of these through the scouting process.

We have brought probably hundreds of companies to our clients so that they can get faster on the mission. It is hard for the commercial sector to operate here and in some ways it probably will continue to be. The value that we bring is twofold. 1 is we do understand this environment, which is why they want to work with us. We understand the clients.

We understand the process. But really importantly, we have unique technology that they need because when you put it all together, like we did with Palantir in the Pacific, like we’re doing with AWS on autonomy, when you put it all together, there are massive technology investments. And what we have done, you can actually create things that actually drive outcomes. I’ve talked for example in the past about the fact that most cloud providers assume that everybody is sitting on fiber and they’re going to be connected 20 fourseven. And then when you enter the world in which we live, it’s anything but disconnected, impaired communications where an adversary is actually trying to get you disconnected.

It’s a very different operating environment. We have already built technology around, for example, software defined radio networks, AI defined radio that actually allows you to travel the spectrum differently and either keep connected or manage the disconnection back to connection back to disconnection. Those are the kinds of things that allow us to co create with the commercial sector extraordinarily well and it leverages their investments that they’ve already made, our investments that we’ve already made and our clients are excited. The number of clients that really believe in this value proposition already is great. And as you point out, the system is not prepared for it and the new administration is going to hopefully accelerate some of the changes that are necessary for this to really operate at speed.

Marina Perez, Analyst, Bank of America: Thank you. And last one, short one, but near term, we’re already like, I don’t know, starting to a quarter and we have seen like a lot of like uncertainty around contracting with executive orders, pausing some like contracts and thing with executive orders, pausing some like contracts and everyone reviewing what they have in and out. What are your expectations for book to bill in the Q4?

Matt Calderon, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Booz Allen Hamilton: Yes, Maren, I’ll take that. It’s Matt. As Rossio said, we’ve seen essentially no impact on our contracts to date because the executive orders, even the one that was rescinded related to grant and loan programs. We are seeing some slowdown in the procurement environment. We had a good pipeline for the quarter.

So how those two things net out, I think remains to be seen. But as you can imagine, as Frasier referenced, agencies are taking some time to adjust to the new administration priorities. And quite frankly, the government workforce is adjusting to the new environment that they’re in. And so we’re seeing some slowdown or potential disruption there. And I think that’s going to be true industry wide.

So this quarter, it remains to be seen, we’re really bullish about next year. Even absent all the big ideas that Horacio mentioned, our pipeline for next year is in a really good spot.

Horacio Rozanski, Chairman, CEO and President, Booz Allen Hamilton: Yes, I would only add, Mariana, we’re sitting on a lot of backlog and a lot of opportunity that is playing out right now. And as Matt pointed out, the pipeline is strong and the funding environment is probably going to be strong. I think the administration needs a budget, especially in the national security side to move these priorities forward. And so our expectation is regardless of what happens over the next whatever 60 days that this is going to be a market in which Booz Allen in particular can really thrive.

Marina Perez, Analyst, Bank of America: Thank you so much.

Carmen, Call Moderator: Thank you. One moment for our next question. And it’s from the line of Gautam Khanna with TD Cowen. Please proceed.

Gautam Khanna, Analyst, TD Cowen: Yes. Good morning, guys.

Matt Calderon, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Booz Allen Hamilton: Good morning. Good

Horacio Rozanski, Chairman, CEO and President, Booz Allen Hamilton: morning. I

Gautam Khanna, Analyst, TD Cowen: was wondering if you could expand upon your comments on headcount additions and the planning there. Are you expecting to ramp up headcount more so than what happened in the December quarter in the March June quarters, just given the environment you described?

Matt Calderon, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Booz Allen Hamilton: That’s the plan. I think it’s a dynamic environment. We’ll see how it plays out. I mean just to give you some parameters, our billability in the Q3 was about 1% higher than it was in the Q1. So that’s equivalent to what, 3 30 FT feet feet feet feet feet feet feet feet feet feet feet feet feet feet feet feet feet feet Es.

And in fact, our billability in December was the highest it’s been on record, honestly, a bit too high for my liking. We probably cleared the bench perhaps too aggressively. So we’re ramping up the hiring engine, particularly around a bunch of the large wins that we’ve enjoyed this year and we’ll see how it plays out. And I don’t think you’re going to see the kind of headcount growth you saw in Q4 last year, but we’re bullish both at about the supply and demand side. We built a lot of momentum.

Horacio Rozanski, Chairman, CEO and President, Booz Allen Hamilton: I would also say this, I mean, and this is going to make your guys’ lives a little bit harder and I apologize for that, but it’s actually good for the business. We have gotten a lot faster in the way we can recruit and deploy. And so we can really compress the acceleration deceleration process of

Marina Perez, Analyst, Bank of America: our

Horacio Rozanski, Chairman, CEO and President, Booz Allen Hamilton: recruiting by a lot. For example, we’re using artificial intelligence in different ways. So now we get, call it, 1,000 plus resumes a day. They are read the same night in which the resumes come in and deployed against the potential opportunities out there. We didn’t have that capability 2 years ago.

And so the ramp up and the ramp down of our recruiting pipeline operated differently. And so again, this is getting faster, being flexible. Like Matt said, this is a very dynamic environment. And so I think week by week, we’re going to be matching supply and demand tightly as we see things evolve. The good news is as the opportunities that we see in the horizon really begin to mature and crystallize, we can ramp into them at a different speed than we could have a couple of years ago.

Gautam Khanna, Analyst, TD Cowen: Yes, that’s helpful commentary. And I was wondering also just to expand on the prior questioner’s question. Are you actually seeing a slowdown that has started since the new administration has taken, but at any specific customers with respect to the pace of awarding task orders or contract award adjudications? Have you actually seen any firm evidence of a slowing or is this more on the cotton, if you?

Horacio Rozanski, Chairman, CEO and President, Booz Allen Hamilton: Let me offer it in 2 pieces. First of all, there is clearly slowdown in some agencies. The good news for us is we have very, very small exposure to those agencies. So we’re we are acknowledging what’s out there without seeing any material impact on our business. And then in some of the other agencies, I think I mentioned that even in October, in anticipation of things, some of the timelines for award had lengthened in some of the civil agencies.

That pattern continues. It has not compressed. It has not lengthened. It just there’s a little bit of a wait and see attitude that begun even in the last administration, since that this was going to be an administration transition after the election regardless. And so that has continued.

But overall, like Matt said, our trailing book to bill is 1.4, which for us is extremely high. Backlog is strong. The demand condition right now is solid. On the supply side, we’re really good. The business is running well.

But we have acknowledged, I think probably more than anybody else, the immediate challenges associated with the presidential transition and those are playing out.

Gautam Khanna, Analyst, TD Cowen: Thank you, guys.

Horacio Rozanski, Chairman, CEO and President, Booz Allen Hamilton: Sure.

Carmen, Call Moderator: Thank you. Our next question is from Sheila Kahyaoglu with Jefferies.

Sheila Kahyaoglu, Analyst, Jefferies: Good morning, Horacio, Matt. Thank you so much for the time. Maybe just a little bit more specific on just your growth trajectory. When we think about Intel (NASDAQ:INTC), it outperformed civil for the first time in a while, obviously easier comps and Thunderdome ramping up as the largest 0 Trust program in the federal government. So maybe if you could just talk about how you expect Intel to progress from here and how the Thunderdome ramp is going?

Horacio Rozanski, Chairman, CEO and President, Booz Allen Hamilton: Well, I’ll start, but then I need to let Matt probably complete the thought. I think what has me really excited about our Intel business is under Tom Pfeiffer’s leadership, we have really pivoted that business in 2 directions. One is we’re bringing a lot more technology to the actual intelligence function, a lot more AI, a lot more use of data platforms in a different way. But secondly, and I think this is going to be the most important driver of our growth over time is this is now very much a cyber and space focused business. Cyber will continue to be a significant investment area for our clients, we believe.

But space is, I think, where we’re going to see a lot of important acceleration. And I think, again, as you think about the administration’s agenda, we are really well positioned on the space front in ways we wouldn’t have been a couple of years ago to continue to see the growth over the medium and long term.

Matt Calderon, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Booz Allen Hamilton: Yes. Sheila, it’s playing out the way we anticipated and foreshadowed that our civil business is still going to grow, but perhaps in the short run, not to the extent that the other markets will grow or civil has grown in the past. What’s interesting is behind that, Horacio talked about these dozen or so big ideas and that list keeps growing. What’s fascinating about that list, there are a lot of them civil, a lot of them that involve 1 or more commercial partnerships and increasingly we’re finding we’re pulling technology and capabilities in solutions from our defense and intel clients into Civil to both for opportunities around efficiency or if you think even about the EO that named drug cartels as terrorist organizations, a lot of the technology and capabilities we built up over years in the intel and defense communities, how they can port over to civil. So it’s a dynamic time in our civil business, but it’s a really exciting time.

And I think as I look across the list of big ideas, you probably have more there than anywhere else. And we’re prepared to and are engaging the administration about ideas for change.

Sheila Kahyaoglu, Analyst, Jefferies: Maybe if I could just follow-up there. Can you quantify at all, Matt, what Thunderdome contributes on an annualized basis and when it sort of how long it reaches that run rate for? And then on Civil, how do you think about how do either of you think about the revenue growth rate under this administration versus the prior? Does it change at all?

Matt Calderon, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Booz Allen Hamilton: Yes. I’ll take the Thunderdome question. It’s growing at the pace we anticipated. We’re having a lot of success, most importantly driving impact for clients and that’s translating into more people more clients adopting that Thunderdome solution. In terms of civil, I don’t know, Hassane, do you want to take that?

Horacio Rozanski, Chairman, CEO and President, Booz Allen Hamilton: No, go ahead.

Matt Calderon, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Booz Allen Hamilton: Okay. I think, as I said, we are excited about the opportunities for change. The vast majority of our portfolio in Civil is an area of real mission importance. As Horacio mentioned, we’ve seen of the agencies we’re seeing the most that are seeing the most churn related to the new EOs and direction of the administration, we don’t have large positions there. So we’re excited about the medium to long term in the Civil business.

I think, growth may look more different. There’s a lot of opportunity for outcome based work there. We’ve been talking about that, Sheila, as you know for 12 to 18 months and positioning for that. You think about ways to make the VA more efficient or the IRS more efficient, to bring AI to bear. So I think we may continue to see some short term disruption.

We’ve talked about that in the Civil business, but the team is leaning into opportunities aggressively.

Sheila Kahyaoglu, Analyst, Jefferies: Okay, got it. Thank you.

Carmen, Call Moderator: Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Tobey Sommer with Truist. Please proceed.

Tobey Sommer, Analyst, Truist: Thank you. I was wondering if you could drill down into the civil clients and maybe describe what areas of civil or agencies that you’re seeing a change in behavior? And I know the executive orders have come

Gautam Khanna, Analyst, TD Cowen: sort of almost in the furious

Tobey Sommer, Analyst, Truist: this month, but any sort of contours you could give us would be helpful? Thank you.

Horacio Rozanski, Chairman, CEO and President, Booz Allen Hamilton: Sure, Tobey. I mean, as you know, the core of our Civil business rests on the healthcare side with a very strong emphasis on the VA and Treasury and with the modernization of systems across Treasury and especially the IRS and then broadly across DHS and especially law enforcement. And again, if you look at those areas and you read the same things that I read probably and you talk to probably some of the same people that I talk to, those are areas that I think are right for both opportunity transformation, investment and acceleration. And so that’s what our team is really focused on. We moved away from a civil business that allowed the 1,000 flowers to bloom across all of the smaller agencies quite a while back.

And I’m glad we did because those are the agencies that I think are seeing right now the most near term disruption. Now again, even in the larger agencies, when there is a

Marina Perez, Analyst, Bank of America: change

Horacio Rozanski, Chairman, CEO and President, Booz Allen Hamilton: in philosophy, when there is a change in strategy, there is an immediate impact where people come in and say, wait, let’s pause and take a look. As you saw, there was a significant pause that then was partially reversed on grants and funding of grants and things like that, where Booz Allen has no almost 0 or 0 business. And so it had no impact on us, but I can see how that has a greater impact. Like we said before, are we going to see some awards that maybe are under consideration now take a little longer to get awarded? Well, we had already begun to see that and I don’t expect that will shorten in the immediate term.

We see some things get canceled and some things get started. This is probably what my 6th presidential transition since I joined Booz Allen. The answer to that is almost certainly yes, because we’ve seen that in every other one of those. But at the end of the day, that is a very short term phenomenon and we’re not focused on that. We will manage that.

We’ll navigate that. We are doing well already there. Our real focus is once things get going in earnest and continue to accelerate, we are able to match that acceleration pace. The history of Booz Allen is we actually do better in every administration transition because we can match better than anybody else the opportunity set. And especially now as an advanced technology company with the largest AI business, the largest cyber business, a strong space presence, largest quantum or I don’t know if it’s the largest, but the leading quantum business.

You put all of that together and you say we are really well positioned to take advantage of opportunities as we as things get underway and we move past the immediate transition.

Tobey Sommer, Analyst, Truist: Thank you for that Horacio. As a follow-up, if I could. With respect to the offer for internal government employees to resign, is there a threshold of percentage decline in internal government staff at your agency customers whereby if large enough, it could signal increased outsourcing to you and others in the marketplace. Just curious how you’re thinking about that, because I guess we’ll have some sense for what the results are in about a week?

Horacio Rozanski, Chairman, CEO and President, Booz Allen Hamilton: Sure. I mean, as you know, we’re not in the outsourcing business and in the staff augmentation business. We’re in the business of bringing technology to bear and that’s what we’re focused on is those types of opportunities. That’s where we think both in the near and in the medium term, the growth is going to be, the investment is going to come, the efficiencies are going to be realized. And so we are full speed ahead on generating those types of opportunities and positioning them for them.

Carmen, Call Moderator: Thank you. One moment for our next question. And it comes from the line of Louis De Palma with William Blair. Please proceed.

Horacio Rozanski, Chairman, CEO and President, Booz Allen Hamilton: Good morning, Louis.

Louis De Palma, Analyst, William Blair: Horacio and Matt and Dustin, also good morning. For Horacio and Matt, your previous long term revenue guidance that you still mentioned in your slide deck was 5% to 8%. And I know you aren’t going to give a fiscal 2026 guidance, but should that range be considered a reasonable benchmark in this new era of slower procurement?

Matt Calderon, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Booz Allen Hamilton: Heather, I’ll take that one. Historically, we’ve said that if our book to bill is above 1.2% and our headcount is in the 3% to 5% range, we’re looking at mid to upper single digit organic growth, if not probably biased towards the high end of that. So we had a lot of momentum in the business. I think your question is hard to parse, right, because we’re talking about a short term recalibration for the procurement environment over the medium to long term and that will start with when the administration really lands and they get a new budget passed and we begin to see areas that they’re going to invest in. We haven’t talked about Iron Dome, for example, which is an area we’re really excited about.

If The money is going to start to flow. And so I wouldn’t read much into this quarter or next. I think it’s going to be a period of recalibration. And the answer to your long term question is we’re really bullish about where we’re headed. We see a lot of opportunity.

As Rossio said, we’ve been preparing for this moment. We’ve been talking about Volt for the past 3 years and the tenants of Volt are squarely in line with what the administration wants to do, AI, speed, dual use technology, driving efficiency. So, this is an opportunity. And you heard in our prepared remarks, but I’ll just say, my experience is Booz Allen is always better when we’re on offense and our team is on offense. And I think that’s what you and our investors would expect is we’re going to create the future.

There’s a reason why our mission statement says we’re empowering people to change the world and we’re embracing this change and going forward.

Louis De Palma, Analyst, William Blair: Great. Thanks. And I guess for either of you, do you in general view this period of Doge cost cutting as different from the 2011 era of sequestration? And this one would probably be for Matt. Do you expect certain unpriced options that are in your backlog to go away or perhaps just be replaced with other work as priority shift?

Horacio Rozanski, Chairman, CEO and President, Booz Allen Hamilton: Louis, why don’t I take the first part of it. I actually think this is qualitatively different from the sequestration time period in that the there they started with a lower first of all, it came up all of a sudden because they had created the BCA caps as a way to force themselves to agree. And then when they couldn’t agree, it’s almost they put their gun to the proverbial head and then the gun went off. And as a result of that, this was this unprecedented takedown of across the board funding that was irrespective of priority investment areas of need. This to me reads completely differently.

If I listen to the conversation that is happening around Doge, this is about creating efficiencies and then deciding how that is going to be invested for the American people. And in that sense, our expectation is that a lot of what is going to be created in the form of efficiencies will be reinvested as investments in technology that will drive future outcomes. We are in a geopolitically very difficult environment where as you heard me say, it’s not we’re just not moving fast enough. I think there’s a possibility to accelerate that there’s a real desire in the department both by the incoming team and by the existing professionals there to accelerate things. And this should enable that both from a funding and a process perspective.

There’s a real need to think about immigration differently. There’s a real need to think about space differently. And any success at creating efficiencies, I think, will unlock the possibility of really creating that faster, which for us spells both impact and opportunity. And so that’s why we came into 2011 recognizing that this was going to be a multiyear period of difficulty. I’ll remind you that even then we decided to double down and invest as opposed to retrench, but we knew that was going to be a multiyear period.

We think this is a much shorter period of adjustment followed by a real clear set of opportunities and priorities we can pursue.

Matt Calderon, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Booz Allen Hamilton: If I could just add to that, Louis, the dominant contracting force in that period was low price technically acceptable. Now it’s all about outcome base and innovation and speed. It could not be more different in terms of what the changes are trying to affect and how we expect it’s going to play out. Back then it was all about who can get as low as possible to supply the same amount of service. This is the antithesis of that.

Louis De Palma, Analyst, William Blair: Great. And like recently when there have been shifting priorities or contract losses like Focus Fox or the recent VA contract, you have been able to shift your talent to other short staffed high growth programs. And in terms of Horacio’s answer and your answer, Matt, you seem to suggest that Doge is more of a shift of priorities rather than just across the board sequestration type cost cutting. Do you expect with Vault that you’re going to be able to have the same type of versatility and be able to shift employees to align to the new priorities quickly?

Horacio Rozanski, Chairman, CEO and President, Booz Allen Hamilton: Absolutely. And I think we may be able to do even more. I think first of all, we have our overall business model based on the single P and L has always been an asset at times like this and it’s going to be a fundamental asset. Now second, as I mentioned before, we are using new tools and new technologies to do everything faster inside of Booz Allen. We can understand, for example, if somebody is coming off a contract, we now use AI to understand where would their skill set be best match and we can make that transition happen, not quite a milliseconds yet, but certainly infinitely faster than we could have in the past.

But maybe 3rd and most importantly, we are really leaning in. And like I said, we are looking for opportunities. We’re talking about opportunities. We are focusing on those and we are beginning to invest as we speak on the in the areas that we believe will turn into opportunities. We’re not standing still.

And so if there are contract shifts, I am really proud of this workforce and their versatility and their value. And I’m really bullish about our ability to redeploy them to where it makes the most sense.

Louis De Palma, Analyst, William Blair: Great. Thanks everyone.

Carmen, Call Moderator: Thank you. Our next question is from Matt Akers with Wells Fargo (NYSE:WFC). Please proceed.

Matt Akers, Analyst, Wells Fargo: Hey, good morning guys. Thanks for the question. Maybe one for Horacio. I mean, so I guess the news last week out of China on AI with Deepsea. Just curious if you’ve heard any kind of reaction from your clients that maybe more urgency to kind of accelerate investment in AI?

And just curious, just sort of where we stand in kind of the AI kind of arms race with China?

Horacio Rozanski, Chairman, CEO and President, Booz Allen Hamilton: Yes. I think I spent a fair amount with our AI team on this topic and it won’t surprise you that we have been tracking this development for the last year. So while the sort of the announcement had some element of surprise, it was not totally out of the blue. Here’s what I would say. First of all, there’s a real opportunity here to rethink at least some elements of how AI is deployed.

And there are some capabilities that Deepsea showed that actually demonstrate that by distilling and doing a number of things, you can actually really lower the cost of deployment and use of AI. You can put it in a much smaller compute footprint. And again, as you think about Edge and all the things we worry about, there’s a lot of things to think about there. The second point is it demonstrates how dynamic this field is and how, if you will, ephemeral leadership could be in an area like this. And I think it’s going to keep everybody on our toes to ensure that we continue to stay on top of it, which is again, I take you back to the VEE involved.

This is why we focused on speed because this is how fast things are changing. And then 3rd, I will say this, I mean, again, when China does something like this, it’s a moment of pause, not just for our clients, but really for all of us for a couple of reasons. First of all, I think it’s we need all need to take some time to examine some of the claims, because there’s some opacity in some of the claims that I think we still need to shred the ground truth. But secondly, it’s already been reported in the press that if you ask certain questions, you get some funny answers coming out of DeepSeq. We don’t know in these models, what is also behind them underneath that.

And so the deployment of models where we don’t have complete understanding of their provenance And what may be in there is something that again creates an intersection between AI and cyber, also something we’ve been talking about for a couple of years that we really need to be very thoughtful about. These are the kinds of things we’re talking to our clients about. These are the kinds of areas where I think Booz Allen’s leadership, if anything, will expand and accelerate. So you and I could geek out on this probably for the next half an hour, but I’ll park it there.

Matt Akers, Analyst, Wells Fargo: That’s great. Thanks. And then I guess I want to ask about capital deployment. You guys have sort of laid out what the strategy kind of the priorities are, but your stock is like 30% off of where it was pre election. I think you’ve talked about being comfortable up to a little bit higher leverage level than where you are now.

Just curious if at some point it makes sense to maybe do something more aggressive with buybacks just given that opportunity?

Matt Calderon, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Booz Allen Hamilton: Yes. Thanks, Matt. I think if you look, we bought back about $500,000,000 in shares over the 1st 9 months. So as is often true, we’re doing things sort of our own way and quietly, but we’ve retired 2.3% of our share count over the 1st 3 quarters. You’re right.

I mean, our balance sheet is strong, right? Our net leverage is 2.3 times. So we deployed almost $1,000,000,000 worth of capital over the last 12 months, while still delevering. And that gives us a lot of flexibility to generate value, in different ways. And as Horacio and I have said, we’re really bullish about Booz Allen’s prospects in the new environment.

So we will continue to deploy capital aggressively and flexibly to create shareholder value in lots of ways. Sounds great. Thank you.

Carmen, Call Moderator: Thank you. And now we’ll turn the call back to Horacio Rosansky for final remarks.

Horacio Rozanski, Chairman, CEO and President, Booz Allen Hamilton: Thank you, Carmen. Thank you all for your questions and for taking time with us this morning. Before we close, I want to take a minute to once again, this is my favorite thing, to brag about the amazing people of Booz Allen. They’re at the heart of the work that we do and the outcomes that we deliver for our clients each and every day. As we closed out our 110th anniversary in December, our people delivered yet one more achievement that makes me proud and is worth highlighting.

In 2024, our employee giving campaign raised a record $2,600,000 in support of nearly 2,500 nonprofits. This is the highest level of employee participation ever. And it demonstrates the care that the people at Bouygues (EPA:BOUY) Island take for each other and for one of the communities and it is really one of the countless reasons why I’m still here after 30 some years, why I’m so proud to be here every day and work with these amazing people who truly are empowered to change the world. And on that note, thank you again all of you for joining us and have a great day.

Carmen, Call Moderator: And this concludes today’s conference call. Thank you all for participating and you may now disconnect.

This article was generated with the support of AI and reviewed by an editor. For more information see our T&C.