Earnings call transcript: Huron Q2 2025 beats forecasts, stock stable

Huron Consulting Group Inc. (HURN) reported its second-quarter 2025 earnings, surpassing analyst expectations with an EPS of $1.89, compared to the forecasted $1.79. The company also exceeded revenue projections, posting $411.76 million against an expected $402.65 million. Despite the positive earnings surprise, Huron’s stock remained stable, closing at $131.93, a slight increase of 0.11% in the aftermarket session. According to InvestingPro analysis, the company maintains a "GREAT" financial health score of 3.17, with notably efficient growth metrics including a PEG ratio of 0.19, indicating potential value relative to its growth rate.

Key Takeaways

• Huron’s Q2 2025 EPS of $1.89 beat forecasts by 5.59%.
• Revenue for the quarter was $411.76 million, surpassing expectations by 2.26%.
• Stock price remained stable post-earnings, with a minor increase of 0.11%.
• The company raised its full-year revenue guidance to $1.64 billion-$1.68 billion.
• Acquisitions in healthcare and commercial segments are expected to be EPS accretive in 2026.

Company Performance

Huron’s performance in the second quarter of 2025 showed resilience, with revenues up 8.3% from the same period last year, driven by organic growth across all segments. The company’s strategic acquisitions in the healthcare and commercial sectors have strengthened its market position, despite facing challenges such as reimbursement pressures in healthcare and regulatory uncertainties in education.

Financial Highlights

• Revenue: $411.76 million, up 8.3% year-over-year.
• Earnings per share: $1.89, exceeding the forecast of $1.79.
• Net income: $19.4 million, down from $37.5 million in Q2 2024.
• Adjusted EBITDA: $60.6 million, representing 15.1% of revenue, up from $55.7 million in 2024.

Earnings vs. Forecast

Huron’s EPS of $1.89 beat the forecasted $1.79 by 5.59%, marking a positive surprise. Revenue also exceeded expectations by 2.26%, reaching $411.76 million. This performance indicates a strong quarter for Huron, continuing a trend of exceeding market expectations in recent quarters.

Market Reaction

Despite the better-than-expected earnings report, Huron’s stock price remained largely unchanged in the aftermarket, closing at $131.93. This price is within its 52-week range of $101.73 to $155, reflecting stable investor sentiment amid broader market conditions. Analyst targets suggest potential upside, with price targets ranging from $165 to $180, though InvestingPro data indicates three analysts have recently revised their earnings expectations downward for the upcoming period.

Outlook & Guidance

Huron has increased its full-year revenue guidance to between $1.64 billion and $1.68 billion. The company anticipates upper single-digit growth in healthcare, mid to upper single-digit growth in education, and mid-twenty percent growth in the commercial segment. The acquisitions made are expected to contribute positively to EPS in 2026.

Executive Commentary

CEO Mark Hussey highlighted the "substantial disruption" facing clients but noted the company’s strong positioning in the market. CFO John Kelly mentioned the "good strength" in digital offerings, reflecting confidence in Huron’s strategic direction. Hussey also emphasized the successful M&A strategy, stating, "We’re finding areas that fill in our gaps very nicely."

Risks and Challenges

• Healthcare reimbursement pressures could impact future profitability.
• Regulatory uncertainties in the education sector may pose challenges.
• Market volatility and macroeconomic factors could affect growth projections.
• Integration risks associated with recent acquisitions need careful management.
• Dependence on digital transformation projects, which have temporarily paused, may affect future revenue streams.

Q&A

During the earnings call, analysts inquired about the temporary pause in digital transformation projects and the impact of recent legislation on healthcare and education sectors. The management addressed these concerns, highlighting strong sales conversions and strategies to optimize headcount and utilization rates.

Full transcript - Huron Consulting Group Inc (HURN) Q2 2025:

Conference Call Operator: Good afternoon, and welcome to Huron Consulting Group’s webcast to discuss the financial results for the second quarter twenty twenty five. At this time, all conference call lines are on a listen only mode. Later, we will conduct a question and answer session for conference call participants and instructions will follow at that time. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. Before we begin, I would like to point all of you to the disclosure at the end of the company’s news release for information about forward looking statements that may be made or discussed on this call.

The news release is posted on Huron’s website. Please review that information along with the filings with the SEC for a disclosure of factors that may impact subjects discussed in this afternoon’s webcast. The company will be discussing one or more non GAAP financial measures. Please look at the earnings release on Huron’s website for all of the disclosures required by the SEC, including reconciliation to the most comparable GAAP numbers. And now I’d like to turn the call over Mark Hussey, Chief Executive Officer and President of Huron Consulting Group.

Mr. Hussey, please proceed.

Mark Hussey, Chief Executive Officer and President, Huron Consulting Group: Good afternoon, and welcome to Huron Consulting Group’s second quarter twenty twenty five earnings call. With me today are John Kelly, our Chief Financial Officer, and Ronnie Dale, our Chief Operating Officer. Revenues before reimbursable expenses, or RBR, in the quarter grew 8% over the 2024, including organic RBR growth across all three operating segments. RBR in the 2025 was a record high for our business. Growth in our core markets continues to reflect strong demand for our services as health systems, universities and commercial businesses adapt to regulatory and macroeconomic pressures, while evolving their business models for success in the future.

Clients continue to seek our deep industry expertise, breadth of capabilities, and proven track record of delivering results to help them achieve a more sustainable path forward in the face of significant market disruption. The current demand environment coupled with our strong client relationships provides us confidence in our outlook for continued growth in 2025 as reflected in our updated annual guidance. I’ll now share some additional insights into our second quarter performance. In the Healthcare segment, second quarter RBR grew 4% over the prior year quarter. Excluding the results for student education, which we divested at the 2024, healthcare segment RBR grew 6% over the 2024.

The increase in RBR in the quarter was driven by continued strong demand for our performance improvement and services, financial advisory, and strategy and innovation offerings, partially offset by a decrease in our digital offerings within healthcare. The passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act earlier this month brought some clarity. The anticipated reductions in federal spending on healthcare. The cuts in Medicaid funding are projected to reduce federal spending on health care by over $1,000,000,000,000 over the next decade, and are expected to result in a significant increase in patients without health insurance coverage. In response, hospitals and health systems are acting with urgency to prepare for margin declines anticipated in the coming years, while addressing current financial pressures driven primarily by costs that continue to increase at a faster rate than reimbursements.

Within the current legislation, many hospitals and health systems will face reductions in the supplemental payments that states have made to health care providers to augment low Medicaid reimbursement rates. The expected increase in the uninsured population has been estimated to be up to 10,000,000 people, which will increase the cost of uncompensated care for most hospitals. As hospitals and health systems address their budget gaps and position their business for a more sustainable future, returning to Huron because of our decades long track record of delivering significant measurable and sustainable financial benefits. In this environment, demand remains strong for our performance improvement, financial advisory and strategy and innovation offerings as reflected in our RBR growth and our solid pipeline. While demand for our digital offerings within healthcare remains solid, we have seen slower sales conversions in certain areas within our pipeline for larger digital transformation engagements.

We believe this to be a temporary pause as our clients focus on their immediate priorities to address their financial situations. As we’ve mentioned on prior earnings calls, the breadth of our capabilities, we believe we are well positioned across a full range of market conditions to address the wide array of opportunities and challenges facing our hospital physician group and health system clients, both now and in the future, which we believe will drive continued growth for our healthcare segment. Let me also add some perspective to the recent acquisition we announced in the healthcare segment. At the end of the second quarter, we acquired Eclipse Insights to strengthen our performance improvement offerings. We partnered with Eclipse Insights in the market for several years.

This acquisition strengthens Huron’s mid revenue cycle expertise, enhancing our ability to support providers across the full revenue cycle continuum, from patient intake and care delivery, through documentation, billing, and reimbursements. Clips Insights brings deep experience in charge capture optimization, clinical documentation, coding, and NILS management and revenue strategy, key areas that have direct impact on hospital financial performance. Turning to education. Education segment RBR grew 5% in the 2025 over the prior year quarter, driven by strong demand for our strategy and operations offerings and increased demand for our research software product offerings. We achieved record education segment RBR in the quarter.

The team continues to execute exceptionally well in the ongoing dynamic regulatory landscape. The recent legislation brought some clarity for taxation of endowment earnings. However, in most other areas, universities and research institutes remain in a period of heightened uncertainty. The impact to our broad client base is highly variable, and institutions are closely monitoring evolving regulatory environment and assessing the magnitude, timing, and strategic implications of potential scenarios that will affect them. The industry continues to face the prospect of lower indirect reimbursement rates for research grants, reduced federal support for research grants and contracts, anticipated declines in enrollment numbers from international and domestic students, and potential reductions in federal financial aid.

As such, our clients continue to strategically prepare for a variety of future scenarios while preemptively taking action to position their organizations for the best possible outcome and a sustainable future. This environment led to a record level of sales conversion for our education segment during the quarter. Our performance improvement offerings in education remain in high demand, as clients seek opportunities to reduce cost, optimize their operations, and strengthen their financial positions. Demand for our digital offerings continues to be robust as clients view investments in their technology infrastructures to be foundational to driving enterprise wide operating efficiencies. In research, many clients are focused on optimizing their research strategies to align with their mission and to retain their research faculty.

In addition, they’re increasingly turning to our software products and managed services offerings to optimize their research administration operations. As tuition and government revenue sources are pressured, institutions are increasingly focused on optimizing fundraising strategies to grow philanthropic support. Our advancement fundraising offerings are well positioned to address these evolving needs. A comprehensive and balanced portfolio allows us to serve our clients across the full spectrum of challenges and opportunities that they are facing in the current landscape. The needs of our clients are wide ranging, and we believe we remain best positioned to serve them in this uncertain environment, given the breadth of our diverse offerings and our deep understanding of the industry and our clients’ institutions.

And now let me turn to the commercial segment. In the 2025, we also achieved record RBR in the commercial segment. Commercial segment RBR grew 28% over the prior year quarter. The increase was driven by the incremental RVR from our acquisition of Akcea and strong demand for our digital offerings. Excluding the acquisition of Akcea, our commercial digital capability RVR grew 23% over the prior year quarter.

Building upon the strengths of our digital financial advisory and strategy capabilities, our growth strategy in the commercial segment is focused on increasing the depth of our industry expertise, while broadening our offerings and market reach, primarily seeking opportunities that are highly complementary to our current portfolio. This strategy has led to continued growth in the commercial segment during a challenging market environment. As our global clients navigate through the broader macroeconomic environment, they’re turning to Huron to advance their competitive positions, drive operational efficiency, and leverage data to make better, faster decisions. For example, we’re working closely with one of our vendor partners in Europe to bring our deep enterprise performance management experience to serve large multinational clients. Many of these large complex companies are upgrading their technologies to improve the quality and speed of planning, scenario modeling, and the data integration needed to make faster decisions and operate more effectively in today’s volatile and dynamic environment.

As part of our programmatic M and A strategy, we’re also investing inorganically to execute our commercial industry strategy. Earlier this month, we acquired Reliant, a leading advisory partner to the financial services industry with relationships with some of the top financial organizations in the world. Trelliance brings decades of specialized expertise in areas such as risk management, compliance, operations, financial crimes, and fraud. Combining Trelliance offerings with Huron’s existing industry specific digital capabilities creates a more comprehensive portfolio to help our clients address the complex challenges of balancing growth, operational efficiency, and automation with robust risk management that complies with the most stringent regulations. We have a solid track record of expanding our commercial portfolio to include accretive offerings and capabilities, building upon our core commercial industries of focus in financial services, industrials and manufacturing, energy and utilities, and the public sector.

We believe that our focused strategy and disciplined investments will continue to foster our competitive advantage and support the achievement of our medium term financial targets in this segment. And now let me turn to our outlook for the year. Inclusive of our recent acquisitions, today we’re increasing our RBR guidance to a range of $1,640,000,000 to $1,680,000,000 which represents an increase of 12% at the midpoint of our guidance when compared to our full year 2024 results. Maintaining our adjusted EBITDA margin guidance range of 14% to 14.5% of RBR, and increasing our adjusted non GAAP EPS guidance to a range of 7.3 to $7.7 which represents an increase of 16% at the midpoint as compared to full year 2024. We’re pleased with the progress we’ve made in executing our organic growth strategy in the 2025, especially given the challenges posed by the current macroeconomic environment.

In parallel, we continue to advance our programmatic M and A strategy, containing a disciplined focus on delivering upon our stated goal of adding 2% to 4% inorganic growth annually. In parallel, we are committed to driving continued sustainable margin expansion fueled by our ongoing pricing and efficiency initiatives. We believe our outlook for 2025 reflects the strong foundation we’ve built, the ongoing market tailwinds for our business, and continued solid execution of our growth strategy, consistent with medium term financial goals we established at our Investor Day in March. Our strong 2025 performance, our pipeline of emerging opportunities, and the strengthened outlook are only possible because of our deep industry expertise, broad portfolio of offerings, and our highly talented and collaborative team. Disruption facing our clients and primary end markets is substantial, stemming from the ongoing market uncertainty and regulatory environment, as well as the rapidly evolving competitive landscape.

We continue to believe this disruption creates significant opportunities for long term growth for Huron. And now let me turn it over to John for a more detailed discussion of our financial results. Thank

John Kelly, Chief Financial Officer, Huron Consulting Group: you, Mark, and good afternoon, everyone. Before I begin, please note that I will be discussing non GAAP financial measures such as EBITDA, adjusted EBITDA, adjusted net income, adjusted EPS, and free cash flow. Our press release, 10 Q, and Investor Relations page on the Huron website, reconciliations of these non GAAP measures to the most comparable GAAP measures, along with a discussion of why management uses these non GAAP measures, and why management believes they provide useful information to investors regarding our financial condition and operating results. Before discussing our financial results for the quarter, I’d like to discuss several housekeeping items. First, our second quarter twenty twenty five results in the Healthcare segment exclude the operating results from the Studer Education business, which was divested on 12/31/2024.

Second, our second quarter results in the education segment do reflect a full quarter of operating results from the acquisitions of Advancement Resources and Halpin, both of which closed in March 2025. Third, our acquisition of Eclipse Insights closed on June 24, and as such, a partial period of their operating results are included within the healthcare segment. Operating results of Eclipse were not material to our second quarter results. Finally, our acquisition of Trelliant, which closed in July, is not included in our second quarter results. The results of Trelliant will begin to be included in the third quarter within commercial segment.

Now I’ll share some of the key financial results from the second quarter. RVR for the 2025 was $402,500,000 up 8.3% from $371,700,000 in the same quarter of 2024. Organic RBR, which excludes the RBR generated by all acquisitions completed subsequent to the 2024, with 4.2% over the prior year quarter, driven by growth across all three operating segments. As Mark mentioned, we achieved record RBR in the quarter, crossing the $400,000,000 mark for the first time. None of this would be possible without our incredible team and their dedication to our clients, our business and each other.

Net income for the 2025 was $19,400,000 $1.09 per diluted share compared to net income of $37500000.0.2.3 dollars per diluted share in the 2024. As a percentage of total revenues, net income decreased to 4.7% in the 2025, compared to 9.8% in the 2024. Net income for the 2025 includes an $8,200,000 non cash impairment charge, net of tax, related to our convertible debt investment in a third party. Net income for the 2024 includes an $11,100,000 litigation settlement gain, net of tax, related to a completed legal matter in which Huron would be plaintiff. Our effective income tax rate in the 2025 was 29.9%.

It was higher than the statutory rate, primarily due to the establishment of a valuation allowance for deferred tax asset recorded as the result of the capital loss on our investment in a hospital or home company, as well as certain non deductible expense items. These unfavorable items were partially offset by a tax benefit related to non taxable gains on our investments used to fund our deferred compensation liability. We now expect an effective tax rate in the range of 25% to 27% for the full year. Adjusted EBITDA was $60,600,000 in Q2 twenty twenty five, or 15.1% of RBR, compared to $55,700,000 or 15% of RBR in Q2 twenty twenty four. The increase in adjusted EBITDA for the quarter primarily due to increases in segment operating income for all three operating segments, excluding the impact of segment depreciation and amortization and segment restructuring charges, partially offset by the increase in unallocated corporate expenses, excluding the impact of the change in the market value of our deferred compensation liabilities and transaction related expenses.

Adjusted net income was $33,700,000 or $1.89 per diluted share in Q2 twenty twenty five, compared to $18,500,000 or $1.68 per diluted share in the 2024, resulting in a 12.5% increase in adjusted diluted earnings per share over Q2 twenty twenty four. Now I’ll discuss the performance of each of our operating segments. The Healthcare segment generated 49% of total company RBR during the 2025. The segment posted RBR of $197,800,000 up $7,700,000 4.1% from the 2024. The 2024 included $3,500,000 of RBR from the Steward Education business, which was divested in 2024.

Excluding the results for Steward Education, healthcare segment Q2 RBR grew 6% over the 2024. The increase in RBR in the quarter was driven by continued strong demand for our performance improvement, managed services, financial advisory, and strategy and innovation offerings, partially offset by a decrease in our digital offerings within healthcare and the decrease in RVR due to the divestiture of our student education practice. The inorganic RVR contribution from our acquisitions was immaterial in the 2025. Operating income margin for healthcare was 30.2% in Q2, twenty twenty five, compared to 29.1% in Q2, twenty twenty four. The increase in margin was primarily due to decreases in bad debt expense, salaries and related expenses for our support personnel, partially offset by an increase in contractor expenses as a percentage of RBR.

The Education segment generated 32% of total company RBR during the 2025. The Education segment posted record RBR of $129,300,000 up $6,500,000 or 5.3% from the 2024. The increase in RBR in the quarter was driven by strong demand for our strategy and operations offerings, increased demand for our software product offerings within our digital capability. Inorganic RBR contribution from our acquisitions was $2,200,000 in the 2025. The operating income margin for education was 25% in Q2 twenty twenty five, compared to 25.1% the same quarter in 2024.

The commercial segment generated 19% of total company RBR during the 2025, posted record RBR $75,400,000 up $16,600,000 or 28.2% from the 2024. The increase in RBR was driven by $12,300,000 incremental RBR our acquisition of Axia, strong demand for our digital offerings. Operating income margin for the commercial segment was 16.6% for Q2 twenty twenty five compared to 15.3% for the same quarter in 2024. The increase in operating income margin is primarily attributable to revenue growth that outpaced the increases in compensation costs for our revenue generating professionals, partially offset by an increase in contractor expenses as a percentage of RBR. Corporate expenses not allocated at the segment level and excluding corporate restructuring charges dollars 54,300,000.0 in Q2 twenty twenty five, compared to $45,600,000 in Q2 twenty twenty four.

Unallocated corporate expenses in the 2025 included $3,700,000 of expense related to the increase in the liability of our deferred compensation plan compared to $700,000 of expense in the 2024. These amounts are offset by the change in market value of the investment assets used to fund that plan, which is reflected in other income expense. Excluding the impact of our deferred compensation plan and restructuring expense in both periods, unallocated corporate expenses increased $5,800,000 in the 2025, primarily driven by increases in salaries and related expenses for our support personnel and legal expenses and third party professional fees related to M and A activity during the quarter. Now turning to the balance sheet and cash flows. Cash flow from operations in the 2025 was $80,000,000 During the quarter, used $6,300,000 to invest in capital expenditures, inclusive of internally developed software costs, resulting in free cash flow of $73,700,000 We continue to expect full year free cash flow to be in a range of positive $160,000,000 to $190,000,000 net of cash taxes and interest and excluding non cash stock compensation.

DSO came in at seventy eight days for the 2025 compared to eighty one days for the 2024. The decrease in DSO reflects the impact of collections on certain larger healthcare and education projects in alignment with our contractual payment schedules. Total debt as of 06/30/2025 was $657,800,000 consisting entirely of our senior bank debt. And we finished the quarter with cash of $61,000,000 for net debt of $596,800,000 This was a $43,900,000 increase in net debt compared to Q1 twenty twenty five, primarily due to the share repurchases and acquisition payments during the quarter. Our leverage ratio is defined in our senior bank agreement with 2.5 times adjusted EBITDA as of 06/30/2025, compared to 2.2 times adjusted EBITDA as of 06/30/2024.

Continue to expect our year end leverage ratio to be approximately two times full year adjusted EBITDA. In the second quarter, we used $61,000,000 to repurchase approximately 430,000 shares, bringing our total year to date share repurchases to $133,900,000 and approximately 938,000 shares, representing 5.3% of our common stock outstanding as of 12/31/2024. As of June were made available for share repurchases under the current share repurchase authorization from our board of directors. Since 12/31/2021, we have repurchased approximately 5,700,000.0 shares under our share repurchase program, returning over $500,000,000 of capital to our shareholders. Today we announced that effective with the closing on July 30, we have amended and restated our credit facility.

We extended the maturity date on the facility to 2030 and increased our borrowing capacity to $1,100,000,000 on favorable pricing terms to provide additional flexibility to support the anticipated growth in our business, as well as our capital allocation strategy. We remain committed to deploying capital in a balanced way, including returning capital to shareholders and executing strategic tuck in acquisitions while maintaining our debt levels within our target leverage ratio. Finally, me turn to our guidance for the full year 2025. Mark mentioned, inclusive of our recent acquisitions, today we are increasing our RBR guidance to a range of $1,640,000,000 to $1,680,000,000 maintaining our adjusted EBITDA guidance range of 14% to 14.5% of RBR, and increasing our adjusted non GAAP EPS to a range of $7.3 to $7.7 Now let me provide some additional color into these numbers. Before consideration of our recent acquisitions of Acliffe and Trelyon, we are narrowing and increasing the midpoint of our previous RBR guidance to a range of $1,620,000,000 to $1,660,000,000 effectively narrowing to the upper half of our original guidance range.

We’re pleased with our first half performance, year to date sales conversions and pipeline of emerging opportunities. We believe we will continue to be well positioned to help our clients address increased strategic, financial and operational pressures facing their businesses. This pressure is particularly acute for our healthcare provider clients, who’s driving increased demand for our performance improvement, managed services, financial advisory and strategy and innovation offerings in the healthcare segment. We expect our recent acquisitions of Eclipse and TreLiant to collectively add approximately $20,000,000 of RBR in the 2025. As such, inclusive of these acquisitions, we now expect full year consolidated RBR to be in the range of $1,640,000,000 to $1,680,000,000 We expect approximately half of this acquisition RBR to be in our healthcare segment and about half in our commercial segment.

We expect a net adjusted EBITDA from these acquisitions as a percentage of RBR to be in a range consistent with our overall consolidated margin guidance, inclusive of certain expenses to integrate the businesses that we do not expect to repeat in 2026. With regard to adjusted EPS, we expect the net impact of Eclipse and Trelliant to be neutral for the remainder of 2025, reflecting those incremental integration expenses over the next two quarters. We expect Eclipse and Treliant to be adjusted EPS accretive individually and in the aggregate in 2026. Finally, me provide updated segment level guidance inclusive of the Eclipse and Treliant acquisitions. With regard to our Healthcare segment, we now expect upper single digit percentage revenue growth for full year 2025.

We now expect operating margins will be in a range of approximately 28% to 30%. The education segment, we continue to expect mid to upper single digit percentage revenue growth for the full year 2025, and operating margins to be in the range of approximately 23% to 25%. The commercial segment, we now expect to see growth in the mid-twenty percent range for 2025, which includes a full year of Akcea and our recent acquisition of Treliant. We expect our operating margin in this segment will be in a range of approximately 18% to 20%, reflecting the full year revenue mix shift towards our digital offerings and Reliant integration expenses as discussed earlier. We expect the mix shift to be more balanced between consulting and digital in the commercial segment starting in the 2025.

Do not expect the incremental Reliant integration expenses to extend beyond 2025. Thanks everyone. I would now like to open the call to questions. Operator?

Conference Call Operator: Thank you. Our first question comes from Andrew Nicholas with William Blair. Please proceed.

Andrew Nicholas, Analyst, William Blair: Hi, good afternoon. Thanks for taking my questions. You mentioned on a few different occasions that the big beautiful bill brought some clarity. It sounds like maybe a little bit more in healthcare than in education, but I just wanted to ask broadly on visibility. Is it better or worse than three months ago, six months ago?

And then how should we think about visibility in how it relates to maybe the conservatism of guidance from here.

Mark Hussey, Chief Executive Officer and President, Huron Consulting Group: Andrew, the way I would characterize it, it’s like there was no shock that I think in what came in the one big beautiful bill act. I think there was for the most part, I think there was a broad anticipation that there was going to be pressure on federal reimbursements. And so when I say it brings clarity, it’s like, Okay, well, we’re no longer waiting to see what happens. We now know what’s going to happen. And so now we’re in a position to start to make some firmer decisions without that uncertainty.

So I think it was more about coming in line with what people generally expect. There were some nuances in every part of the bill when it got passed. But I’d say, generally speaking, it’s consistent with our outlook for the full year in terms of the guidance that we provided. So I would say it’s not necessarily propelling it more, it’s consistent. And we just continue to see ongoing financial pressures even besides these, because for a long time, we’ve seen cost trends ahead of rep reimbursements, and probably maybe they’ll increment a little bit more pressure in this past year.

John Kelly, Chief Financial Officer, Huron Consulting Group: And I’ll just add, Mark. I think from a visibility perspective, I think that our visibility is stronger at this point than it was earlier in the year, three months ago. I would, and some of that has to do with some of the increased clarity around some of the regulatory environment. But some of it has to do too with just our sales conversion over the first half of the year, the pipeline at this point, even some of the activity we see heading into the third quarter. I think what is clear is that within the healthcare segment for our healthcare provider clients, there are many clients who are going through either current financial strain or for a variety of factors concerned about financial constraint in the near term.

And I think that is a strong driver for the consulting parts of our business, in particular within healthcare, performance improvement, our strategy offerings, our financial advisory offerings, our managed services offerings. So I think is that as we’ve had those sales conversions and the pipeline has strengthened to record highs, I think that does provide additional visibility for us. Within the education segment, obviously there’s been a lot of news. I would say during the first half of the year, we continue to see both strong revenue execution, but then also strong sales conversion. I think Mark noted in his comments, we had record sales conversion for that team in the second quarter.

So that’s another thing that strengthens our visibility at this point. So we feel good about that.

Andrew Nicholas, Analyst, William Blair: Great, thank you. Maybe just on healthcare, you talked about a little bit slower sales conversions there as it relates to digital transformation work. But I think you also said that you believe it’s a temporary pause. Can you maybe flesh that out a little bit more? What makes you confident that’s temporary?

And to what extent do you need it to be temporary to hit your targets for this year?

John Kelly, Chief Financial Officer, Huron Consulting Group: Andrew, I would say to answer that last part first, our guidance

Andrew Nicholas, Analyst, William Blair: for

John Kelly, Chief Financial Officer, Huron Consulting Group: the year is not contingent on any assumptions related to the pace of conversion the digital side of the business. I think from a healthcare segment perspective, the strength we’re seeing on the consultant side is definitely driving our confidence in the guidance moving forward. As it relates to digital, just to provide a little clarity there, we actually do see demand for certain digital offering areas and really across the board as it supports some of our performance improvement projects. We continue to see good strength there. I think what we have seen is a little bit of a slower sales conversion cycle for some of standalone digital sales in that segment.

And I think that’s somewhat intuitive given some of the financial pressures that our clients are going through right now. I think we do see a shift in focus to some of the performance improvement projects that support clients that are going through financial strain. But the reality is those underlying projects, eventually they need to get done. And so we know that once our clients kind of reach that point of financial stability, they’re likely to have to circle back and take on some of those digital projects. So that’s what gives us confidence that it’s a temporary pause.

But in the meantime, we feel very well positioned to help them on the performance improvement side.

Andrew Nicholas, Analyst, William Blair: Great. Thank you.

Conference Call Operator: One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from Tobey Sommer with Truist Security. Please proceed.

Andrew Nicholas, Analyst, William Blair: Thanks. I kinda wanted to dig in a little bit more if

Tobey Sommer, Analyst, Truist Security: we could on the the delays in the pipeline conversion. You you’ve given some explanation, but what what is the what are the elements that give you confidence that the delays are temporary?

Mark Hussey, Chief Executive Officer and President, Huron Consulting Group: So again, Toby, I would say just back to the context of what’s happening in the market, this is not by anywhere near the headline story of what is happening within the health care business. It’s an element of one component of probably five or six other major areas. And I would just say, we’ve seen just the increase of our clients whose C suites are focused on driving financial stability to their business, have prioritized that ahead of some of the other conversations. So I think it’s really not that they’ve gone away, it’s just they have more pressing needs in the context of where we are. I do think that, back to the outlook for the year, I would say this is an area that we expect to have more than this is not just related to the approval of the legislation.

Were long term trends coming into this legislation. These have now just dialed in even more pressure beyond even 2025. So this is back to the comment we have about the longer term secular tailwinds for our business, feeling very good about it.

John Kelly, Chief Financial Officer, Huron Consulting Group: Right. And if you think about the healthcare business from where we started the year, we increased our guidance today from the initial outlook at the beginning of the year was mid single digit growth from an overall healthcare segment perspective to now upper single digit revenue growth. If you go back to the original assumptions in the year for that mix between consulting and digital, I think the net effect of this is more of a shift towards our higher margin consulting part of the business during the year. And we have just noted that some clients, as we’ve engaged with them and they’re looking at their strategic agenda for in the year, we’re seeing more demand on the performance improvement side and some clients that are shifting some dollars that maybe previously would have been allocated to digital to focusing on aspects of performance improvement.

Mark Hussey, Chief Executive Officer and President, Huron Consulting Group: Okay, I appreciate that.

Tobey Sommer, Analyst, Truist Security: In terms of hiring, the headcount growth was quite high. Maybe could you disaggregate the impact of acquisitions from that just to and maybe speak to what your view is on utilization and organic headcount growth going forward through

Conference Call Operator: the balance of the year.

John Kelly, Chief Financial Officer, Huron Consulting Group: Yeah, in terms of our headcount growth, I think a lot of the increase in headcount growth came from our managed services business within the healthcare segment. In terms of the excluding the managed services headcount, I think there it’s really two primary factors. You did have some increase in headcount from the Eclipse acquisition that was in the neighborhood of 40 new team members joining as a result of that acquisition. And then beyond that, it’s really just the strength in demand that we see right now on the consulting side within healthcare. And based on the sales conversions and pipeline activity that we see, we’ve been aggressive in the market, adding talent in that area to support the growth that we’re expecting for the back half of the year.

So those would be the primary areas where we’ve seen headcount growth. I appreciate that. And where are you sort of

Tobey Sommer, Analyst, Truist Security: year to date with the acquisitions that you’ve consummated? How do they sum up to your longer term sort of annual goals? Are you already at target for this year? Or do you think there’s more to go before we flip the calendar to ’26?

Mark Hussey, Chief Executive Officer and President, Huron Consulting Group: Toby, I think we’re actually done a good job of building that. I would expect there might be maybe one or two. Some of the timing of these deals, as you know, you don’t get to decide exactly when they fall. But I would say they’re all within the tuck in type categories that we had. And certainly, our expectation is to try to stay in that balanced capital deployment strategy.

So I would say we’ve made a lot of progress. I mean, you saw that with some of the transaction costs within the quarter. We’ve been very, very busy in the marketplace. And the good news is we’re finding areas that fill in our gaps very nicely. We’re finding the right partners that are not necessarily for sale when we get working together.

And then it’s leading to the kinds of conversations that we want to over time that will give us the long term confidence that it’s going to be a successful deal. So I’d say it’s actually powering very well, but maybe there might be another transaction or two

Tobey Sommer, Analyst, Truist Security: Thank you very much.

Conference Call Operator: Our next question comes from Bill Sutherland with The Benchmark Company. Please proceed.

Bill Sutherland, Analyst, The Benchmark Company: Thank you, and, good evening, guys. The utilization rates were impressive in the quarter, 77% consulting and 78% in digital. Should we think about as think of that as kind of the upper end of a range that you’re likely to have in any given quarter? Or is there a possibility that this is a level that maybe isn’t the top of a range? It could be like midpoint now.

John Kelly, Chief Financial Officer, Huron Consulting Group: I would say, Bill, it’s closer to the top of the range in terms of utilization, which that doesn’t mean there couldn’t be individual quarters where it could flex a little bit higher. But in terms of sustainable rate of utilization, I think that this is towards the top end of where we want to be. And the thing to keep in mind when you see those utilization metrics that you mentioned for consulting and digital, of course it’s not spread even across all teams. So within there, you have certain teams that have even higher utilization that blend into that up into the 80% range. And those are some of the areas where we’re more aggressively hiring right now to continue to build out the team and to give us capacity as we continue to grow.

So I think in those areas that are driving that average up even a little bit, our hope is that that will actually cool off and come down a little bit as the year goes on and we’re adding new team members to continue to support the longer term growth of the business.

Bill Sutherland, Analyst, The Benchmark Company: Okay. In the education segment with the record sales conversion in the quarter, can you kind of rank order one, two, three of what was getting the most momentum?

John Kelly, Chief Financial Officer, Huron Consulting Group: I would say within our strategy and operations team build, that’s where we saw a lot of strength. And I’d really characterize what where we have seen strength, particularly in education is offerings that really drive higher benefits, either on investments in technology or helping our clients right now work through their strategy through what’s a fairly disruptive environment, improving student enrollment yields, reducing risk and improving the efficacy of research and driving more effective fundraising campaigns. I think those are the things right now that our clients are coming to in what’s been a fairly disruptive macro environment to start the year, where they’re seeking our help to really navigate whether it’s financial strain or operational disruption. And

Bill Sutherland, Analyst, The Benchmark Company: so actually, the backdrop in healthcare side where there’s a fair amount of consolidation, I’m not sure if it’s accelerated year to date. Sometimes it feels like it from the headlines. But what are you guys seeing there, and how is it impacting your book on that side?

Mark Hussey, Chief Executive Officer and President, Huron Consulting Group: You’re talking back on health care, Bill, with respect to consolidation? We certainly see systems continuing to want to acquire hospitals that are going to help them achieve their growth objectives. And I would say for us, it’s not the headlines, but it’s certainly an element of what we’re doing and helping them not only with the strategic evaluation of which targets, but then helping them on the post merger integration work as well. It’s certainly a contributor to what’s happening in the marketplace. And I would expect that as you see continued pressures, sometimes those are the catalysts that relate to transactions ultimately.

So it’s going to continue to be an element of what we see in the market, sure.

Bill Sutherland, Analyst, The Benchmark Company: Okay. Thanks, guys.

Conference Call Operator: One moment for our next question.

John Kelly, Chief Financial Officer, Huron Consulting Group: Our

Conference Call Operator: next question comes from Kevin Steinke with Barrington Research Associates. Please proceed.

Kevin Steinke, Analyst, Barrington Research Associates: Thank you. Good afternoon. So just wondering if you could give investors some tangible examples of how you can help healthcare clients adapt to this more constrained Medicaid funding environment and expected surge in uninsured population. I know it’s the same playbook you’ve been following for many years, but perhaps you’d be helpful if you can just kind of point to some of the things you can do on the performance improvement side, revenue cycle side and how you help the client base work through this pretty substantial change.

Mark Hussey, Chief Executive Officer and President, Huron Consulting Group: Mean, Bill, if you go back to the core of this business back even sixteen, seventeen years ago when we acquired Stockcamp and Wellspring, over the years, we’ve built out a pretty comprehensive set of performance improvement offerings from revenue cycle to supply chain work to workforce setup to the clinical operations. I mean, pretty much if there’s any operation within the four walls of the hospital system, not only including the main hospitals, but really the overall system, we’re doing an assessment not only on their operations from where the cost savings opportunities, but more importantly, the balanced approach to find the growth opportunities for them to continue to improve their business. And I think depth and breadth of what we have together, and just the methodology, the track record of real savings and results and impact that we’ve made, those are the things that we’re bringing to every client based on their own unique setting or situation. Sometimes they know in advance where they want us to focus because they have certainly some insights there, but it’s pretty much not limited. Then that goes even beyond just the, we call it performance improvement, the financial advisory areas, whether it’s how you work with the office of the CFO and get better insights in terms of the decision making, the speed, management of cash.

There’s really, I would say, we’re not aware of anyone else who’s got the breadth of what we do. We bring it together as a unified team and going to market in that way, I think, really gives us a great speed to value and impact for our clients.

Kevin Steinke, Analyst, Barrington Research Associates: Great. Thank you. That’s helpful. Just I wanted to ask about the Truliant acquisition. I’m trying to recall how much of this is an expansion of maybe an adjacent services that you currently aren’t providing.

I can’t recall how much you’re into the risk management compliance side, but maybe just a little more color on what that particular transaction brings to you in terms of added capabilities.

Mark Hussey, Chief Executive Officer and President, Huron Consulting Group: What we have among our commercial portfolio, financial services has been the number one or number two industry segment that we’ve had for a long time. And a lot of those have been built in areas that are already doing risk management compliance reporting, things that, as we look at Reliant, are highly complementary to what they do. And this gets back to even how we came together has been an outreach to recognize where we have opportunities to take their capabilities, our capabilities, and really create a more comprehensive solution. So there’s a lot of joint excitement for that, and they are very much aligned but not overlapping.

Kevin Steinke, Analyst, Barrington Research Associates: Okay, yeah, appreciate the color. I’ll turn it back over.

Conference Call Operator: Thank you. Seeing there are no further questions in the queue, I’d like to turn the call back to Mr. Hussey.

Mark Hussey, Chief Executive Officer and President, Huron Consulting Group: Yeah. Well, thank you very much for joining us this afternoon. We look forward to speaking with you again in October when we announce our third quarter results. Have a good evening.

Conference Call Operator: This concludes today’s conference call. Thank you, everyone, for your participation. You may now disconnect.

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