Calls
Source: S&P Capital IQ transcripts via Xpressfeed · latest indexed call 2026-05-22 · generated 2026-07-24.
Latest call digest
Booz Allen Hamilton Holding Corporation, Q4 2026 Earnings Call, May 22, 2026 · 2026-05-22T12:00:00
Q4 FY2026 call — May 22, 2026. The prepared remarks framed fiscal 2026 as the hardest year Booz Allen has had as a public company: gross revenue fell to $11.2 billion, Civil declined sharply, and adjusted EBITDA landed around $1.2 billion at an 11% margin. Management introduced new CFO Troy Lahr and Kristine Anderson's added President title, then guided fiscal 2027 to revenue of $11.2–11.7 billion, adjusted EPS of $6–6.35 and free cash flow of $825–925 million, with National Security growing mid-single digits and Civil declining high single digits. In the Q&A the tone was more optimistic than the numbers, but analysts repeatedly pushed on where the guide's low-versus-high ends come from, the shape of a year that starts negative in Civil and improves in the second half, whether the funding recovery since January is durable or another head fake, and how headcount is being managed against a still-declining top line. Management leaned on cost discipline, the outcome-based/fixed-price transition and cyber/defense-tech growth vectors, and declined to size individual businesses when pressed.
Participant coverage from the latest call.
| Group | Participants | Count |
|---|---|---|
| Management | Operator; Dustin Darensbourg — Director & Head of Investor Relations, Booz Allen Hamilton Holding Corporation; Horacio Rozanski — CEO & Chair, Booz Allen Hamilton Holding Corporation; Kristine Anderson — COO & President, Booz Allen Hamilton Holding Corporation; Troy Lahr — Executive VP & CFO, Booz Allen Hamilton Holding Corporation | 5 |
| Analysts | Gavin Parsons — Analyst, UBS Investment Bank, Research Division; Louie Dipalma — Partner & Research Analyst of Industrials, William Blair & Company L.L.C., Research Division; Gautam Khanna — MD & Senior Analyst, TD Cowen, Research Division; John Godyn — Research Analyst, Citigroup Inc., Research Division; Unknown Analyst; David Strauss — Equity Analyst, Wells Fargo Securities, LLC, Research Division; Noah Poponak — Equity Analyst, Goldman Sachs Group, Inc., Research Division; Scott Mikus — Director of Aerospace, Defense and Space Research, Melius Research LLC; Sheila Kahyaoglu — Managing Director in Equity Research, Jefferies LLC, Research Division | 9 |
Curated latest-call exchanges; one row per analyst topic.
| Analyst | Firm | Topic | What changed in Q&A |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gavin Parsons | UBS Investment Bank, Research Division | Revenue growth decoupling from headcount; funded backlog to revenue | Asked how growth diverges from headcount and how funding awards convert to revenue after funded backlog fell; CEO tied divergence to outcome-based work and IP monetization and pointed to improved recent funding. |
| John Godyn | Citigroup Inc., Research Division | Shape of the fiscal-2027 guide, low vs. high end | Pressed twice for the drivers of the range and the intra-year cadence; management held to a Civil-pressured first half improving through the year but declined quarter-by-quarter detail. |
| Noah Poponak | Goldman Sachs Group, Inc., Research Division | Durability of the funding recovery | Asked why the improved funding is a real trend rather than another head fake; management cited a normalized-but-not-historic environment and would not call the future. |
| David Strauss | Wells Fargo Securities, LLC, Research Division | Civil sequential trajectory; sizing Space and Health | Sought clarity on whether Civil keeps rising sequentially and asked for growth figures on Space and Health; CEO declined to put specific numbers on those businesses. |
| Scott Mikus | Melius Research LLC | Buyback appetite under the executive order; cost-takeout retention | Questioned lighter repurchases and any EO constraint on capital returns; CFO reaffirmed dividend-first and continued buybacks and said the company keeps about 40% of the cost takeout. |
| Sheila Kahyaoglu | Jefferies LLC, Research Division | Headcount down 12% with revenue-per-employee up 6%; margins | Probed productivity gains and how the Civil mix affects fiscal-2027 margins; management flagged puts and takes but comfort with roughly flat ~11% margins. |
| Gautam Khanna | TD Cowen, Research Division | Procurement pace and IRS/Treasury reputational risk | Asked whether reputational issues blocked bids; management said conversations are productive and pointed to mid-single-digit National Security growth as evidence of no impediment. |
| Louie Dipalma | William Blair & Company L.L.C., Research Division | Agentic cyber demand and the Golden Dome OTA | Asked about agentic-AI cyber impact and the space-based interceptor award; CEO could not trace demand to a single event but reiterated accelerating cyber demand, and could not discuss the classified Golden Dome role. |
Theme tracker
Themes are curator-classified across supplied calls.
| Theme | Status | Quarters mentioned | Read-through |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bifurcation: National Security growth vs. Civil decline | persisted | Q4 2025, Q1 2026, Q2 2026, Q3 2026, Q4 2026 | The central framing of every recent call: Defense/Intel growing while Civil resets. It sharpened in Q2 2026 and remained the organizing lens through the latest guide. |
| Shift to outcome-based and fixed-price contracting | persisted | Q4 2025, Q1 2026, Q2 2026, Q3 2026, Q4 2026 | Positioned as both a delivery change and a margin lever; management describes a steady, contract-by-contract conversion accelerated by procurement reform rather than a step change. |
| Cyber productization (Thunderdome, Vellox, agentic cyber) | persisted | Q4 2025, Q2 2026, Q3 2026, Q4 2026 | Evolved from services and Zero Trust toward named products; Vellox Reverser reached general availability in Q3 2026 and the agentic-cyber pitch intensified into the latest call. |
| Cost reduction and delayering (~$150M annualized) | emerged | Q2 2026, Q3 2026, Q4 2026 | Announced in Q2 2026, executed in Q3 2026, and cited in Q4 2026 as roughly one-third realized in fiscal 2026 with the full run-rate landing in fiscal 2027; about 40% is retained. |
| Tech-ecosystem partnerships and Booz Allen Ventures | persisted | Q4 2025, Q1 2026, Q2 2026, Q3 2026, Q4 2026 | NVIDIA and AWS are long-standing; the a16z acceleration partnership and up-to-$400M fund commitment emerged in Q3 2026, and ventures gains increasingly touch EPS. |
| Golden Dome / space | persisted | Q4 2025, Q1 2026, Q3 2026, Q4 2026 | Discussed as a pursuit for several quarters and converted to a disclosed space-based interceptor OTA award by Q4 2026, though the role remains classified. |
| FY2021 Investor Day investment-thesis framing | dropped | Q3 2025, Q4 2025 | The multiyear EBITDA-target narrative anchored calls through the close of fiscal 2025, then disappeared once the thesis period ended; its absence reflects a completed goal rather than a reversal. |
Guidance ledger
Quotes, calls, and speakers are source-verified; outcomes are curator-classified.
| Verbatim guidance | Call | Speaker | Curator outcome | Outcome note |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| “We expect to deliver revenue between $12 billion and $12.5 billion.” | Booz Allen Hamilton Holding Corporation, Q4 2025 Earnings Call, May 23, 2025 · 2025-05-23T12:00:00 | Matthew Calderone | missed | This original fiscal-2026 range was cut over the following quarters; fiscal-2026 gross revenue finished at about $11.2 billion, below the low end. |
| “We expect to generate adjusted EBITDA dollars in the range of $1.315 billion to $1.37 billion.” | Booz Allen Hamilton Holding Corporation, Q4 2025 Earnings Call, May 23, 2025 · 2025-05-23T12:00:00 | Matthew Calderone | missed | Fiscal-2026 adjusted EBITDA came in around $1.2 billion per the Q4 2026 call, below this initial range. |
| “We now expect to deliver revenue between $11.3 billion and $11.5 billion.” | Booz Allen Hamilton Holding Corporation, Q2 2026 Earnings Call, Oct 24, 2025 · 2025-10-24T12:00:00 | Matthew Calderone | missed | Even this lowered range proved slightly high; fiscal-2026 revenue landed near $11.2 billion, at or just below the bottom. |
| “restructuring our business to take out a net incremental $150 million of cost on an annualized basis” | Booz Allen Hamilton Holding Corporation, Q2 2026 Earnings Call, Oct 24, 2025 · 2025-10-24T12:00:00 | Matthew Calderone | kept | Later calls confirmed the actions were executed, with run-rate spend dropped by roughly $150 million and about one-third realized in fiscal 2026. |
| “We now expect free cash flow to be between $900 million and $1 billion.” | Booz Allen Hamilton Holding Corporation, Q1 2026 Earnings Call, Jul 25, 2025 · 2025-07-25T12:00:00 | Matthew Calderone | kept | Despite later downward revisions to the free-cash-flow range, fiscal-2026 free cash flow of $951 million fell within this raised range. |
| “we expect to deliver revenue between $11.2 billion and $11.7 billion” | Booz Allen Hamilton Holding Corporation, Q4 2026 Earnings Call, May 22, 2026 · 2026-05-22T12:00:00 | Troy Lahr | pending | Fiscal-2027 revenue guidance issued on the latest call; no subsequent call in the set to judge the outcome. |
| “We expect adjusted EPS to be in the range of $6 to $6.35.” | Booz Allen Hamilton Holding Corporation, Q4 2026 Earnings Call, May 22, 2026 · 2026-05-22T12:00:00 | Troy Lahr | pending | Fiscal-2027 adjusted EPS guidance; outcome not yet observable in the supplied call history. |
Q&A pressure map
Question counts and firms are curator tallies; analyst coverage shown above.
| Topic | Questions | Firms | Pressure / response |
|---|---|---|---|
| Civil decline and the timing of a return to growth | 9 | Jefferies LLC, Research Division, Cantor Fitzgerald & Co., Research Division, William Blair & Company L.L.C., Research Division, Citigroup Inc., Research Division, Wells Fargo Securities, LLC, Research Division, BofA Securities, Research Division | The most persistent line of questioning across the last five calls; analysts repeatedly asked when Civil bottoms and inflects, and management kept pointing the recovery further out — into the second half, then the next fiscal year. |
| Funding and procurement pace vs. funded-backlog conversion | 6 | TD Cowen, Research Division, UBS Investment Bank, Research Division, Goldman Sachs Group, Inc., Research Division, JPMorgan Chase & Co, Research Division, William Blair & Company L.L.C., Research Division | Analysts pressed on the gap between strong awards and soft funded backlog and on whether the post-shutdown pickup is durable; management conceded a choppier, more episodic funding pattern than in prior years. |
| Headcount managed against a declining top line | 5 | Jefferies LLC, Research Division, Melius Research LLC, TD Cowen, Research Division, UBS Investment Bank, Research Division | Recurring questions on whether revenue can grow faster than headcount and whether cuts risk being overdone; management pointed to fixed-price mix, higher utilization and AI-assisted productivity. |
| Sizing individual businesses (Space, Health, Cyber) | 2 | Wells Fargo Securities, LLC, Research Division, BofA Securities, Research Division | When asked to quantify specific businesses, management declined — in Q4 2026 the CEO said it was very hard to put a specific number on Space or Health, and in Q2 2026 the cyber business was not sized. The answers plainly did not provide the figures requested. |
| Capital returns and buybacks under the executive order | 2 | Melius Research LLC, Truist Securities, Inc., Research Division | Analysts asked whether the executive order on capital returns constrains repurchases; management said it does not apply to Booz Allen negatively and reaffirmed dividend-first, opportunistic buybacks. |
Language shifts
Only language evidence verified against the referenced component is shown.
| Observation | Verbatim evidence | Call ID | Component |
|---|---|---|---|
| A new caution word entered the vocabulary in Q2 2026 — management began labeling the Civil/National Security split a 'bifurcation' and reached for superlatives to describe the environment, a framing that then recurred. | “This is the most bifurcated environment I have seen in my decades with Booz Allen.” | 1960390514 | 2 |
| The Q2 2026 call marked the clearest drop in confidence in the set, with the CEO plainly conceding disappointment while cutting guidance across the board. | “I am disappointed in our results this quarter and that we are lowering guidance across all key metrics.” | 1960390514 | 2 |
| By the latest call the register shifted from crisis to recovery: the CEO acknowledged the hardest year on record but paired it with a forward claim of strength. | “Fiscal year 2026 was the most challenging year we faced as a public company.” | 1994235646 | 2 |
| 'Choppy' and 'volatility' became standing hedges on the market outlook, carried into the fiscal-2027 framing rather than presented as a one-time disruption. | “still a market that will experience volatility and some choppiness” | 1994235646 | 9 |
The call history documents a full guidance-down cycle through fiscal 2026 — two revenue cuts and a missed EBITDA range — followed by a latest call that pairs a stabilized cost base and improving funding with a still-cautious, Civil-pressured fiscal-2027 setup. For the current debate, the useful signal is that management has consistently pushed the Civil inflection outward while National Security and the outcome-based transition carry the growth story; the durability of the post-January funding recovery is the swing factor to watch.