Booz Allen Hamilton Holding Corporation Price & Performance (BAH)

And thank you for standing by. Welcome to Booz Allen Hamilton's Earnings Call Covering Third Quarter Fiscal Year 20 25 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, [indiscernible] 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 [indiscernible] 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 reconciliation of our non GAAP measures to the most comparable GAAP measures in our 3rd quarter 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. [indiscernible] Thank you, Dustin.

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 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 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. These 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, Ibuzao'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 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 0 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 reduced fraud, [indiscernible] abuse.

Using an outcomes based acquisition model, we designed built and continue to operate recreation dot gov. It's 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 warfighters. 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. With ALAN'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 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 warfighting operations. This solution is already being tested in large scale exercises. It will improve collaboration and combined mission planning, for the U. S, and our allies and partners.

Last week, we also announced an expanded partnership with Amazon 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.

First, our multiyear 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 Alcon based contract. [indiscernible] 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 for speed 2 outcomes. From the Pacific to Orbit, and here at home, We are investing in the technologies and the talent necessary to in the coming years and 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.

Thank you, Rocio, and good morning, everyone. I'm really pleased with our 3rd quarter 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 maintain momentum into the future and continue to accelerate the core elements of our Volt 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% adjusted EBITDA margin. We maintained a 1.41x trailing 12 month Booz 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 range 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 1.2 dollars 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 3rd quarter, 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 3rd quarter 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 3rd quarter 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 Rossio noted, expect the industry will see a short term slowdown of funding and award activity as the new administration and Congress established their 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 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. Rizwan 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 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, 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 [indiscernible] Up approximately 10% year over year.

This increase in ADEPS was driven by our overall profitability, 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 less $17,000,000 of CapEx. Moving now to capital deployment on Slide 8, 3rd quarter, we deployed a total of $228,000,000 to generate value for 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 percent of outstanding shares In addition, we have deployed $65,000,000 in quarterly dividends, $9,000,000 in strategic investments through our corporate venture capital fund, and $4,000,000 related to the Par Government acquisition. Today, we are pleased to announce that our Board of Directors has approved a $0.04 increase our quarterly dividend. This dividend of $0.55 per share be payable on March 4th 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 1.31 dollars 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 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 the range of 850,000,000 dollars to $925,000,000 In closing, I am bullish about the state of our business. Booz Allen has maintained its momentum in both the flexibility to rapidly adapt and thrive in an evolving environment. As Horacio said, 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.

Cruise Island 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.

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

Thank you, Carmen. Before we begin Q and A this morning, I hope you 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 D. C. Area, D. C. 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 Moment to Again, acknowledge the loss May all the victims' memories be for a blessing. Thank you for listening and for allowing me to do this Carmen, let's be in Q and A please.

Of course. And as a reminder to our audience, to ask a question, simply press It comes from the line of Marina Perez with Bank of America. Good morning, everyone. [indiscernible] So my first question is going to be about hiring.

I understand that you're preparing for this uncertainty as the government and agencies also adjust to what they are 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 Booz strategy 4 years ago. And the way I'm going to oversimplify it, but the way I think about those efficiencies is just putting that on full speed. So So how do you think about investing towards being prepared to absorb most of that opportunity? 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?

You know us too well. So let me take a minute to unpack what 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, [indiscernible] 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, 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 of the potential churn in the industry At the operational level, as you pointed out, this is a time to run the business tightly. That we can actually create investment capacity as the priorities begin to to clarify and accelerate And then strategically, [indiscernible] As you pointed out, Voalte has prepared us for this We are fast, we are 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 [indiscernible] some clients. So while we're managing the business I think prudently to create investment capacity, very excited about the future.

And then I'm curious if you could discuss on the other side of the world, right, not the customers and the contract team officers and the agencies, but like how the commercial companies also prepare [indiscernible] That's expected to be willing to work with them. Have you seen those companies reach out to you to also have this 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.

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 [indiscernible] 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 2 fold. 1 is we do [indiscernible] 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. Is 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 now prepared for it.

And the new administration is going to hopefully accelerate of the changes that are necessary for this to really operate at speed Thank you. And last one, short one, but near term, where are we like I don't know, starting to the quarter and we have seen like a lot of like uncertainty around contracting 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 4th quarter?

Yes, Marianne, I'll take that. It's Matt. As Rossio said, we've seen essentially no impact on our contracts to date because of 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, there is Ross, your agencies are taking some time to adjust new administration priorities. And quite frankly, the government workforce is adjusting to new environment that they're in. And so we're seeing some slowdown or a potential disruption there. And I think that's going to be true 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.

Yes, I would only add, Mariana, you were 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 non serial 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.

You so much, Gracias. Thank you.

One moment for our next question. And it's from the line of Gautam Khanna with TD Cowen. Please proceed.

Yes.

Good morning, guys.

Good morning.

I was wondering if you could expand upon your comments on headcount additions in 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? That's the plan. I think we'll it's a dynamic environment. We'll see it plays out. I mean just to give you some parameters, our billability in the 3rd quarter was about 1% higher than it was in the Q1. So that's equivalent to what 330 FTEs. And in fact, our billability in December was the highest it's been on record. Honestly, a bit too high from my liking. We probably the bench Booz aggressively. So we're ramping up the hiring engine, particularly around a bunch of the 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 Booz about the supply and demand side. We've built a lot of momentum.

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 accelerationdeceleration process of our recruiting by a lot. 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 come in. And deploy it against the potential of opportunities out there. We didn't have that capability 2 years ago. And so the ramp up and the ramp down of recruiting pipeline operating differently And so again, this is an 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 that we could have a couple of years ago.

Yes, that's helpful, expand on the prior questioner's question. Are you actually seeing a slowdown that has started since the new administration has taken foot at any specific customers 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 Khan, if you 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 it 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 began 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 [indiscernible] But we have acknowledged, I think, probably more than anybody else The immediate challenges associated with the presidential transition and those are playing out.

Thank you, guys.

Thank you. Our next question is from Sheila Kahyaoglu with Jefferies. Good morning, Gilathea. Matt, Matthew. Maybe just a little bit more specific on just your growth trajectory. When we think about Intel, it outperformed several for the first time in a while, obviously easier comps and Thunderdome ramping up as the largest 0 trust program in the federal expect expect Intel to progress from here and how the Thunderdome ramp is going?

Well, I'll start, but then I need to let Matt Frode complete the thought. I think it would has me really excited about our Intel business is under Tom Pfeiffer's leadership, we have really pivoted that business in 2 directions. 1 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 growth over the medium and long term.

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 still 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 [indiscernible] involve 1 or more commercial partnerships and increasingly we're finding we're pulling Technology and capabilities and solutions our defense and intel clients into civil, 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've 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.

Maybe if I could just follow-up there. Can you quantify it on that? But 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?

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 ThunderZoom solution. In terms of civil, I don't know, Hosseo, do you want to take that? No, question. Okay. I think as I said, we we are excited about the opportunities for change. The vast majority of our portfolio in civil is an area that's a 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 [indiscernible] So we're excited. [indiscernible] the medium to long term, in the Civil business. I think your 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, [indiscernible] 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.

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Tobey Sommer with Turis. Please proceed.

Thank you. I was wondering if you could drill down into the the civil clients in maybe describe What areas of civil or agencies that you're seeing A change in behavior, and I know executive orders have come sort of instant furious this month, but any sort of contours you could give us would be helpful.

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 [indiscernible] the modernization of systems across treasury and especially the IRS and then broadly across the HS 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 ripe 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 change in in philosophy, when there is a change in strategy, there's an immediate impact where people come in and say, wait, Let's and take a look. As you saw, there are was a significant pause that then was partially reversed on grant and funding of grants and things like that.

It 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. So like we said before, are we going to see some awards that maybe are under consideration now take a little longer to get awarded? We have 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 HUZEL 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, strong space presence, largest quantum 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 things get underway and we move past the immediate transition.

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 of a percentage decline in internal government staff at your agency customers whereby if it's 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. Sure.

I mean, as you know, we're not in the outsourcing business. And this tough 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.

Thank you. One moment for our next question. And it comes from the line of Louedi Palma with William Blair.

Good morning, Louis.

Horacio, 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 a slower Heather, I'll take that one. Historically, we've said that if our book to bill is above 1 point 2 and our headcount is in the 3% to 5% range We're looking at mid to upper single digit organic growth and 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. [indiscernible] over the medium to long term and that 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. 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 Horacio said, we've been preparing for this moment [indiscernible] 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 heard in our 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 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 in going forward. Great.

Thanks. And I guess for For either of you, do you like 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 to speak replaced with Other work as priority shift Louie, 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 a lower first of all, it came up all of a sudden because they had created the DCA caps as a way to force themselves to agree and then when they couldn't agree, it's almost they put their gun to proverbial head and then the gun went off. And as a result of that, this was this unprecedented takedown need This to me reads completely differently. If I listen to the conversation [indiscernible] 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 [indiscernible] I think there's a possibility to accelerate that there's a real desire in the department Booz by the incoming team and by the existing professionals there to accelerate things and this should enable that Booz 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 possibility of really creating that faster, which for us spells both [indiscernible] 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.

If I could just add to that, Louie, the dominant contracting force in that period was low price technically acceptable. Now it's all about outcome based and innovation and speed. It could not be more different. In terms of what the changes they're 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. Great.

And Recently, when there have been shifting priorities or contract buses 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 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 Volt that you're going to be able to have the same type of versatility and And be able to shift employees to align to the new priorities quickly Absolutely. And I think we may be able to do even more. I think first of all, we have a 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 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 matched and we can make that transition happen not quite in 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 In the areas that we believe will turn into opportunities, we're not [indiscernible] 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.

Great.

Everyone.

Thank you. Our next question is from Matt Akers with Wells Fargo. Please proceed.

Hey, good morning, guys. Thanks for the question. Maybe one for Horacio. I mean, so guess the news last week out of China on AI with DeepSpeak, 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? 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. [indiscernible] 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, a femoral 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 V involved, this is why we 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 It's a moment of pause not just for our clients, but really for all of us, for couple of reasons. First of all, I think it's we all need to take some time to examine some of the claims. Because there's some capacity in some of the claims that I think we still need to shred the ground truth. But secondly, I did it's already been reported in the press that if you ask certain questions you get some funny answers. Coming out of deep seek We don't know in these models, what is also behind them underneath that. And so the deployment of malls where we don't have complete understanding of their provenance and what maybe 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. [indiscernible] Thanks.

And then I guess I wanted 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?

Yes.

Thanks, Matt. If you Booz, 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 0.3 percent 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, that gives us a lot of flexibility to generate value in different ways. And as Rosio 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.

Thank you. And now, we'll turn the call back to Horace Rosinski for final remarks.

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 [indiscernible] 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 1011th 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 non profits. This is the highest level of employee participation [indiscernible] And it demonstrates the care that the people at Guzzajalant 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.

And this concludes today's conference call. Thank you all for participating and you may now disconnect.