Booz Allen Hamilton Holding Corporation

There will be an opportunity for questions. I'd now like to turn the call over to the Head of Investor Relations, Dustin Derrensberg.

Thank you. Good morning and thank you for joining us for Booz Allen's third quarter 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 two. With me today to talk about our business and financial results or 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 three, 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 risk, uncertainties, and other factors that may cause our actual results to differ materially from forecasted results discussed in our SEC filings and on this call. All forward-looking statements are expressly qualified in their entirety by the foregoing cautionary statements and speak only as of the date made. Except as required by law, we undertake no obligation to update or revise publicly any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise. During today's call, we will also discuss some non-GAAP financial measures and other metrics, which we believe provide useful information for investors. We include an explanation of adjustments and other reconciliations of our non-GAAP measures to the most comparable GAAP measures in our third 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 Rosansky. We are now on slide four.

Thank you, Dustin. Welcome to the team. We're glad to have you on board. And good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining the call. This morning, Matt and I are excited to share excellent financial results for the third quarter 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 aimed for this fiscal year. This performance is particularly important in the current industry environment. Consistent with many other presidential transitions, we see some agencies taking time to assess and align priorities with their new agendas. This creates some slowing and uncertainty in the procurement environment as funding shifts in line with those priorities. We anticipated this adjustment period and have managed our business accordingly. We are running our operations tightly. This is reflected in the strong results we are discussing today. And because of our unique business model, we are able to accelerate investments in priority growth areas. Much of the new administration's agenda relies on the ability to apply advanced technologies to move faster, disrupt outdated processes, and protect our nation's technological supremacy. We believe VOLT, 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, in Booz Allen's 20th presidential transition, we believe we are on the precipice of another transformative era. We know from experience that large-scale change always includes a period of uncertainty and disruption. We also know that these times create major opportunities. The work Booz Allen has done over the last decade and accelerated through Volt has positioned us as the advanced technology company delivering outcomes at the center of our nation's most important missions. We have a truly unique vantage point for understanding and driving the changes that will bring better, faster innovation into government. Our tech scouting function has been key to identifying the technologies that shape the future. We accelerate the journey from breakthrough to outcome in areas like advanced manufacturing, quantum cryptography, and autonomy. For decades, we have invested in disruptive technologies that are changing the world. We made early bets in cloud, cybersecurity, space, and AI that are now core to essential missions. And our venture fund and commercial partnerships help bring leading dual-use technologies into civil, defense, and national security missions to achieve faster, more effective outcomes. Let me share a few examples that further highlight how Booz Allen is well-positioned for this moment. We now have the largest AI business in the federal government and one of the largest cyber businesses in the world. we are developing and delivering trusted, secure, and responsible AI across missions, including for the Defense Department's largest data platform. And with Thunderdome, we have also built and deployed the largest integrated zero-trust solution at scale. We are developing and operating premier space systems built with scalable, secure, AI-powered data solutions to support national security missions. Over the past two 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, waste, and abuse. Using an outcomes-based acquisition model, we designed, built, and continue to operate Recreation.gov. Its advanced technical infrastructure delivers a customer experience on par with the most successful commercial platforms. And we are delivering digital battle space 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. Booz Allen's ability to collaborate with a network of innovative commercial technology partners helps speed the impact of emerging and dual-use technologies. For example, we know that in the most challenging national security environment in half a century, we need to move faster. We must push boundaries and disrupt long-standing barriers to innovation. We recently announced an expanded partnership with Palantir Technologies to co-create solutions to help the US 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 combine mission planning for the US 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 US 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 multi-year effort to become faster at everything allows us to match the velocity of change underway. Second, 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 third, speaking of outcomes, for quite some time now, we have prepared and advocated for a move towards outcome-based contracting as a model to create both efficiency and faster impact across the missions we support. We expect this trend to accelerate in the current environment. For all these reasons and more, I am excited about what's ahead. Booz Allen is the advanced technology company known for speed to outcomes. From the Pacific to orbit and here at home, we are investing in the technologies and the talent necessary to succeed in the coming years 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, Horacio, and good morning, everyone. I'm really pleased with our third 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, maintained momentum into the future, and continued to accelerate the core elements of our Volt strategy that are squarely in line with the change agenda of the new administration. 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 million in adjusted EBITDA at an 11.4% adjusted EBITDA margin. We maintained a 1.41 times trailing 12-month book-to-bill. This is our highest at calendar year-end in the last six years. And we continued to deploy capital to generate long-term value for shareholders, including almost $150 million in share purchases. Based on this performance, we are tightening towards the upper end of our guidance ranges for this fiscal year. We are poised to deliver another year of double-digit growth in revenue and adjusted EBITDA. And as we approach our final quarter of our three-year investment thesis, we are positioned to exceed our target of $1.2 to $1.3 billion of adjusted EBITDA almost entirely through organic performance. Booz Allen remains a premier compounder and continues to deliver outstanding performance year after year. I am 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 six. In the third quarter, revenue increased roughly 14% year over year to $2.9 billion. 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 seven. Net bookings for the third quarter totaled $1.1 billion. Our quarterly book-to-bill was 0.37 times, right in line with our five-year average of 0.4 times for the third quarter. We maintained a trailing 12-month book-to-bill of 1.41 times our highest third-quarter trailing 12-month book-to-bill in six years. Our current backlog of $39 billion is our highest ever at this point in the year. Our total backlog is up 15% year over year. Looking forward, as Horacio noted, we expect the industry will see a short-term slowdown of funding and award activity as the new administration and Congress establish 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 of the incoming administration. We are aggressively leaning into this opportunity. We believe we have the backlog, proposal pipeline for next fiscal year, and most important, the technology, the commercial relationships, and the innovative ideas for change needed to remain on a strong growth factor. Transitioning now to headcount. In the third quarter, 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. Bruzan finished the third quarter with total client staff headcount of over 32,000, a 6% increase from a year ago. Since the start of the fiscal year, total client staff headcount has grown 4.4%. This puts us in good shape relative to our full year target of 3% to 5% client-facing headcount growth. Going forward, we aim to increase headcount at a consistent pace to support the ramp-up of recent wins and to meet our growth aspirations. On the bottom line, we delivered $332 million in adjusted EBITDA in the third quarter, a 14% improvement over the prior year quarter. Our third 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&L, our net income was $187 million, 28% higher year over year. Adjusted net income grew 7% year over year to $198 million. Diluted earnings per share increased to $1.45 per share, up about 31% year-over-year. Adjusted diluted earnings per share grew to $1.55 per share, up approximately 10% year-over-year. This increase in ADEPS was driven by our overall profitability, as well as a reduction in share count, which was partially offset by a higher tax rate compared to the prior year. Turning now to the balance sheet, we ended the third quarter with $454 million of cash on hand. net debt of approximately $2.9 billion, and a net leverage ratio of 2.3 times adjusted EBITDA for the trailing 12 months. Free cash flow for the quarter is $134 million, the result of $151 million of cash from operations plus $17 million of CapEx. Moving now to capital deployment on slide eight. In the third quarter, we deployed a total of $228 million to generate value for shareholders. This included $149 million in share repurchases at an average price of $157.74 per share. This brings our total repurchase activity to 2.3% of outstanding shares since the beginning of the fiscal year. In addition, we deployed $65 million in quarterly dividends, $9 million in strategic investments through our corporate venture capital fund, and $4 million related to the PAR government acquisition. we are pleased to announce that our Board of Directors has approved a 4-cent increase to our quarterly dividend. This dividend of 55 cents per share will be payable on March 4th to stockholders of record as of February 14th. Our Board has also approved an increase of $500 million to our share repurchase authorization, bringing our available capacity to approximately $1 billion. 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 nine 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 to $1.33 billion. The impact of our recently announced $15.9 million 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 ADAPT's guidance to a range of $6.25 to $6.40 per share. This includes an anticipated $15 million gain from the expected close of the sale of Snap Attack, in which we have a minority investment in the fourth quarter. Lastly, we now expect operating cash flow between $950 million and $1.025 billion, and free cash flow in the range of $850 million to $925 million. In closing, I am bullish about the state of our business. Bruce Allen has maintained its momentum and built the flexibility to rapidly adapt and thrive in an evolving environment. As Horacio said, we have navigated 20 presidential administration transitions, and we are approaching this one with both ideas and optimism. While the transition phase for a new presidential administration always creates a period of recalibration, we view this transition as a unique opportunity. Bruce Allen is always on the side of change, and we look forward to continuing to bring change to government. We are the clear leader in advanced technology for the federal government, driving speed to outcome better than anyone else.

And I will now turn the call back over to the chairman, CEO, and president, Horacio Rosansky.

Thank you, Carmen. Before we begin Q&A this morning, I hope you'll allow me to take a moment to acknowledge the tragic air collision that took the lives of 67 people yesterday in our nation's capital. We grieve for the victims and for their families. For those of us who live in the 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 a 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 begin Q&A, please.

Of course, as a reminder to our audience, to ask a question, simply press star 11 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To remove yourself, simply press star 11 again. One moment for our first question. It comes from the line of Marina Perez with Bank of America. Good morning, everyone.

Hola, Mariana.

Hola. So my first question is going to be about hiring. I understand that you're preparing for this uncertainty as the government and the agencies also adjust to what they're going to do, what they have to do in awarding. But you guys have been preparing for this change towards technology, towards outcomes for a long time. You launched your bold strategy four years ago. And the way, I'm going to oversimplify it, but the way I think about Doge and efficiencies is just putting that on full speed. So how do you think about investing towards being prepared to absorb most of that opportunity on headcount and hiring and how much you prepare to be just like, I don't know, brace for impact and how the government absorbs this impact near term uncertainty type of thing?

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, 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, you know, because we anticipated this, we are managing the business accordingly, financially, operationally, and strategically. At the financial level, we have a really strong balance sheet. It gives us a lot of opportunity to invest in different ways and be prepared to take advantage of the potential churn in the industry. At the operational level, as you pointed out, this is a time to run the business tightly so that we can actually create investment capacity as the priorities begin to clarify and accelerate. And then strategically, as you pointed out, Volt, has prepared us for this. We are fast, we're flexible, and we are in the middle of driving technology to outcome and create change. So we're uniquely positioned. I will tell you, we have already a dozen big ideas that we are shaping that are very much in line with what we believe is the administration's intent and priorities. And we've even begun some of these discussions with some clients. So while we're managing the business I think prudently to create investment capacity. We're very excited about the future.

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

Absolutely. No, I think you're right on on that, too. We've been talking about this, and we've been doing it for quite some time. We have an active partnership program. We've talked on the prepared remarks about a couple of the most recent things, but our CVC, our venture fund, was... aimed at bringing all of these through the scouting process. We have brought probably hundreds of companies to our clients so that they can get faster on the mission. It is hard for the commercial sector to operate here. And in some ways, it probably will continue to be. The value that we bring is twofold. One is we do understand this environment, which is why they want to work with us. We understand the clients. We understand the process, but really importantly, we have unique technology that they need because when you put it all together, like we did with Palantir in the Pacific, like we're doing with AWS on autonomy, when you put it all together, there are massive technology investments. And what we have done, you can actually create things that actually drive outcomes. I've talked, for example, in the past about the fact that most cloud providers assume that everybody's sitting on Fiverr And they're going to be connected 24-7. And then when you enter the world in which we live, it's anything but, you know, disconnected, impaired communications where an adversary is actually trying to get you disconnected. It's a very different operating environment. We have already built technology around, for example, software-defined radio networks, AI-defined radio that actually allows you to travel the spectrum differently and either keep connected or or manage the disconnection, back to connection, back to disconnection. Those are the kinds of things that allow us to co-create with the commercial sector extraordinarily well. And it leverages their investments that they've already made, our investments that we've already made, and our clients are excited. The number of clients that really believe in this value proposition already is great. And as you point out, the system is not prepared for it, and the new administration is going to hopefully accelerate some of the changes that are necessary for this to really operate at speed.

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

Yeah, 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, as Rossio referenced earlier, Agencies are taking some time to adjust to the new administration priorities. And quite frankly, the government workforce is adjusting to the new environment that they're in. And so we're seeing some slowdown or potential disruption there. And I think that's going to be true industry-wide. So this quarter 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.

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

Thank you so much. Gracias.

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

Yes. Good morning, guys. Good morning. Good morning. I was wondering if you could expand upon your comments on headcount additions and the planning there. Are you expecting to ramp up headcount more so than what happened in the December quarter in the March and June quarters, just given the environment you described?

That's the plan. It's a dynamic environment. We'll see how it plays out. I mean, just to... give you some parameters. Our billability in the third quarter was about 1% higher than it was in the first quarter. Um, you know, so that's equivalent to what 330 FTEs. Um, and in fact, our billability in December was the highest it's been on record, honestly, a bit too high from, from my liking. Um, we probably cleared the bench, you know, perhaps too aggressively. So, um, We're ramping up the hiring engine, particularly around a bunch of the large wins that we've enjoyed this year, and we'll see how it plays out. I don't think you're going to see the kind of headcount growth you saw in Q4 last year, but we're bullish, both about the supply and demand side. We've built a lot of momentum.

I would also say this, 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. You know, we have gotten a lot faster in the way we can recruit and deploy. And so we can really compress the acceleration, deceleration process of our recruiting by a lot. For example, we're using artificial intelligence in different ways. So now we get, call it a thousand plus resumes a day. They are read the same night in which the resumes come in. and deploy it against the potential opportunities out there. We didn't have that capability two years ago. And so the ramp up and the ramp down of our recruiting pipeline operated differently. And so again, this is getting faster, being flexible. Like Matt said, this is a very dynamic environment. And so I think week by week, we're going to be matching supply and demand tightly as we see things evolve, the good news is that the opportunities that we see in the horizon really begin to mature and crystallize. We can ramp into them at a different speed than we could have a couple years ago.

Yeah, that's helpful commentary. And I was wondering also just to expand on the prior questioner's question, are you actually seeing a slowdown that has started since the new administration has taken foot at any specific customers with respect to the pace of awarding task orders or, you know, contract award adjudications. Have you actually seen any firm evidence of a slowing or is this more on the con?

Let me offer it in two 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, you know, we're, we are acknowledging what's out there without seeing any material impact on our business. And then in some of the other agencies, I think I mentioned that even in October, in anticipation of things, some of the timelines for award had lengthened in some of the civil agencies. That pattern continues. It has not compressed. It has not lengthened. It just, you know, there's a little bit of a wait and see attitude that began even in, you know, in the last administration, since that this was going to be an administration transition. after the election regardless. And so that has continued. But overall, like Matt said, our trailing book to bill is 1.4, which for us is extremely high. Backlog is strong. The demand condition right now is solid. On the supply side, we're really good. The business is running well. But we have acknowledged, I think probably more than anybody else, the immediate challenges associated with the presidential transition, and those are playing out.

Thank you, guys.

Sure.

Thank you. Our next question is from Sheila Kayawoglu with Jefferies.

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

Well, I'll start, but then I need to let Matt probably complete the thought. I think what has me really excited about our Intel business is under Tom Pfeiffer's leadership, we have really pivoted that business in two directions. One is we're bringing a lot more technology to the actual intelligence function, a lot more AI, a lot more use of data platforms in a different way. But secondly, and I think this is going to be the most important driver of our growth over time, is this is now very much a cyber and space-focused business. Cyber will continue to be a significant investment area for our clients, we believe. But space is, I think, where we're going to see a lot of important acceleration. And I think, again, as you think about the administration's agenda, we are really well positioned on the space front in ways we wouldn't have been a couple of years ago to continue to see the growth over the medium and long term.

Yeah, Sheila, it's playing out the way we anticipated and foreshadowed that our civil business is still going to grow, but perhaps in the short run, not to the extent that the other markets will grow or civil has grown in the past. What's interesting is behind that, Horacio talked about these dozen or so big ideas and that list keeps growing. What's fascinating about that list, there are a lot of them civil. A lot of them that involve, you know, one or more commercial partnerships. And increasingly, we're finding we're pulling technology and capabilities and tech and solutions from 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 a 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 at all, Matt, what Thunderdome contributes on an annualized basis and when it sort of, how long it reaches that run rate for? And then on civil, how do you think about, how do either of you think about the revenue gap growth rate under this administration versus the prior? Does it change at all?

I'll take the Thunderdome question. It's going at the pace we anticipated. We're having a lot of success, most importantly, driving impact for clients. And that's translating into more people, more clients adopting that Thunderdome solution. In terms of civil, I don't know, do you want to take that? Okay. Okay. You know, I think, as I said, we, We are excited about the opportunities for change. The vast majority of our portfolio in civil is in areas of real mission importance. As Soracio mentioned, we've seen, of the agencies that are seeing the most churn related to the new EOs and direction of the administration, we don't have large positions there. So we're excited about the medium to long term in the civil business, I think. 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. So, you know, 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.

Okay, got it. Thank you. Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Toby Sommer with Truist. Please proceed.

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

Sure, Toby. I mean, as you know, the core of our civil business rests on the healthcare side with a very strong emphasis on the VA and Treasury and with the modernization of systems across Treasury and especially the IRS and then broadly across DHS and especially law enforcement. And again, if you look at those areas and you read the same things that I read probably and you talk to probably some of the same people that I talk to, those are areas that I think are 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 thousand 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 philosophy, when there's a change in strategy, there's an immediate impact where people come in and say, wait, let's pause and take a look. As you saw, there was a significant pause that then was partially reversed on grants and funding of grants and things like that, where Booz Allen has no, almost zero or zero business. And so It had no impact on us, but I can see how that has a greater impact. So, you know, like we said before, are we going to see some awards that maybe are under consideration now take a little longer to get awarded? Well, we 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. You know, this is probably what my sixth presidential transition since I joined Booz Allen. Uh, the answer to that is almost certainly yes, because we've seen that in every other one of those. Uh, but at the end of the day, that, 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. Uh, the history of whose Allen is we actually do better. in every administration transition because we can match better than anybody else the opportunity set. And especially now as an advanced technology company with the largest AI business, the largest cyber business, the strong space presence, largest quantum, or I don't know if it's the largest, but the leading quantum business, you put all of that together and you say, we are really well positioned to take advantage of opportunities as we go. 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 threshold of a percentage decline in internal government staff at your agency customers? whereby if large enough, it could signal increased outsourcing to you and others in the marketplace. Just curious how you're thinking about that, because I guess we'll have some sense for what the results are in about a week.

Sure. I mean, as you know, we're not in the outsourcing business and the staff augmentation business. We're in the business of bringing technology to bear, and that's what we're focused on is those types of, 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 Louie DePalma with William Blair. Please proceed. Good morning, Louie.

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 slower procurement?

Yeah, I'll take that one. Historically, we've said that if our book to bill is above 1.2 and our headcount is in the 3% to 5% range, we're looking at mid to upper single-digit organic growth, if not higher. probably biased towards the high end of that. So, you know, we got a lot of momentum in the business. I think your question is hard to parse, right? Because, you know, we're talking about a short-term recalibration for the procurement environment, you know, over the medium to long-term. And that, you know, that will start with when the administration really lands and they get a new budget passed. And, you know, we begin to see areas that they're going to invest in. You know, 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, you know, I wouldn't read much into this quarter or next. I think it's going to be a period of recalibration. And, you know, the answer to your long term question is we're really bullish about where we're headed. We see a lot of opportunity. As Rossio said, we've been preparing for this moment. We've been talking about Volt for the past three years, and the tenets of Volt are squarely in line with what the administration wants to do, AI, speed, dual-use technology, driving efficiency. So this is an opportunity. And you heard in our prepared remarks, but I'll just say my experience is Bruce Allen's 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 gonna create the future. There's a reason why our mission statement says we're empowering people to change the world and we're embracing this change and going forward.

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

Louis, why don't I take the first part of it? I actually think this is qualitatively different from the sequestration time period in that there they started with a lower... First of all, it came up all of a sudden because they had created the BCA caps as a way to force themselves to agree. And then when they couldn't agree, it's almost they put their gun to the proverbial head and then the gun went off. And as a result of that, this was this unprecedented takedown of across the board funding that was irrespective of priority investment areas of need. This, to me, reads completely differently. If I listen to the conversation that is happening around Doge, this is about creating efficiencies and then deciding how that is going to be invested for the American people. And in that sense, our expectation is that a lot of what is going to be created in the form of efficiencies will be reinvested as investments in technology that will drive future outcomes. We are in a geopolitically very difficult environment where, as you heard me say, we're just not moving fast enough I think there's a possibility to accelerate that there's a real desire in the department, both by the incoming team and by the existing professionals there to accelerate things. And this should enable that both from a funding and a process perspective, there's a real need to think about immigration differently. There's a real need to think about space differently. And, and it, any success at creating efficiencies, I think will unlock the possibility of really creating that faster, which for us spells both impact and opportunity. And so that's why we came into 2011 recognizing that this was going to be a multi-year 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 multi-year 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, Louis, 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. Recently, when there have been shifting priorities or contract losses like FocusFox or the recent VA contract, you have been able to shift your talent to other short staffed, high growth programs. And, you know, in terms of Horacio's answer and your answer, Matt, you seem to suggest that DOGE is more of a shift of priorities rather than just across the board, sequestration type cost cutting. Do you expect with Vault that you're going to be able to have this same type of versatility and be able to shift employees to align to new priorities quickly?

Absolutely. And I think we may be able to do even more. I think, first of all, you know, we have our overall business model based on the single P&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, you know, we are using new tools and new technologies to do everything faster inside of Booz Allen. We can understand, for example, if somebody is coming off a contract We now use AI to understand where would their skill set be best match, and we can make that transition happen not quite in milliseconds yet, but certainly infinitely faster than we could have in the past. But maybe third 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 standing still. And so, you know, 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.

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

Hey, good morning, guys. Thanks for the question. One for Horacio. I mean, so I got some news last week out of China on AI with DC. Just curious if you've heard, you know, any kind of reaction from your clients that maybe, you know, more urgency to kind of accelerate investment in AI. And just curious, you know, just sort of where we stand in kind of the AI kind of arms race with China.

Yeah, you know, 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 sort of the announcement had some element of surprise, it was not totally out of the blue. Here's what I would say. First of all, there's a real opportunity here to rethink at least some elements of how AI is deployed. And there are some capabilities that DeepSeq showed that actually demonstrate that by distilling and doing a number of things, you can actually really lower the cost of deployment and use of AI. You can put it in a much smaller compute footprint. And again, as you think about edge and all the things we worry about, there's a lot of, things to think about there. The second point is it demonstrates how dynamic this field is and how, if you will, ephemeral leadership could be in an area like this. And I think it's going to keep everybody on our toes to ensure that we continue to stay on top of it, which is, again, I take you back to the V involved. This is why we focused on speed, because this is how fast things are changing. And then third, I will say this. I mean, again, when China does something like this uh it's a it's a moment of false not just for our clients but really for all of us for a couple of reasons um first of all you know i think it's we all need to take some time to examine some of the claims uh because there's some opacity in in some of the claims that i think we still need to to shred to ground truth uh but secondly um you know i did it's already been reported in the press that if you ask certain questions uh you get some funny answers coming out of deep seek we don't know in these models uh what is also behind them underneath that and so the deployment of models where we don't have complete understanding of their provenance uh and and what may be in there is something that again creates an intersection between AI and cyber, also something we've been talking about for a couple of years that we really need to be very thoughtful about. These are the kinds of things we're talking to our clients about. These are the kinds of areas where I think Booz Allen's leadership, if anything, will expand and accelerate. So you and I could geek out on this probably for the next half an hour, but I'll park it there.

That's great.

Thanks.

And then I guess I want to ask about capital deployment. You guys have sort of laid out what the strategy, you know, kind of the priorities are. But, you know, 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.

Yeah, thanks, Matt. I think if you look, we've bought back about $500 million in shares over the first nine months. So as is often true, we're doing things sort of our own way and quietly, but we've retired 2.3% of our share count over the first three quarters. You're right. I mean, our balance sheet is strong, right? Our net leverage is 2.3 times. So we've deployed almost a a billion dollars worth of capital over the last 12 months while still delevering. And that gives us a lot of flexibility to generate value in different ways. And as Horacio and I have said, we're really bullish about Booz Allen's prospects in the new environment. So we will continue to deploy capital aggressively and flexibly to create shareholder value in lots of ways.

Sounds great. Thank you.

Thank you. And now we'll turn the call back to Horacio Rosansky 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 to, once again, this is my favorite thing, to brag about the amazing people of Booz Allen. They're at the heart of the work that we do and the outcomes that we deliver for our clients each and every day. You know, as we closed out our 110th anniversary in December, our people delivered yet one more achievement that makes me proud and is worth highlighting. In 2024, our employee giving campaign raised the record $2.6 million in support of nearly 2,500 nonprofits. This is the highest level of employee participation ever. And it demonstrates the care that people at Booz Allen 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.