CRA International , Inc . ( NASDAQ : CRAI ) Q4 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

<p>CRA International, Inc. (NASDAQ:<a href="https://www.insidermonkey.com/insider-trading/company/cra+international+inc/1053706/">CRAI</a>) Q4 2025 Earnings Call Transcript February 26, 2026</p>
<p>CRA International, Inc. beats earnings expectations. Reported EPS is $2.06, expectations were $2.05.</p>
<p>Operator: Good day, everyone, and welcome to the Charles River Associates Fourth Quarter 2025 Conference Call. Please note that today’s call is being recorded. The company’s earnings release and prepared remarks from CRA’s Chief Financial Officer are posted on the Investor Relations section of CRA’s website at crai.com. With us today are CRA’s President and Chief Executive Officer, Paul Maleh; Chief Financial Officer, Eric Nierenberg; and Chief Corporate Development Officer, Chad Holmes. At this time, I’d like to turn the call over to Dr. Nierenberg for opening remarks. Please go ahead, sir.</p>
<p>Eric Nierenberg: Thank you, Melissa, and good morning to everyone. Please note that the statements made during this conference call, including guidance on future revenue and non-GAAP EBITDA margin along with any other statements concerning the future business, operating results or financial condition of CRA, including those statements using the terms expect, outlook or similar terms are forward-looking statements as defined in Section 21 of the Exchange Act. Information contained in these forward-looking statements is based on management’s current expectations and is inherently uncertain. Actual performance and results may differ materially from those expressed or implied in these statements due to many important factors, including the level of demand for our services as a result of changes in general and industry-specific economic conditions.</p>
<p>Additional information regarding these factors is included in today’s release and in CRA’s periodic reports, including our most recently filed annual report on Form 10-K and quarterly reports on Form 10-Q filed with the SEC. CRA undertakes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements after the date of this call. Additionally, we will refer to some non-GAAP financial measures and certain measures presented on a constant currency basis on this call. Everyone is encouraged to refer to today’s release and related CFO remarks for reconciliations of these non-GAAP financial measures to their GAAP comparable measures and descriptions of the calculation of EBITDA and measures presented on a constant currency basis. I will now turn it over to Paul for his report.</p>
<p>Paul?</p>
<p>Paul Maleh: Thanks, Eric, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us today. Revenue for fiscal 2025 increased by 9.3% to $751.6 million, marking CRA’s eighth consecutive year of record annual revenue. Our performance benefited from broad-based contributions across the portfolio. Both lines of business contributed to the year’s revenue growth as our legal and regulatory services increased 10.3% relative to fiscal 2024. And our management consulting services expanded 6.4% year-over-year. For fiscal 2025, 7 practices grew their top lines with 3: Antitrust &amp; Competition Economics, Energy and Intellectual Property delivering double-digit revenue growth relative to fiscal 2024. Geographically, both our North American and international operations contributed to the year’s revenue growth, increasing 7.3% and 19.5%, respectively.</p>
<p>During this period of revenue growth, we continue to manage the business effectively achieving full year utilization of 77%. Our strong utilization and overall execution drove record profits for fiscal 2025 as measured by net income, earnings per diluted share and EBITDA. Turning to the fourth quarter. Our portfolio strength drove an 11.6% increase in revenue year-over-year, resulting in the best quarterly revenue in CRA’s history. Continued growth of our sales pipeline supported this record Q4 revenue. During the quarter, our weekly average project lead flow and new project originations increased 9.3% and 7.7%, respectively, relative to the fourth quarter of 2024. For the fourth quarter, 6 of CRA’s practices grew their top line with 4 Antitrust &amp; Competition Economics, Energy, Forensic Services and Labor &amp; Employment, delivering double-digit revenue growth year-over-year.</p>
<p>Revenue in the fourth quarter for CRA’s legal and regulatory services increased 14.3% relative to last year. The Antitrust &amp; Competition Economics and Forensic Services practices led the way with each delivering quarterly revenue growth of more than 20% year-over-year. With this notable performance, each practice established new records for both quarterly and annual revenue. In addition to these 2 practices, the labor and employment and risk investigations and analytics practices expanded revenue year-over-year. During the quarter, CRA’s Antitrust &amp; Competition Economics practice worked on merger transactions across a range of industries and geographies as worldwide M&amp;A activity in 2025 totaled $4.6 trillion, an increase of 49% compared to 2024 and represented the strongest annual period for dealmaking since 2021.</p>
<p>For example, the practice was retained by the Hershey Company, an industry-leading snacks company with iconic brands to advise on its acquisition of LesserEvil, a maker of organic snacks. The CRA team provided support to Hershey on the competition and regulatory compliance aspects of its acquisition. [ Although ], a global CRA team advised Boeing with the submissions made to competition authorities across the world in connection with its acquisition of Spirit AeroSystems. The transaction closed in December 2025, following the consent order from the FTC and earlier clearances by the U.K. Competition and Market Authority and the European Commission conditional on full compliance with commitments offered by the emerging parties. During the fourth quarter, the Forensic Services practice worked on hundreds of ransomware, wire transfer fraud, employee misconduct, trade secret and various litigation matters.</p>
<p>Our team is consistently retained by companies ranging from large Fortune 500 companies to smaller private companies that are in crisis. For example, when a company is crippled by ransomware. Our team provides support for clients to contain incidents, recover operations, advise on business interruption claims and manage stakeholder communications in alignment with relevant authorities. During Q4, the labor and employment practice continued to assist clients in all phases of employment-related litigation. The practice was routinely engaged for pre-litigation support, expert testimony and proactive consulting services in complex employment matters. For example, a CRA Vice President was retained as an expert by a large tech company in a nationwide class action matter involving alleged violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act as well as California’s and New York’s labor codes.</p>
<p>During the fourth quarter, the risk investigations and analytics practice worked on several large investigative and damages matters across multiple jurisdictions. In the U.S., the practice was retained as an expert on behalf of a leading global energy company to opine on damages from an alleged breach of contract in relation to a joint development agreement between the parties to develop heat exchangers and a related acquisition. In the United Kingdom, the practice was engaged on behalf of an African utility company that commenced arbitration proceedings regarding the concession agreement with a national government entity. CRA consultants are providing financial analysis of multiple elements of the concession agreements. Within our management consulting offering, the energy practice continued to operate at the forefront of key industry developments during the fourth quarter with revenue increasing more than 20% relative to the fourth quarter of 2024.</p>
<p>Activity was particularly strong around data center-driven load growth where the practice supported 1 electric utility and 2 gas utilities in evaluating strategic options to attract and serve large-scale data center customers, including consideration around infrastructure investment, tariffs and regulatory positioning. In parallel, the practice remained engaged on electricity market design and planning issues as clients increasingly recognize that existing market structures are under strain from rapid load growth, resource adequacy challenges and evolving reliability needs. This work included advising utility developers and other market participants on the implications of these changes for investment, operations and policy. CRA’s Life Sciences strategy work continues to span the product life cycle.</p>
<p>As an example, during the fourth quarter, a couple of our major projects involved opposite ends of the spectrum in liver disease. For one of our clients, we engaged in mapping the patient’s journey and identifying unmet needs to assist a pharmaceutical company in identifying new therapy development opportunities in liver disease. On the other end of the spectrum, we helped the pharmaceutical company prepare for a loss of patent exclusivity on a blockbuster product. Recapping our record financial performance, CRA reported revenue for fiscal 2025 of $751.6 million and non-GAAP EBITDA of $96.8 million, producing a non-GAAP EBITDA margin of 12.9%. CRA achieved this performance during a period of market turbulence and external disruptions. From geopolitical and macroeconomic shifts to industry-specific volatility, CRA absorbed the shocks and continue to expand its bench of talented contributors.</p>
<p>On the consulting side of the business, during fiscal 2025, we promoted 8 colleagues to Vice President and hired 19 new Vice Presidents. As previously announced, we made investments to expand our leadership ranks on the corporate side, drawing from our deep bench of management talent to promote Eric Nierenberg to CFO; Brian Langan, to Chief Strategy and Business Transformation Officer; and Sandy David, to Principal Accounting Officer. We further expanded our leadership team with the external hires of Graham Ross as CRA’s Chief Marketing Officer; and Curt Lefebvre as Vice President of Artificial Intelligence to oversee CRA’s deployment of AI across the organization as we move beyond broad experimentation and toward disciplined enablement. Moreover, we made all of these investments without missing a beat in our financial performance.</p>
<p>Overall, I’m grateful to my colleagues for their hard work during the fourth quarter and throughout the year as we delivered outstanding services to help our clients address their most challenges — their most important challenges. For full year fiscal 2026 on a constant currency basis relative to fiscal 2025, we expect revenue in the range of $785 million to $805 million and non-GAAP EBITDA margin in the range of 12.0% to 13.0%. Based on current forecast, we expect that currency effects will decrease our reported revenue by roughly $5 million and will decrease our reported EBITDA by less than $1 million when stated on a constant currency basis. In addition, noncash forgivable loan amortization, which is reflected as an expense when presenting EBITDA metrics is expected to increase approximately $15 million or more than 30% year-over-year in fiscal 2026 due to the increase in talent investments completed in fiscal 2025.</p>
<p>Finally, as a reminder, fiscal 2026 returns to CRA’s typical 52-week year, whereas fiscal 2025 contained an extra week and resulted in a 53-week year. To close my prepared remarks, I would like to share my thoughts on the recent market volatility. Over the past month, CRA’s strong operating performance has been overshadowed by apparent unease in the broader equity market over the potential impact of AI on all types of businesses, including those in the consulting space. We view AI as a catalyst for improved productivity and revenue growth. Since the public release of ChatGPT and the resulting attention on large language models, my colleagues have found innovative ways to deploy a variety of AI tools and techniques with client projects. For example, AI tools have accelerated the creation of computer code and scripts in support of our analytical work, enhanced first pass document review, including foreign language translations and accelerated basic desk research.</p>
<p>What may seem like small productivity enhancements allow my colleagues to reallocate more time and resources to part of our clients’ challenges where CRA can provide unique insight. The combination of CRA’s industry-leading expertise and the capabilities of these new technologies allows us to identify opportunities and deliver the creative solutions that our clients have come to expect from CRA. For example, our energy practice has developed an artificial intelligence-driven resource adequacy model known as CRA Adequacy X that utilizes a Monte Carlo-based loss of load approach. It uses artificial intelligence and synthetic data to simulating future grid conditions such as changing load shapes and generator unit performance to capture correlated events like high load coupled with wide-scale outages during cold winter events.</p>
<p>By stimulating future conditions, CRA can accurately capture the capacity contribution of different generating technologies and identify critical reliability risks, which would be missed by only simulating historical conditions. Additionally, AI is expanding the range and complexity of economic decisions that can be evaluated from regulatory scenario testing to competitive simulations and litigation, the value is not in the machine selecting the answer. The value lies in expert judgment, framing the right questions, choosing defensible assumptions and defending conclusions, AI can accelerate the work. but it does not replace the credibility in complex and high-stakes environments. Importantly, our approach to AI adoption is disciplined and governance focused.</p>
<p>We are integrating AI through controlled pilots, strong quality control processes and reproducibility standards and strict data security safeguards. Human oversight remains central to every client-facing deliverable. As we scale adoption, our priority is to use AI in ways that strengthen quality, speed and consistency while maintaining the standards our clients and courts expect. As I have often said, our long-term business drivers are complexity, regulation, litigation and high-stakes economic decision-making. These are not going away. If anything, they are likely to intensify. We see AI as strengthening the position of firms like CRA with deep expertise, strong governance and established credibility. Our culture of expertise and rigor is durable.</p>
<p>We remain confident in our strategy and in CRA’s ability to continue deli