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Text: As some of you know, our Head of Investor Relations, Rubun Dey, recently left the company to pursue other opportunities.
Our Vice President and Chief Accounting Officer, Laura Adams, has stepped in as Interim Head of Investor Relations, which she will oversee while also maintaining her ongoing role.
Laura has been a finance executive with the firm for over a decade, overseeing many areas of corporate finance, including governance, financial and treasury oversight and risk mitigation.
She has played a vital role for me and our leadership team in our strategic decision-making around our capital allocation and M&A plans and our investment thesis more recently.
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 second quarter fiscal year 2022 slides.
We are now on Slide 4.
Laura, it's great to have you play a more public role on these calls, because you have been a leader on our finance team and integral to the quarterly earnings process for many years.
I have personally relied on your expertise for as long as I've been CEO.
Lloyd and I, along with several of our Booz Allen colleagues were excited to be in New York City earlier this month to share our new investment thesis and our strategy for growth.
It was great to see so many of you in person, and we hope you took away from that event a deeper understanding of our strategy, business and multi-year financial goals.
Today, we will continue the conversation in the context of our second quarter results for the fiscal year.
And we will show how Booz Allen is already setting up to accelerate into the financial goals described in our investment thesis.
I'm also pleased to share an update on our future of work rollout.
Before diving into the second quarter results, I want to briefly recap a few points from our Investor Day, starting with VLT; velocity, leadership and technology.
VLT is the strategic framework that will accelerate our growth and create exceptional shareholder value.
Through VLT, we will capitalize on future market opportunities and leverage our positioning to deploy talent and capital against the nation's highest priorities.
As part of our new strategy, we also told you about the opportunities we see for hyper growth in the areas of digital battle space and national cyber, among others.
And then those of you who attended AUSA a week later, saw some of our differentiated technology solutions that are transforming national missions.
Specifically, demos of Rainmaker and a few of our Edge solutions are excellent examples of how we are leading in our market.
Fueled by the investments we have made during Vision 2020, Booz Allen holds first-mover advantage at key intersections of technology and mission.
The overall strategy is important because it's what creates our strong financial performance year-to-year.
And on Investor Day, we were pleased to present our new investment thesis.
It's the multi-year outlook that will frame our quarter-to-quarter performance going forward.
At the core of these thesis is accelerating growth in adjusted EBITDA dollars through fiscal year 2025.
We expect adjusted EBITDA to increase by about 50% from $840 million in fiscal year 2021 to $1.2 billion to $1.3 billion in fiscal year 2025.
Broadly, we expect this increase to be driven by above market organic revenue growth, continued strong margins and capital deployment that prioritizes strategic acquisitions.
To be more specific, our path to 50% adjusted EBITDA growth includes financial expectations of 5% to 8% annual organic revenue growth, adjusted EBITDA margins in the mid-10s and $3.5 billion to $4.5 billion in total capital deployment during the period.
The leadership team and I are confident that we can accelerate growth and achieve the goals in our investment thesis.
We have the right strategy.
And more importantly, the right team is in place to drive our business.
This quarter's results demonstrate that Booz Allen is already positioned for acceleration.
So let me shift now to an overview of the second quarter.
As we have said since fiscal year 2022 begun, this year's growth pattern looks different from recent fiscal years with slower revenue growth in the first half and significant acceleration expected in the second half.
These pattern is primarily due to three factors.
First and most important, a ramp-up in hiring.
Second, productivity and time of dynamics tied to the pandemic that create challenging comps in the first half.
And third, full inclusion of revenue from acquisitions.
These factors contribute to choppiness at the top-line.
And with our second quarter results now final, you can see that the first half of the fiscal year played out just as we expected.
For the full six months, revenue growth was in the low-single-digits.
We are pleased to report that across bottom line metrics we outperformed in the first half with strong profit margins driving EBITDA and ADEPS growth.
Book-to-bill for the second quarter was strong, reflecting a significant year-over-year increase in bookings and cash generation was exceptional.
Our latest results demonstrate several key things about our business at the midpoint of the fiscal year.
We are not demand constraint, as shown in our backlog and book-to-bill performance.
Hiring, which is our top operational priority, rapidly accelerated over the first two quarters.
We continue to attract and retain the talent we need in a very competitive market, and we aim to keep our momentum going.
Our team is managing the business extraordinarily well, which can be seen especially in the bottom line metrics.
We are well underway with making strategic acquisitions and successfully integrating them, with our acquisition of Tracepoint last month being the most recent example.
We're already seeing lift from combining Tracepoint's channel access and incident response expertise with Booz Allen's cyber consulting and managed services offerings.
And while we did face headwinds from comps and a slow ramp up on some contracts, we continue to manage through them.
Taken together, our first half results and the strong operational performance behind them point to acceleration through the rest of the fiscal year.
To achieve our second half objectives, we are focused on a set of priorities that are critical to our success.
Let me walk through them.
Our top priority remains recruiting.
We must continue strong hiring to execute our growing backlog.
Second, we will maintain operational excellence in managing the business.
Third, we will continue to capture key market opportunities.
Fourth, we will capitalize on the upside presented by our acquisitions of Liberty and Tracepoint.
And fifth, we will continue to invest in our people and differentiated solutions to drive growth beyond this fiscal year.
Lloyd and I are confident Booz Allen will continue to make progress on these objectives.
And today, we are pleased to reaffirm guidance for the full fiscal year.
We believe that our growing momentum will both deliver another successful year and accelerate our business into the years covered by our new investment thesis.
Lloyd will share more details on our results and fiscal year 2022 guidance in a few minutes.
Before giving him the floor, I want to provide an update on the implementation of our future of work program.
As you may recall, we believe we can offer our people increased flexibility in the way we work with the expectation that many of our people will work in a hybrid model.
It makes up telework and purposeful in-person collaboration.
We have plans to launch future of work and reopen all our offices on September 7, but those plans have to be delayed.
It just was not safe at the time given the summer wave of COVID driven by the Delta variant.
Since then, case metrics have improved and we are implementing a vaccination policy consistent with the federal government's mandate, requirements and timeline.
We're making excellent progress in our vaccination rates.
And earlier this month, we began a phase reopening of offices that have remained closed, and we expect to have all offices open by November 22.
We are excited to now be in the position to safely engage more broadly with clients and colleagues in-person.
Our people did an extraordinary job staying connected over the past 19 months.
But just like Investor Day, there are times when being face-to-face is best.
Our future of work program provides the flexibility to come together with purpose when and where it makes the most sense.
With the opportunity to see more of our teams, clients, investors and other Booz Allen stakeholders in-person, I'm feeling energized and confident about the future.
And my optimism is enhanced by the strong performance we delivered in the first half and how it sets us up for acceleration for the rest of the fiscal year and well beyond.
And with that, Lloyd, over to you to take us through the financials in depth.
Our overall objective with Investor Day was to once again demonstrate Booz Allen's commitment to long-term profitable growth.
Leveraging our VLT strategy, we will make the internal investments and strategic acquisitions required to drive and execute that growth.
In our view, the first half of fiscal year 2022 was an inflection point.
As we move into the second half of the fiscal year and move past the direct and indirect influences of COVID over the last 19 months, we are entering the next leg of the firm's multi-year journey.
As Horacio noted, we closed out the first half of the fiscal year with top-line performance in line with our expectations and prior guidance and with bottom-line performance well ahead.
This gives us great confidence in our plan for the full fiscal year.
Our large backlog, strong bookings and proposal activity signals continued client interest and strong demand for our work.
Our hiring engine is now firing on all cylinders, positioning us to drive growth in the second half of the fiscal year.
We closed on the acquisitions of Liberty and Tracepoint.
As we have noted, we anticipated early year choppiness in our top-line results as we move into a post-COVID operating rhythm, which played out as we expected.
Our strong balance sheet position and favorable market conditions have allowed us to take advantage of a number of opportunities, including attractive levels of debt financing, M&A and share repurchases.
As a reminder, we had forecast constrained low-single-digit top-line growth in the first half with an acceleration through the fiscal year, driven by three dynamics: a ramp up in contracts and hiring, normalizing staff utilization and time off usage, growing contributions from acquisitions.
I will speak to these in more detail when I address our guidance.
With that, let me walk you through the second quarter results.
At the top-line, in the second quarter, revenue increased 4.3% year-over-year to $2.1 billion.
Revenue excluding billable expenses grew 3.6% to $1.5 billion.
Revenue growth was driven by inorganic contributions and solid operational performance, offset from higher than normal staff utilization in the comparable prior year period.
Now, let me step through performance at the market level.
In defense, revenue declined by 0.6%, primarily due to a significant materials purchased in billable expenses and unusually high staff utilization in the prior year period, a headwind felt throughout most of our markets.
Defense also saw some slowness in ramp ups on both new and existing work, while ongoing protests continue to create uncertainty on the timing of programs starts.
In the first six months, revenue increased 1.8%.
In civil, revenue grew by 16.4% led by strong performance in our health business and the addition of Liberty.
Liberty's contributions so far is slightly outpacing our previously forecasted range of $300 million to $340 million of annualized revenue.
We remain exceptionally pleased with Liberty's performance and contribution to Booz Allen and are well underway with plans to fully integrate it with our broader health and digital business.
We are feeling momentum across this entire market as we continue to capture key opportunities aligned to the government's priorities.
In the first six months, revenue increased 11.2%.
In intelligence, we recorded 0.8% revenue growth this quarter.
Our portfolio reshaping efforts have started to yield critical wins, and we are excited to see this business return to growth.
For the full first six months, revenue declined 2.9%, but we believe this will continue to turnaround in the second half of the fiscal year.
Lastly, revenue and global commercial declined 5.7% compared to the prior year quarter.
We continued to strategically shift focus to our U.S. commercial cyber business and anticipate growth in the back half of the fiscal year as we accelerate hiring to capitalize on the strong demand and additive growth in the business from Tracepoint.
In the first six months, revenue declined 17.2%.
Our book-to-bill for the quarter was 2.03 times, while our last 12 month's book-to-bill was 1.28 times.
Total backlog grew 18% year-over-year, resulting in backlog of $29 billion, a new record.
Funded backlog grew 9.7% to $4.9 billion, unfunded backlog grew 54.7% to $9.5 billion and priced options grew 4.4% to $14.6 billion.
We are proud of our bookings performance in the second quarter, which continues to demonstrate we are not demand constrained, and our ability to win and convert on work aligned with our core capabilities and clients' most critical missions.
Pivoting to headcount, as of September 30, we had approximately 29,200 employees, up by about 1,600 year-over-year or 5.8%.
In the first half of the fiscal year, we added approximately 1,500 employees.
As we have previously noted, the competition for talent, particularly technical talent, remains fierce.
Still, we have successfully executed our hiring and retention strategies.
As Betty Thompson highlighted at Investor Day, those strategies focused on fostering a strong people-centered culture and effective talent systems that support individual pursuits as well as business needs.
Accelerating headcount growth remains a top operational priority for this fiscal year and will be key as we move into the next multi-year period of our investment thesis.
We expect to continue building on our progress through the second half of the fiscal year.
Moving to the bottom line, adjusted EBITDA for the quarter was $270 million, up 18.1% from the prior year period.
Adjusted EBITDA margin on revenue was 12.8% compared to 11.3% in the prior year period.
The increase in adjusted EBITDA margin was driven by three factors.
First, profitable contract level performance and mix, which includes the inorganic contributions into our results.
Second, prudent cost management.
And third, a return to a billing for fee within intel, which had a $7 million negative impact on the prior year period under the CARES Act.
As we move through the fiscal year, we expect billable expenses and unallowable spend to ramp up, with billable expenses which are currently near the low end of our historical 29% to 31% range, expected to move toward the midpoint of that range by the fiscal year end.
Second quarter net income increased 14% year-over-year to $155 million.
Adjusted net income was $170 million, up 19% from the prior year period, primarily driven by the same factors driving higher adjusted EBITDA.
Diluted earnings per share increased 16% to $1.14 from $0.98 the prior year period.
And adjusted diluted earnings per share increased 22% to $1.26 from $1.03.
These increases to our non-GAAP metrics were primarily driven by better operating performance, the inclusion of Liberty, a lower effective tax rate and a lower share count due to our share repurchase program.
Cash from operations was $470 million in the second quarter compared to $426 million in the prior year period.
This increase was driven primarily by continued strong cash management, fueled by consistent operational performance.
Capital expenditures for the quarter were $21 million, up approximately $3 million from the prior year period, driven by investments for future growth.
We still expect capital expenditures to land within our forecast range for the fiscal year.
During the quarter, we paid out $50 million for our quarterly dividend and repurchased $106 million worth of shares at an average price of $83.31 per share.
We also acquired the remaining stake in Tracepoint, a promising digital forensics and incident response business.
As you may recall, we took a minority stake in Tracepoint last December.
And the partnership has proven so fruitful that we completed the purchase in September.
In total, including the close of the Tracepoint acquisition, we deployed $285 million during the quarter.
Today, we are announcing that our board has approved a regular dividend of $0.37 per share payable on December 2 to stockholders of record on November 15.
As our actions and performance demonstrate, we remain committed to preserving and maximizing shareholder value through a disciplined balanced capital allocation posture.
Turning now to guidance.
Please move to Slide 8.
Before I address the numbers, I want to highlight our continued expectations for a distinct first half, second half dynamics this fiscal year.
Let me walk through the puts and takes of this second half ramp, starting with the top-line perspective.
First, we expect year-over-year comparables in staff utilization to normalize in the second half of the fiscal year.
As a reminder, in fiscal year 2021, staff utilization trended roughly 300 basis points above typical levels in the first half of the year before starting to normalize in the third quarter.
Second, we expect that our ramp on both contracts and hiring will translate into growth as we move through the fiscal year.
Strong customer interest and proactive demand signals give us confidence that any near-term slowness in the acquisition process is likely temporary, not withstanding any unforeseen disruptions in government funding.
On the other hand, from a supply perspective, our efforts to improve hiring, in some cases ahead of demand, have paid off.
Third, our growing Liberty business will fully contribute in the second half of the fiscal year relative to a partial first half.
Lastly, minor timing differences in our costing of labor, resulting from the implementation of our new financial management systems.
Putting it all together, we still forecast significant acceleration from our first half performance ramping through the fourth quarter, barring any major disruption such as a prolonged government shutdown or other dynamics outside of our control.
Regarding adjusted EBITDA margins, we exercise considerable control over our cost structure and margin levers.
We traditionally take a conservative approach to cost management early in the fiscal year and prioritize investments in our people, infrastructure and long-term growth objectives as we move throughout the fiscal year.
Given the slowness we noted in the government's contracting process, we have maintained a tighter grip on our cost levers into this fiscal year.
However, we still expect to make those same investments in the second half of the fiscal year, which will pressure back half adjusted EBITDA margins.
Taking these factors into consideration, we are reaffirming our fiscal year 2022 guidance.
We expect revenue growth to be between 7% and 10% inclusive of Liberty and Tracepoint.
We expect adjusted EBITDA margin in the mid-10% range.
Let me reiterate that we expect to make investments in our people and our technology in the second half of the fiscal year to support our multi-year growth aspirations.
That said, given our strong first half results, we expect to finish near the top end of our current guidance.
We expect adjusted diluted earnings per share to be between $4.10 and $4.30 based on an effective tax rate of 22% to 24%, 134 million to 137 million weighted average shares outstanding and interest expense of $92 million to $95 million.
We expect operating cash flow near the low end of our prior $800 million to $850 million range, which is inclusive of approximately $56 million of cash payments related to the Liberty transaction.
And finally, we expect capex in the $80 million to $100 million range.
Finally, I would like to round out the conversation by looking to the future and our new investment thesis, which Horacio recapped in his remarks.
As we continue to position ourselves for a post-COVID operating environment, we believe that our actions and performance throughout the remainder of fiscal year '22 will put us on the right trajectory to accelerate our growth and execute on our investment thesis.
We are truly excited for the future of this firm and all we can accomplish for both our clients and our investors.
Operator, please open the lines.

user
compname reports quarterly adjusted earnings per share $1.26.
qtrly earnings per share $1.14.
qtrly adjusted earnings per share $1.26.
booz allen hamilton holding - qtrly revenue increase of 4.3% over yoy to $2.1 billion.
co reaffirms its previously provided fiscal 2022 guidance.

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