Huron Consulting Group Inc. provides global professional services in the United States and internationally. It operates through three segments: Healthcare, Education, and ...
Huron Consulting Group is a publicly traded professional services company headquartered in Chicago, Illinois, and listed on the NASDAQ under the symbol HURN. Founded in 2002, the company works with organizations that face complex operational, financial, technology, regulatory, and transformation challenges. Its business model is primarily project- and relationship-based: clients ...Huron Consulting Group is a publicly traded professional services company headquartered in Chicago, Illinois, and listed on the NASDAQ under the symbol HURN. Founded in 2002, the company works with organizations that face complex operational, financial, technology, regulatory, and transformation challenges. Its business model is primarily project- and relationship-based: clients engage Huron for consulting engagements, technology implementations, managed services, outsourcing, and recurring support programs. Because Huron is a services business rather than a manufacturer, traditional bill-of-materials costs are not central to its operations. Its principal cost inputs are professional labor, subcontractors, technology platforms, implementation resources, sales and marketing, facilities, and general corporate overhead.
The company reports three principal operating segments: Healthcare, Education, and Commercial. Healthcare services include performance improvement, care transformation, revenue-cycle improvement and outsourcing, enterprise health-record implementation, digital transformation, analytics, artificial intelligence, automation, and technology managed services. In education, Huron supports colleges, universities, and research institutions with financial and operational improvement, enterprise resource planning, research administration, compliance, organizational transformation, and technology services. Its Huron Research product suite is designed to support research-administration processes and compliance. The Commercial segment serves industries such as financial services, industrials and manufacturing, energy and utilities, public-sector organizations, and other commercial clients through strategy, innovation, organizational, financial, technology, regulatory, and risk-management consulting.
Huron’s portfolio includes enterprise health-record, enterprise resource-planning, enterprise-performance-management, customer-relationship-management, data-management, artificial-intelligence, automation, and managed-technology capabilities. The company also provides financial and capital advisory services, revenue-cycle managed services, research-focused consulting, and software-enabled solutions. These offerings allow Huron to combine advisory work with implementation and longer-term managed services, potentially increasing client retention and recurring revenue opportunities.
The supplied trailing-twelve-month information indicates approximately $2.42 billion in market capitalization and $3.25 billion in enterprise value. Reported metrics include a 30.5% gross margin, 10.8% EBIT margin, 12.9% EBITDA margin, 6.4% net margin, and approximately $325.7 million of free cash flow to equity. The company reported no dividend in the supplied data. Its balance sheet carries meaningful leverage, with debt-to-equity of approximately 2.25 and net debt-to-EBITDA of approximately 3.57, although interest coverage was reported at roughly 5.14 times. The employee count supplied by the financial-data source is 8,610, placing Huron in the 5,001-10,000 employee category. Mark Hussey has served as CEO and President since January 2023, following the transition from former CEO James H. Roth. Huron’s strategic objective is to help clients achieve sustainable performance improvement by combining industry expertise, technology, analytics, advisory services, and operational execution.
YoYYoY means Year-over-Year. It compares the latest annual value with the previous annual value to show long-term trend strength.
QoQQoQ means Quarter-over-Quarter. It compares the latest quarter with the immediately previous quarter to show short-term momentum changes.
RevenueThe total money that came through the front door from selling things, before paying a single bill. Think of it as the grand total of every credit card swipe from customers. (YoY compares this year to last year's performance, while QoQ compares the current three months to the previous three).
$1.7B
+14.3%
+5.2%
Net IncomeThe absolute bottom line. If the company paid every single supplier, employee, banker, and tax collector, this is the actual money left in their pocket at the end of the day.
$105.0M
-9.9%
+34.4%
Gross MarginThe basic markup. If they sell a $100 pair of sneakers, this percentage tells you how much of that price tag is profit right after paying for the rubber and shoelaces, but before paying for things like store rent or TV commercials.
+29.9%
-6.5%
+16.8%
Operating MarginThe 'day job' efficiency score. Out of every dollar a customer spends, this shows how many cents the company keeps after making the product AND paying for all the everyday corporate overhead (like salaries, marketing, and keeping the lights on).
+11.7%
+3.3%
+14.9%
Net MarginThe final take-home percentage. When you strip away every conceivable cost, tax, and interest payment, this is the exact number of cents the company truly gets to keep from every dollar in sales.
+6.2%
-21.2%
+27.8%
Free Cash FlowThe holy grail of corporate cash. It's the spendable, physical money left over after the business pays for its daily operations AND buys the big, expensive upgrades (like new factories or servers) it needs to survive. This is the 'free' money they can use to pay dividends or buy back stock.
$183.0M
-5.0%
+169.8%
FCF MarginThe ultimate cash conversion rate. It shows how good the company is at turning regular sales directly into cold, hard, spendable cash. A high percentage means the business is an absolute cash-printing machine.
+10.8%
-16.9%
+166.3%
Debt / EquityThe financial risk gauge. It compares how much of the company's empire was built using borrowed money (loans) versus the owners' own money (shareholders). A high number means they are heavily leveraged and playing a riskier game; a low number means they are playing it safe.
103.7%
+46.1%
+0.6%
Current RatioThe 12-month survival check. It simply compares the cash they have right now (plus things they can quickly turn into cash) against the immediate bills they absolutely must pay this year. A score above 1 means they have enough in the wallet to cover the upcoming bills without panicking.
1.17x
-3.1%
-22.9%
Total AssetsThe absolute size of the company's empire. It bundles together absolutely everything of value they own—from the cash in the register and the inventory in the warehouse, to the software patents in the vault and the factories on the ground.
Operator: Good afternoon, and welcome to Huron Consulting Group's webcast to discuss financial results for the second quarter of 2026. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. Before we begin, I would like to point all of you to the disclosure at the end of the company's news release for information about any forward-looking statements that may be made or discussed on this call. The news release is posted on Huron's website. Please review that information along with the filings with the SEC for a disclosure of factors that may impact subjects discussed in this afternoon's webcast. The company will be discussing one or more non-GAAP financial measures. Please look at the earnings release and on Huron's website for all of the disclosures required by the SEC, including reconciliation to the most comparable GAAP numbers. And now I would like to turn the call over to Mark Hussey, Chief Executive Officer and President of Huron Consulting Group. Mr. Hussey, please go ahead.
C. Hussey: Good afternoon, and welcome to Huron Consulting Group's Second Quarter 2026 Earnings Call. With me today are John Kelly, our Chief Financial Officer; and Ronnie Dail, our Chief Operating Officer. Led by strong organic growth across all 3 operating segments, we achieved record revenues before reimbursable expenses or RBR in the second quarter of 2026, increasing 16% compared to the second quarter of 2025. That included record RBR across both our consulting and managed services and our digital capabilities. We're pleased with this meaningful step-up in our RBR growth trajectory, our continued margin expansion and robust cash flow from operations delivered in the quarter. In addition, client bookings were up across all 3 segments during the first half of the year with an acceleration during the second quarter. Our strong first half performance, coupled with the continued strength of our backlog and pipeline reinforce our confidence, increasing our full year RBR and earnings guidance, building upon our strong track record of consistent growth and margin expansion since 2021. Before we turn to our second quarter performance, let me provide some additional insights on how AI is creating growth opportunities and adding value to our business. Increasingly, organizations are turning the Huron to understand how the rapidly evolving AI and technology landscape to drive growth and operational improvement. Our teams are focused on helping clients address critical business priorities while executing shoulder to shoulder with them to integrate technology, including frontier AI models and to redesign workflows and operating processes to help drive and sustain tangible outcomes and improve financial returns. AI is driving demand for our digital services. During the first half of 2026, total bookings for our digital capability increased by more than 20% compared to the same period a year ago, and greater than 60% of those bookings have either direct …