Yahoo Finance

Horacio Rozanski

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 aim 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Much of the new administration's agenda relies in the ability to apply advanced technologies to move faster, disrupt outdated processes, and protect our nation's technological supremacy.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. This includes 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 war fighters, even in the most disrupted environments. This is the power of VoLT. This is the power of Booz Allen.
We also recognize the importance of partnerships to generate speed to outcomes. With 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 war fighting operations. This solution is already being tested in large-scale exercises. It will improve collaboration and combined 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 a 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 multiyear 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.

Matthew Calderone

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 changed agenda of the new administration: innovation, 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 continue to deploy capital to generate long-term value for shareholders, including almost $150 million in share repurchases. 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 billion 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'm exceptionally proud of what our Booz Allen's 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 6.
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 7.
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 procurement 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 vector.
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.
Booz Allen 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 was $134 million, the result of $151 million of cash from operations, less $17 million of CapEx.
Moving now to capital deployment on slide 8, 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 have 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.
Today, we are pleased to announce that our Board of Directors has approved a $0.04 increase to our quarterly dividend. This dividend of $0.55 per share will be payable on March 4 to stockholders of record as of February 14. 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 9 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 billion 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 for the year. This implies an adjusted EBITDA margin of about 11%.
Additionally, we are raising our ADEPS 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 SnapAttack, in which we have a minority investment, in the fourth quarter. Lastly, we now expect operating cash flow of 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. Booz 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. Booz 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.

Operator

And I will now turn the call back over to the Chairman, CEO, and President, Horacio Rozanski.

Horacio Rozanski

Thank you, Carmen. Before we begin Q&A this morning, I hope you 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 DC area, DC 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, for allowing me to do this. Carmen, let's begin Q&A, please.

Question and Answer Session

Operator

(Operator Instructions) Mariana Perez, Bank of America.

Mariana Perez Mora

Good morning, everyone.

Horacio Rozanski

Hola, Mariana.

Mariana Perez Mora

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 VoLT strategy four years ago. And the way -- I'm going to oversimplify it -- but the way I think about those inefficiencies 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?

Horacio Rozanski

You know us too well. So let me take a minute to unpack what you say -- 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 we -- 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 the 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.

Mariana Perez Mora

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 retail to you to also have this type of partnerships to also be able to offer their commercial technologies to a government that is not the easiest customer to deal with?

Horacio Rozanski

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 in 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 is sitting on fiber, and they're going to be connected 24/7. And then when you enter the world in which we live, it's anything but -- 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 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.

Mariana Perez Mora

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

Matthew Calderone

Yeah, Mariana, I'll take that. It's Matt. As Horacio 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 Horacio referenced, 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, it 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.

Horacio Rozanski

Yeah. I would only add, Mariana, you were 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 to 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.

Mariana Perez Mora

Thank you so much. Gracias.

Operator

Gautam Khanna, TD Cowen.

Gautam Khanna

Yes, good morning, guys.

Horacio Rozanski

Good morning.

Matthew Calderone

Good morning.

Gautam Khanna

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?

Matthew Calderone

That's the plan. I think we -- 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. So that's equivalent to, what, 330 FTEs.
And in fact, our billability in December was the highest it's been on record. Honestly, a bit too high from my liking. We probably cleared the bench, perhaps, too aggressively. So 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.
And 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.

Horacio Rozanski

I would also say this. I mean -- 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. 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, 1,000-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 of years ago.

Gautam Khanna

Yes. 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 contract award adjudication? Have you actually seen any firm evidence of a slowing, or is this more on the con?

Horacio Rozanski

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 a very, very small exposure to those agencies. So 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's just -- there's a little bit of a wait-and-see attitude that began even in the last administration, since that this was going to be an administration transition after 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.

Gautam Khanna

Thank you, guys.

Horacio Rozanski

Sure.

Operator

Sheila Kahyaoglu, Jefferies.

Sheila Kahyaoglu

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.

Horacio Rozanski

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 Pfeifer'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.

Matthew Calderone

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 still has grown in the past.
What's interesting is behind that -- Horacio has 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 in civil, a lot of them that involve one or more commercial partnerships.
And increasingly, we're finding -- we're pulling technology and capabilities 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 built up over years in the intel and defense communities, how they can put over to civil.
So it's a dynamic time in our civil business, but it's a really exciting time. And I think if 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.

Sheila Kahyaoglu

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 growth rate under this administration versus the prior? Does it change at all?

Matthew Calderone

I'll take the Thunderdome question. It's growing 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 the Thunderdome solution. In terms of civil -- I don't know, Horacio, do you want to take that?

Horacio Rozanski

No. Go ahead.

Matthew Calderone

Okay, okay. I think, as I said, we are excited about the opportunities for change. The vast majority of our portfolio in civil is an area that's a real mission importance. As Horacio 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 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. We think about ways to make the VA more efficient or the IRS is more efficient, to bring AI to [bear].
So I think 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 as aggressively.

Sheila Kahyaoglu

Okay, got it. Thank you.

Operator

Tobey Sommer, Truist.

Tobey Sommer

Thank you. I was wondering if you could drill down into the civil clients and maybe describe what areas of civil or agencies that you're seeing a change in behavior. And I know the executive orders have come sort of (technical difficulty) this month. But any sort of contours you could give us would be helpful. Thank you.

Horacio Rozanski

Sure, Tobey. I mean, as you know, the core of our civil business rests on the healthcare side, with a very strong emphasis on the VA 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 1,000 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 like we said before, are we going to see some awards that maybe are under consideration now taking 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.
This is probably, what, my sixth presidential transition since I joined Booz Allen. The answer to that is almost certainly, yes, because we've seen that in every other one of those. But at the end of the day, 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. The history of Booz 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, a 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 -- as things get underway, and we move past the immediate transition.

Tobey Sommer

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 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.

Horacio Rozanski

Sure. I mean, as you know, we're not in the outsourcing business. And in this tough augmentation business, we're in the business of bringing technology to bear. And that's what we're focused on, is those types 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.

Operator

Louie DiPalma, William Blair.

Horacio Rozanski

Good morning, Louie .

Louie DiPalma

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?

Matthew Calderone

I'll take that one. Historically, we've said that if our book-to-bill was above 1.2 and our headcount is in the 3% to 5% range, we're looking at mid- to upper single-digit organic growth and if not, probably bias towards the high end of that. So we got a lot of momentum in the business.
I think your question is hard to parse, right, because we're talking about a short-term recalibration for the procurement environment over the medium to long term. And that will start with when the administration really lands and they get a new budget passed, and we begin to see areas that they're going to invest in. 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 I wouldn't read much into this quarter or next. I think it's going to be a period of recalibration. And the answer to your long-term question is we're really bullish about where we're headed. We see a lot of opportunity.
As Horacio 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 it in our prepared remarks. But I'll just say, my experience is Booz Allen is 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 going to create the future. There's a reason why our mission statements says we're empowering people to change the world, and we're embracing this change and going forward.

Louie DiPalma

Great. Thanks. And I guess, for either of you, do you like, 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?

Horacio Rozanski

Louie, why don't I take the first part of it? The -- I actually think this is qualitatively different from the sequestration time period in that the -- 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, is not -- 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 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 multiyear 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 multiyear period. We think this is a much shorter period of adjustment, followed by a real clear set of opportunities and priorities we can pursue.

Matthew Calderone

If I could just add to that, Louie. 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 are 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.

Louie DiPalma

Great. And like 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 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 VoLT, that you're going to be able to have the same type of versatility and be able to shift employees to align to the new priorities quickly?

Horacio Rozanski

Absolutely. And I think we may be able to do even more. I think, first of all, 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, we are using new tools and new technologies to do everything faster inside of Booz Allen. And 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 matched, 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 on the -- in the areas that we believe will turn into opportunities.
We're not standing still. And so 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.

Louie DiPalma

Great. Thanks, everyone.

Operator

Matt Akers, Wells Fargo.

Matt Akers

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

Horacio Rozanski

Yeah. 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 the 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 DeepSeek 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, it's a moment of pause, not just for our clients, but really for all of us for a couple of reasons. First of all, I think it's -- we all need to take some time to examine some of the claims because there are some opacity in some of the claims that I think we still need to shred to ground truth.
But secondly, it's already been reported in the press that if you ask certain questions, you get some funny answers coming out of DeepSeek. We don't know in these models, what is also behind underneath that. And so the deployment of models where we don't have complete understanding of their provenance 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.

Matt Akers

That's great. Thanks. And then, I guess, I wanted to ask about capital deployment. You guys have sort of laid out the strategy -- kind of the priorities are.
But 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?

Matthew Calderone

Yeah. Thanks, Matt. I think if you look -- we 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 $1 billion 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.

Matt Akers

That's great. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. And now I will turn the call back to Horacio Rozanski for final remarks.

Horacio Rozanski

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.
As we closed out our 110th anniversary in December, our people delivered yet one more achievement that makes me proud, and it's worth highlighting. In 2024, our employee giving campaign raised a 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.

Operator

And this concludes today's conference call. Thank you, all, for participating, and you may now disconnect.