CRA International (CRAI) Sidoti Small-Cap Virtual Investor Conference summary

Business overview and strategy

• Maintains a consistent vision of applying academic expertise in quantitative methods and economics to business and legal challenges.

• Operates two main business lines: legal and regulatory (80% of revenue) and management consulting (20%).

• Highly selective hiring, with less than 1% acceptance rate for campus applicants and a staff with strong academic credentials.

• Top 30 revenue generators have less than 5% voluntary turnover over five years, reflecting strong retention.

• Serves 88 of the Fortune 100 and 98 of the top 100 law firms in the past two years, indicating deep client relationships.

Financial performance and capital allocation

• Achieved consistent annual revenue growth of 9-10% over the past decade, with profit growth outpacing revenue and expanding margins.

• All growth and shareholder returns are funded internally, with no debt and only a working capital line of credit.

• Investment objective is to maximize long-term value per share, aiming to return about half of capital to shareholders.

• Over the past five years, nearly $240 million was returned to shareholders, mainly through share repurchases and dividends.

• Share count reduced by 25% over the past 10 years, supporting the long-term value per share thesis.

Practice area performance and growth drivers

• Antitrust & Competition Economics, Forensic Services, and Life Sciences practices together generate 70-75% of revenue.

• Legal and regulatory segment has grown double digits for six years, with recent strength from M&A activity and increased legal filings.

• Life Sciences and Energy practices are experiencing strong growth, with Energy benefiting from AI-driven demand for data centers.

• Forensic Services practice is seeing a surge in incident response work due to rising cyber threats, especially those enabled by AI.

• International operations now contribute 20-25% of revenue, with growth exceeding 20% in recent quarters, led by European Life Sciences and Antitrust practices.