Share count
68Mpeak FY2021
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HLI, Houlihan Lokey
Capital Markets & Asset Management financial
Houlihan Lokey, Inc. is a leading global independent investment bank with expertise in mergers and acquisitions, capital markets, financial restructurings, liability management, and financial and valuation advisory services.
We provide our financial professionals with an integrated platform that enables them to deliver meaningful and differentiated advice to our clients.
We advise our clients on critical strategic and financial decisions, employing a rigorous analytical approach coupled with deep product and industry expertise.
The business
What it sells, where the money comes from, the kind of company it is.
Revenue · FY2026
$2.6B
+9.5% YoY · 11% 5-yr CAGR
Vital signs · TTM, with 5-yr average
Revenue $2.6B 5-yr avg $2.2B
Net margin 16.3% 5-yr avg 16.2%
Revenue $717M +13.0% vs yr-ago qtr
Operating margin 22.4% yr-ago 21.5%
Net income $117M yr-ago $95M
Net margin 16.3% yr-ago 15.0%
The business in brief
read the 10-K →What this business is and what moves its needle, from its own SEC filings.
- What moves the needle
- Assets under management and the fee rate on them. What decides it: net flows in or out, the market's move on the assets already there (the firm rises and falls with the indices it invests in), the drift toward cheaper passive products, and the operating leverage on a largely fixed cost base. On its own account, the filing leans hardest on pricing power & competition, set against the numbers in what the filing emphasizes, below.
- Is it a good business?
- Operating margin has been modest for a fee business (median 21%). It earns this on little capital, so return on equity has run near 18%, the leverage of a model that needs almost no plant to grow. A high return that does not fade can mark a moat, but whether the assets stay (net flows, not last year's market) is what the flow disclosures and the 10-K settle, not the multiple.
Every line is arithmetic on the company's filings, shown in full in the sections below.
Where the money comes from
read the 10-K →32% of revenue comes from outside the United States.
Revenue by geography, FY2026
- United States68%$1.8B
- International32%$842M
From the segment footnote of the company's own 10-K. Shares are of total revenue; the profit bar shows each segment's share of segment operating profit, before unallocated corporate costs.
The record
Ten years of arithmetic, read across the cycle.
The record, 2017–2026
realized figures from each filing · older years to the left| 2017’17 | 2018’18 | 2019’19 | 2020’20 | 2021’21 | 2022’22 | 2023’23 | 2024’24 | 2025’25 | 2026’26 | TTMTTMMar 2026 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Income statement | |||||||||||
| $872M | $963M | $1.1B | $1.2B | $1.5B | $2.3B | $1.8B | $1.9B | $2.4B | $2.6B | $2.6B | RevenueRevenue |
| 20.9% | 22.3% | 20.2% | 19.8% | 26.8% | 27.0% | 18.9% | 19.5% | 21.0% | 20.1% | 20.1% | Operating marginOp. mgn |
| 12.4% | 17.9% | 14.7% | 15.9% | 20.5% | 19.3% | 14.0% | 14.6% | 16.7% | 16.3% | 16.3% | Net marginNet mgn |
| $108M | $172M | $159M | $184M | $313M | $438M | $254M | $280M | $400M | $426M | $426M | Net incomeNet inc. |
| 39% | 21% | 29% | 22% | 24% | 27% | 22% | 28% | 25% | 24% | 24% | Effective tax rateTax rate |
| Cash flow & returns | |||||||||||
| $243M | $243M | $218M | $267M | $566M | $728M | $86M | $300M | $809M | $682M | $682M | Owner earningsOwner earn. |
| 15% | 20% | 18% | 19% | 23% | 30% | 16% | 15% | 18% | 18% | 18% | Return on equityROE |
| 7% | 14% | 10% | 10% | 16% | 22% | 7% | 7% | 11% | 11% | 11% | Retained to equityRetained/eq |
| Balance sheet | |||||||||||
| $1.4B | $1.4B | $1.4B | $1.7B | $2.4B | $2.9B | $3.0B | $3.2B | $3.8B | $4.3B | $4.3B | Total assetsAssets |
| $300M | $207M | $286M | $380M | $847M | $834M | $714M | $721M | $971M | $1.2B | $1.2B | Cash & investmentsCash+inv |
| $727M | $853M | $891M | $984M | $1.4B | $1.4B | $1.6B | $1.8B | $2.2B | $2.3B | $2.3B | Shareholders’ equityEquity |
| Per share | |||||||||||
| 66.6M | 66.3M | 65.8M | 65.7M | 68.7M | 68.3M | 67.6M | 68.2M | 68.7M | 68.4M | 68.4M | Shares out (diluted)Shares |
| $13.10 | $14.53 | $16.47 | $17.64 | $22.21 | $33.25 | $26.77 | $28.09 | $34.80 | $38.25 | $38.25 | Revenue / shareRev/sh |
| $1.63 | $2.60 | $2.42 | $2.80 | $4.55 | $6.41 | $3.76 | $4.11 | $5.82 | $6.22 | $6.22 | EPS (diluted)EPS |
| $3.65 | $3.66 | $3.30 | $4.06 | $8.24 | $10.66 | $1.27 | $4.40 | $11.78 | $9.96 | $9.96 | Owner earnings / shareOE/sh |
| $0.83 | $0.79 | $1.02 | $1.23 | $1.34 | $1.68 | $2.08 | $2.18 | $2.41 | $2.54 | $2.54 | Dividends / shareDiv/sh |
| $10.91 | $12.86 | $13.54 | $14.98 | $20.15 | $21.15 | $23.87 | $26.95 | $31.68 | $34.23 | $34.23 | Book value / shareBVPS |
Per-share growththe realized rate an owner's share compounded
| 9-yr | 5-yr | |
|---|---|---|
| Revenue / share | +12.6%/yr | +11.5%/yr |
| Owner earnings / share | +11.8%/yr | +3.9%/yr |
| EPS | +16.1%/yr | +6.4%/yr |
| Dividends / share | +13.2%/yr | +13.7%/yr |
| Capital spending / share | +4.6%/yr | +9.6%/yr |
| Book value / share | +13.5%/yr | +11.2%/yr |
The record, charted
FY2017–2026Each measure over its full record; the current point and the worst year marked.
Revenue
$2.6Blow FY2017
Quality & stewardship
Returns, the balance sheet, capital allocation, and pay.
Owner’s Scorecard
FY2026 10-K · source on SEC EDGAR →
Is it a good business?
- Operating margin 20.1%Solid fee marginOperating income $527M ÷ revenue $2.6BIndustry peers: median 25%
What this means
The heart of a asset manager: how much of each fee dollar survives the cost of running the business. Fees ride on assets under management, so the swing factors are net flows in or out and the market's move on the assets already there; the cost base is largely fixed, which lifts margins in a bull market and squeezes them in a bear one. A high margin held for years, through a market it does not control, is the operational mark of a real franchise.
- Net margin 16.3%WideNet income $426M ÷ revenue $2.6B
What this means
What reaches the owner after tax and interest. For a capital-light fee business this should be a wide share of revenue; when it is thin despite a high operating margin, debt taken on for acquisitions is usually the reason, so read it next to the balance sheet.
- Return on equity 18%StrongNet income $426M ÷ equity $2.3BIndustry peers: median 17%
What this means
Because the business ties up little capital, a healthy fee stream throws off a high return on the equity behind it. Read it with the buyback record: returning capital lifts this ratio honestly, but heavy debt taken to do so can flatter it.
Does AI threaten the moat?
Moderate contestabilityAI is likely to reshape costs and some products here without clearly contesting or sparing the core moat; how the company itself frames it is the tell.
In its own filing Named as a competitive risk
Its FY2026 10-K names artificial intelligence as a competitive threat.
“The deployment of AI, which relies on substantial data volumes, introduces risks such as potential leakage of confidential or proprietary information, unauthorized access, misuse, or theft of sensitive data, and the possibility of competitors adopting AI more effectively, which could materially impact our business, fin…”
The question is whether a moat the record shows as durable outlasts a technology that lowers the cost of part of what the firm sells. The durability is read in the record above, the filing's own framing of AI beside it; the industry label decides nothing on its own.
Read from the filing's own risk factors, paired with the industry's structure under its SIC code; the durability is read above, the price below.
All figures as filed; the source filing is linked above.
Lease obligations
the lease note, SEC EDGAR →Debt by another name. What the business owes on the property, aircraft, stores and equipment it rents rather than owns is a fixed claim due on a schedule; added back to the debt, it is the true leverage. That ladder, and what it adds to the debt on the page above.
Lease payments by year, scaled to the largest; “later” is everything beyond year five, shown apart. These are the contractual cash payments, before the interest the filing imputes back out to the balance-sheet liability.
Due in the next 12 months$64Ma fixed cash payment, owed whether or not the business has a good year
Total lease payments$645Mevery year plus the tail, undiscounted: the full cash the leases will take
On the balance sheet$492Mthe present value of those payments, the recognised lease liability
True leverage: debt plus leases
On-balance-sheet debt$56M
Lease obligations (present value)$492M
Total fixed claims on the business$548M
Counting the leases the way Buffett does, the fixed claims on this business come to $548M, of which the leases are 90%, more than the debt itself. The lease wall above and the debt schedule together are the calendar of what must be paid, and when.
Lease ladder read from the ASC 842 tags in the company’s Mar 31, 2026 annual report and reconciled: the yearly buckets sum to the undiscounted total, which less the imputed interest equals the balance-sheet liability; a ladder that doesn’t tie out is withheld.
Acquisitions & goodwill
from the balance sheet & the 10-year cash-flow recordGoodwill grows only when a company acquires and falls only when it concedes it overpaid. The size of that bet, the cash put into buying rather than building, and how much has already been written off.
Goodwill$1.4B32% of all assets; the premium carried on the balance sheet for businesses acquired
Against book equity60%goodwill is this share of book equity; the rest is the company’s own retained and paid-in capital
Cash spent acquiring$550Mover 10 years buying other businesses, against $252M of capital spent building
None written down over the record; the goodwill is still carried at full cost. That is the deals holding their value on the books so far; whether they keep doing so is the test an owner watches, since the write-down, when it comes, is the admission the price was too high.
Goodwill, acquired intangibles and equity from the latest balance sheet; acquisition spend and write-downs summed across the 10-year record, from the company's own filings.
Management, ownership & pay
read the proxy →From the proxy: how much of the business the people running it own, and how they are paid, beside what the business earned for its owners in the same years.
| Fiscal year | Pay, as filed | “Actually paid” | Owner earnings |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2021 | $6.9M | $7.6M | $566M |
| 2022 | $10.7M | $11.5M | $728M |
| 2023 | $7.0M | $7.0M | $86M |
| 2024 | $7.0M | $8.7M | $300M |
| 2025 | $11.3M | $13.3M | $809M |
| 2025 | $4.0M | $5.3M | $809M |
Both pay figures are the company’s own, from the pay-versus-performance table its proxy statement files. “As filed” is the Summary Compensation Table total: salary, bonus, and equity awards at their value on the day of grant. “Actually paid” is the SEC’s prescribed recalculation, which re-marks those equity awards to what they became as they vested; it can swing far above or below the filed figure in either direction, and negative years occur. Owner earnings are the whole business's, from the record above, for the same fiscal years.
- Insider ownership<1%
The stake all directors and executive officers hold together, per the 2025 proxy: skin in the game, the first thing Munger reads.
- Stock-based compensation$57M
The slice of the business handed to employees in shares this year, 2% of revenue, equal to 11% of operating profit. Buffett's oldest accounting fight: this is compensation, compensation is an expense, real whether or not the headline earnings admit it. One trap: the cash-flow statement adds SBC back, so the operating cash, and the owner earnings drawn from it, are flattered by exactly this amount; counted as the cost it is, what an owner keeps is lower.
What an owner would ask, FY2026
read the 10-K →- Which reported numbers are a judgment call?Management names Acquisitions, Contingencies as critical estimates
each rests partly on management's judgment; the filing's note sets out the assumptionsverify →
The questions the record and the charts do not answer on their own; each carries the figure and the place to look.
Peers, Capital Markets & Asset Management
The same industry, side by side on fee margins. Each figure is a through-cycle median, so a peak or trough year can’t distort it; the group median at the foot is the line to read each against.
| Company | Revenue | Op. margin | Net margin | ROE |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| LAZLazard | $3.2B | 18.5% | 11.6% | 44% |
| JHGJanus Henderson Group plc | $3.1B | 25.0% | 18.8% | 10% |
| OWLBlue Owl Capital | $2.9B | 14.3% | 2.7% | 4% |
| HLIHoulihan Lokey | $2.6B | 20.5% | 16.1% | 18% |
| MORNMorningstar Inc. | $2.4B | 17.4% | 15.2% | 17% |
| AMGAffiliated Managers Group Inc. | $2.1B | 42.8% | 24.3% | 17% |
| STEPStepStone Group | $2.0B | 25.0% | 4.0% | 18% |
| FHIFederated Hermes | $1.8B | 28.4% | 20.0% | 26% |
| Group median | — | 22.8% | 15.6% | 18% |
The price
What a price has to assume.
What the price implies
reverse-DCFType today's close and see the owner-earnings growth you'd have to believe to justify it, beside what Houlihan Lokey has delivered.
$
Through the cycle, Houlihan Lokey earns about $671M on its 25.6% median owner-earnings margin. This year’s 26.0% margin runs in line with that. Normalize, below, values the price on that through-cycle figure rather than the latest year.
Base
—
The assumptions
9.0% = the 4.55% 10-year Treasury (Jul 15, 2026) + 4.45 points of equity premium. The rate you require is yours to set.
Enter a price above to run it.
A dated snapshot of the price you typed, the assumptions you set, and what the page showed for them. A snapshot is never edited after it is saved. Your notebook is yours alone — the commitment states what is stored and what we will never do.
Implied by the price—
Owner-earnings growth · ’22→’26+16%/yr
Owner-earnings growth · ’17→’26+13%/yr
Owner-earnings growth · ’17→’26+13%/yr
Owner-earnings yield—
What a growth belief costs, in multiples
The growth each return requires, at your price
P/E (3-yr earnings ’24–’26)—
P/B—
Graham’s price gate—
Graham capped the multiple at 15×; Buffett and Munger let that rule go: a wonderful business can deserve 50× if the thesis holds. The gate marks the bargain-hunter's floor.
Against a high-grade bond: Graham’s yardstick bond yield%
Prefilled with the 10-year Treasury (4.55%, as of Jul 15, 2026). Edit it for today’s exact figure, or a AAA corporate yield.
Graham measured a stock against the bond you could own instead, the heart of his margin of safety. Enter a price above to weigh the owner-earnings yield against this bond.
Owner-earnings yield—
High-grade bond yield—
Margin over the bond—
Owner earnings $682M on 67M shares outstanding (a weighted basic average, the only count this filer tags); net cash $1.1B. The base is the latest year by default; Normalize values it on the through-cycle median owner-earnings margin (to avoid paying on a peak year). Net of stock comp treats option pay as the expense it is. The dials set the multiple a growth belief justifies; the price, and every dollar on this page, is yours.
Cite: Owner Scorecard, "Houlihan Lokey (HLI), the owner's record," https://ownerscorecard.com/c/HLI, data as of 2026-07-09.
Manual order: ← HLF its page in the Manual HLIO →
Industry order: ← HIVE the Capital Markets & Asset Management chapter HLNE →