ICF International, Inc. Canaccord Genuity's 46th Annual Growth Conference
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Right. Good afternoon, everyone. I'm Jason Tilchen, senior research analyst at Canaccord Genuity. It's my pleasure to welcome the team from ICF International, including John Wasson, Chairman and CEO, and Anne Choate, President. John's been with ICF for almost four decades, which is quite a long time, and was appointed to the CEO role back in 2019, prior to which he was Chief Operating Officer. Anne was promoted to President last year, previously led the company's energy environment and infrastructure group. Thank you both so much for joining us today.
Great to be here. Thank you.
Yeah, thanks for having us.
I have one for John to start. I just mentioned you have a wealth of experience with the company, so no better person to maybe walk us through a little bit of background on the history of the company, what type of services the business provides, and who it's providing those services to.
Okay, sure. Well, thanks again for inviting us. ICF, we are a global advisory and technology services company, about $2 billion of revenue, 9,500 employees. We've been publicly traded on NASDAQ for 20 years. We'll have our 20th anniversary this September. In terms of the company, what we do, we provide front-end advisory services to our clients in the domains we serve. We do that leveraging deep subject matter expertise within the company. Those advisory services include strategy and program design and policy and economic analysis and research. We also then stick with our clients into the implementation. Once we've designed their strategy, designed their program, we then help them implement that. That we do through leveraging a set of cross-cutting, industry-leading implementation services, including IT technology, complex program management, and change management.
In terms of the markets we serve, first, we are diversified. We serve a balanced roster of both government and commercial clients. About two-thirds is for governments, one-third is commercial, primarily energy. The vertical markets we serve are basically two pillars. About half the business is in energy, environment, infrastructure, and disaster recovery. About 35% is in public health, education, housing, and other social programs. Then 15% is in defense and a few other cats and dogs. I think at a high level, that's kind of who we are and the markets we serve.
Okay, perfect. It's a great overview. If you just think about where the business is today versus where it's been, you look at the stock chart for a company that's been publicly listed for so long, and for most of that period, it was up and to the right, very consistent, steady growth story. Then you look at what happened at the beginning of last year, and there was a disruption to the business.
Revenue declined, and now you're sort of working back from that. Maybe just give a little bit of background on what caused that decline, and then what you've been doing to help.
Yeah put the business in a stronger footing going forward.
Sure. I think, as you know, in the period we've been a publicly traded company, I think we've been a strong growth company. If you run a CAGR on revenue for that period, I think it's 12% or 13% growth, about half organic, half inorganic, with even higher earnings growth in that period. And so consistent growth company. 2025 was, we call it, a transition year with the new administration, the Department of Government Efficiency impacts in the market with respect to our portfolio. Our federal business was down about 25% in 2025. But that's behind us. I think we managed through that. We maintained our profitability. This year, we will return to growth. The midpoint of our guidance is 3% revenue growth, 5% growth on non-GAAP EPS, and we'll accelerate that growth as we go forward.
I think that the impacts of 2025 are behind us, and I think we're executing on our growth strategy and are confident in our return to growth.
Perfect. We're going to get into that growth strategy in a bit- Sure and then sort of walk through each segment.
Maybe before we do that, Anne, your new role as President that you moved into last year, maybe talk about the prior experience in the energy practice, which has been a growth engine for the company for some time, and how that prepared you to sort of move into this new role and responsibility.
Okay, sure. Also, thanks for having us.
Of course. I've been at ICF about 30 years, so not as long as John, but I have had an opportunity to work in a lot of corners of the business.
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