Exponent 2026 Q2 Earnings Call

Please go ahead. Thank you, operator.

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for joining us on Exponent's second quarter 2026 financial results conference call. Please note that this call will be simultaneously webcast on the investor relations section of the company's corporate website at www.investors.exponent.com. This conference call is the property of Exponent, any taping or other reproduction is expressly prohibited without prior written consent. Joining me on the call today are Dr. Catherine Corrigan, Chief Executive Officer, John Pye, President, Rich Schlenker, Executive Vice President, and Eric Anderson, Chief Financial Officer. Before we start, I would like to remind you that the following discussion contains forward-looking statements, including, but not limited to Exponent's market opportunities and future financial results that involve risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially from those discussed here.

Additional information that could cause actual results to differ from forward-looking statements can be found in Exponent's periodic SEC filings, including those factors discussed under the caption Risk Factor in Exponent's most recent Form 10-Q. The forward-looking statements and risks in this conference call are based on current expectations as of today, Exponent assumes no obligation to update or revise them, whether as a result of new developments or otherwise. Now I will turn the call over to Dr. Catherine Corrigan, Chief Executive Officer.

Catherine? Thank you, Joni, and thank you, everyone, for joining us today.

I will start off by reviewing our second quarter 2026 business performance. John will share his perspective on innovation and market trends. Eric will then provide a more detailed review of our financial results and outlook, we will then open the call for questions. Exponent delivered another strong quarter with double-digit growth in revenues and earnings, reflecting the continued demand for our specialized expertise across industries. Our proactive work experienced strong growth in the quarter, led by demand for user research studies as clients accelerate the development of AI-enabled products across an increasingly diverse array of hardware form factors and applications, with engagements continuing to expand in scope, scale, and complexity. Proactive activity was also supported by increased risk management and infrastructure-related engagements in the utility sector.

Reactive work grew with strong demand for our dispute-related expertise from the consumer products, chemicals, and transportation industries. Turning to these engagements in more detail, our proactive user research work continues to grow more diverse and complex, both across our client base and across the breadth of products and technologies that we support. This quarter also benefited from a large study that drove higher than expected revenue and utilization. These engagements increasingly call for a combination of human factors, biomechanics, engineering, and data science expertise to elucidate how people interact with AI-enabled technologies in situations where standard research approaches are woefully inadequate. While user research is often thought of as recruiting participants and gathering feedback, our work is far more sophisticated.

We identify and articulate the right underlying scientific question, design a bespoke methodology capable of answering it, collect high-quality data in the real-world environment, and interpret the results within a broader technical, regulatory, and business context. The differentiated value lies not in data collection alone, but in the scientific judgment and multidisciplinary expertise required to design the study, execute the unique methodology, and generate reliable, actionable conclusions. As companies compete aggressively to integrate AI into an expanding array of smart devices, including glasses, immersive technologies, health and wellness wearables, and more, the technical safety and usability challenges increase significantly, and Exponent's differentiated position grows. We also saw increased demand for risk management and infrastructure-related engagements in the utility sector as clients evaluate the resilience and reliability of critical systems amid rising power demand, more extreme weather events, and the growing complexity of the electric grid.

Turning to our reactive engagements, we saw strong demand for dispute and failure analysis-related work across a range of industries, including consumer products, chemicals, and transportation. We helped consumer products clients evaluate product safety and recalls, investigate incidents, and address disputes as manufacturers face challenges surrounding performance, reliability, and quality across an increasingly complex set of technologies. In the chemical sector, we saw growing activity evaluating chemicals of concern, ranging from legacy substances to emerging compounds. In transportation, we saw greater failure analysis work related to advanced driver assistance systems as clients addressed performance, safety, and reliability challenges. As the pace of innovation accelerates and the consequences of failure rise, clients increasingly rely on Exponent's multidisciplinary ecosystem and long-standing reputation in failure analysis to address complex, novel challenges. A recent engagement involving a satellite performance issue illustrates this demand.

The client required deep engineering expertise to investigate performance and risk in a highly technical and uncertain environment. This level of mastery across disciplines, whether applied to space systems, AI, energy storage, power infrastructure, cybersecurity, or other domains, uniquely positions Exponent to help clients navigate both today's challenges and the inevitable disruptions that will accompany future technological advances. We remain confident in the durability and long-term growth potential of our reactive work as organizations will continue to rely on independent, science-based expertise when critical systems fail or perform unexpectedly. Our results during the quarter reflect several powerful long-term trends shaping demand for Exponent services, including rapid technological innovation, increasing complexity, growing energy demand, investment in resilient power and digital infrastructure, and rising expectations for safety, reliability, and performance. Clients turn to Exponent when they face high-consequence challenges involving new technologies, complex systems, and the interaction between people and products.

Our multidisciplinary teams provide independent science-based insights that help clients innovate with confidence, reduce risk, and make better decisions. Nowhere is this more relevant today than in the accelerating importance of artificial intelligence in products, which continues to be a significant force shaping demand across our business. I'd like to turn it over to our President, John Pye, to share his perspective on this shift and where he sees innovation heading across our markets.

John? Thank you, Catherine. Across industries, we're seeing an accelerating shift.

Artificial intelligence is expanding beyond the digital world and into physical products and systems that operate in the real world, whether that's a vehicle, a wearable device, a piece of infrastructure, or a robotic system. As that shift unfolds, the standards these systems are held to is also changing. The question is no longer simply whether a product functions as designed in a controlled setting, but whether it can be trusted to perform safely and reliably in the unpredictable conditions of everyday life, including the edge cases and complex interactions that fall outside of prior experience. This is where the human side of the equation becomes just as important as the technology itself.

As AI becomes embedded in the devices and systems people rely on throughout their daily lives, things like walking, driving, working, or simply going about routine tasks at home, it inevitably competes for people's attention alongside everything else happening in their environment. There's a fine line between technology that supports human performance and technology that, if not designed thoughtfully, can be degraded. Getting that balance right requires specialized expertise across multiple disciplines. Exponent has been at the forefront of this kind of human-machine interaction work for decades. It's not new for us, and it's an area where our differentiated expertise is increasingly important as more of our clients grapple with these same questions across a widening range of products and applications. We're also seeing this same dynamic extend into new areas that are still in relatively early stages.