FTI Consulting Q3 2026: What's Behind the Earnings Beat

FTI Consulting posted adjusted EPS of $3.84 for the third quarter of 2026, far exceeding expectations, with revenue above $1 billion and all five segments contributing.

Record Corporate Finance success fees, including a fee tied to a loan portfolio sale for the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, and a lower effective tax rate drove most of the beat. CEO Steven Gunby said that even after normalizing for those one-off items, he had difficulty getting the underlying quarterly number below $2.90 per share, well above recent quarters.

A $46 million restructuring charge that cut roughly 4% of staff pulled GAAP diluted EPS down to $2.35. Management expects a further charge in the fourth quarter and about $80 million in annualized savings.

Management raised full-year adjusted EPS guidance to a range of $9.50 to $10.00 while cutting the GAAP EPS range to reflect the restructuring charges, and reaffirmed full-year revenue guidance.

The success fees and favorable tax rate that lifted Q3 are not anticipated to repeat, and management flagged continued softness in restructuring, M&A, and regulatory volumes into a seasonally slower quarter. Investors taking the beat at face value risk misreading the trajectory into year-end.

FTI plans an Investor Day early next year to lay out a multiyear financial outlook. Gunby described the past 18 months as a period of dislocation in one business that obscured broader progress, and called the Q3 results evidence the underlying platform is reasserting itself, while cautioning against expecting an immediate return to historical profitability levels.