Booz Hamilton or Booz Allen Hamilton? 2026 in Figures

Booz Hamilton, Booz Allen, and the name on the filings

Four names circulate for one company, and only two of them are real. Here is each one, and what it actually refers to.

The annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended 31 March 2026 settles the identifiers. Delaware incorporation, employer identification number 26-2634160, principal executive offices at 8283 Greensboro Drive, McLean, Virginia 22102, Class A Common Stock trading as BAH on the New York Stock Exchange.

There is a fifth name that confuses people more than the misspelling does, and it is a different company. Booz & Company existed from 2008 and was the commercial half of the old firm. It is covered further down, because the split that created it is the single most misleading thing about this firm's history.

The firm describes itself in one sentence at the top of that filing: "Booz Allen Hamilton Holding Corporation is an advanced technology company building products and solutions for government and business."

What the firm actually does now

Booz Allen sells technology and consulting to the United States government, and a smaller amount of cybersecurity work to companies. The filing is specific about how far the technology claim goes.

It calls itself "the federal government's largest AI provider with approximately 400 active AI projects," and groups its capabilities as AI, cybersecurity, data and engineering. The markets it names are defense, intelligence, civil government, and a global commercial business built around cyber incident response.

The defense and intelligence customers named in the filing include the Intelligence Community, the National Security Agency and the Defense Intelligence Agency. The civil list runs through healthcare, homeland security, financial services, justice, law enforcement, immigration, energy, transportation and labor.

Two things follow for anyone deciding whether this firm does the work they want. The commercial practice is real and narrow, centered on cybersecurity rather than on corporate strategy. And the word consulting now shares the billing with product engineering, which the firm says it has been shifting toward since 2013.

That places Booz Allen in a different family from a pure strategy house. Our types of consulting firms page sets out how the categories differ and what each one tends to buy in a junior hire.

$11.2 billion, and the year revenue went down

Booz Allen reported revenue of $11,217 million for the fiscal year ended 31 March 2026, a fall of 6 percent. It is the first decline in the three years the filing shows.

The filing names the cause rather than leaving it to inference: "Revenue decreased 6% to $11,217 million, primarily driven by the impact of a slowed procurement and funding environment, including the government shutdown that occurred in the third quarter of fiscal 2026."

Check the arithmetic, because it is the sort of thing an interviewer asks you to do out loud. From 11,980 to 11,217 is a fall of 763, and 763 divided by 11,980 is 6.4 percent, so the stated 6 percent holds. Operating margin is 1,033 over 11,217, or 9.2 percent, down from 11.4 percent the year before. Net margin is 7.6 percent. Those three ratios are ours, computed from the firm's figures.

One line in the accounts looks strange and has an explanation on the same page. Income tax expense fell 96 percent to $11 million, and the filing states that "the effective tax rate decreased to 1.3% in fiscal 2026 from 23% in fiscal 2025." A 1.3 percent effective rate is not a normal year, and net income held up partly because of it.

The backlog number almost no profile carries

Booz Allen reports a contract backlog, and at 31 March 2026 it stood at $38,187 million. That is roughly three and a half years of revenue booked in advance, and it is the single most informative figure about this company that company profiles leave out.

The three categories are not equivalent, and the difference decides how much of the number is real. Funded backlog is work Congress has appropriated money for. Unfunded backlog is contracted work awaiting appropriation. Priced options are periods the government may exercise and may not.

So the reliable layer is the smallest one. Funded backlog of $4,319 million is about 38 percent of one year of revenue, and the other $33.9 billion depends on decisions nobody at the firm controls. The filing says as much: "we can give no assurance that we will be able to convert our backlog into revenue in any particular period, if at all."

A cleaner commitment figure sits alongside it. The company reported "$10.7 billion of remaining performance obligations" and expects to recognize about 65 percent of that as revenue within twelve months, and about 75 percent within twenty-four.

Total backlog rose 3 percent year over year, which checks out: 38,187 against 37,027 is a gain of 1,160, or 3.1 percent. Additions to funded backlog, though, fell from $12.2 billion to $11.1 billion.

31,500 people, and what the filing says about them

Booz Allen employed about 31,500 people at 31 March 2026, of whom 28,800 are customer staff. That leaves roughly 2,700 in everything else, which is a lean overhead for a company of this size.

The workforce description in the filing is unusually detailed, and four of its numbers are worth carrying.

• Clearances. "Approximately 77% of our employees hold security clearances," based on voluntary self-reporting. For a junior applicant that figure explains why clearance language dominates the postings.
• Military background. "Nearly 30% of our workforce identifies as veterans or individuals with military experience."
• Degrees. About 87 percent hold bachelor's degrees, 46 percent master's, and 4 percent doctorates, again self-reported.
• Footprint. "We work in 23 countries, with 32 major business centers and more than 20 engineering, manufacturing, and R&D facilities."

Divide revenue by headcount and you get about $356,000 per person, which is our arithmetic on the firm's two figures. That ratio sits well below a strategy firm's and well above a staffing company's, which is roughly where a government technology services business belongs.

The headcount also moved for the same reason revenue did. The filing attributes the revenue decline partly to "a decrease in headcount," so 31,500 is a reduced number rather than a plateau. For what the hiring process itself contains, our Booz Allen case interview guide reads the five published steps and the clearance wording that decides a junior application.

One customer at 10 percent, and 5,026 contracts

Booz Allen's largest single customer is the Department of Veterans Affairs, which supplied 10 percent of fiscal 2026 revenue. On $11,217 million that is about $1.1 billion from one agency, which is our calculation from the firm's percentage.

The contract structure underneath is published in one paragraph and repays reading slowly. The firm "delivered solutions, outcomes, and services under 5,026 contracts and task orders in fiscal 2026 and approximately 84% of our revenue was derived from 2,426 active task orders under IDIQ contract vehicles."

An IDIQ vehicle is an indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity contract. Winning one buys the right to compete for work orders rather than the work itself. So 84 percent of this company's revenue arrives through a mechanism where every individual order is still a contest.

Three concentration figures complete the picture. The top IDIQ vehicle accounted for about 17 percent of revenue, the largest single task order about 4 percent, and the largest definite contract about 1 percent.

Read those together and the risk profile inverts the usual one. No single contract matters much; one contract vehicle matters a great deal; and the federal appropriations cycle matters most of all. That is the business, stated in four numbers the firm publishes about itself.

1914, Chicago, and a business called The Business Research Service

Booz Allen dates itself to 1914, which makes it one of the oldest firms in this industry. The filing says "for more than 112 years," and 2026 less 112 gives 1914, so the two agree.

The firm's biography of its founder carries the detail: "Edwin George Booz, a pioneer of the management consulting profession, founded Booz Allen Hamilton in 1914 in Chicago, originally under the name The Business Research Service."

Note the city. Several third-party profiles place the founding in Evanston. The firm says Chicago on its own page, so Chicago is what this page says.

The early chronology is published in the same place, and it explains how a market research outfit became a defense contractor.

1. 1914. Founded as The Business Research Service. The first major assignment was for the Illinois State Railroad, "researching potential customer reaction to a rate increase."
2. 1917 to 1919. Booz is drafted, rises "from private to major," and returns to the business.
3. 1920s and 1930s. Clients named by the firm include Goodyear Tire, Addressograph, General Mills, U.S. Gypsum and Montgomery Ward.
4. 1940. Navy Secretary Frank Knox "hired Booz Allen to help the Navy double in size and streamline its operations." Edwin Booz and partner Jim Allen led the work.
5. 1941. The Army commissions similar restructuring. In 1944, Knox told Fortune he had never spent government money more effectively.
6. 1955. Booz Allen Applied Research Inc is established to hold classified work begun in 1940.

The firm also publishes its founder's motto, and uses it in its own prose: "Fear not the future nor people." Edwin Booz chaired the company until 1946 and died in 1951.

Booz, Fry, Allen and Hamilton, and what Booz Hamilton leaves out

The firm carried four surnames for seven years, and the one that disappeared explains why the name has the shape it does. A reader typing Booz Hamilton is dropping a name; the firm itself dropped a different one in 1943.

Booz Allen published a decade-by-decade history that has since been unpublished, and it survives in the archive. Read in order, the name changed five times.

The people arrived in order too. The 1925 entry has George W. Fry joining "the firm as its second employee." The 1929 entry has James L. Allen joining "as third employee." In 1935 the firm "changes its name to Edwin G. Booz and Fry Surveys. Carl L. Hamilton, from Weyerhauser, joins the firm as partner." By 1936, Allen was back and the firm "become a four-person partnership called Booz, Fry, Allen, & Hamilton."

Then the disagreement, which the firm describes in three sentences under the heading 1942-43. "Edwin G. Booz and George W. Fry dispute the future of government consulting. James L. Allen temporarily leaves the firm and Fry resigns to start his own consulting business. Allen later returns and the firm adopts the name Booz, Allen & Hamilton."

So the subject of the argument that removed a name from the door was government consulting, which is now the entire company. Hamilton died of a heart attack in 1946 and Booz semi-retired the same year, leaving Allen in charge. By 1945 the firm had "eight partners, 129 staff members, and offices in Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles."

The 2008 split that produced two firms from one

In 2008 Booz Allen Hamilton divided into two independent companies, and the name stayed with the government half. Anyone reading older material about this firm is reading about a different business unless they check the date.

The completion release, dated 1 August 2008, states the whole transaction in one sentence. The company "has completed the previously announced separation of its U.S. government and global commercial businesses, as well as the sale of a majority stake in the U.S. government consulting business, which will retain the name Booz Allen Hamilton, to The Carlyle Group for $2.54 billion. The firm's commercial and international businesses are now independent, operating as Booz & Company."

The filing gives the reason in the firm's own words: "In 2008, a strategic business decision was made to prioritize and protect the Company's government and national security interests and spin off its global commercial business."

Two consequences matter for a reader deciding what to believe. Any account of Booz Allen's strategy work for multinational corporations before 2008 describes capability that left the building. And the firm had 20,000 employees at the separation, against about 31,500 now, so the surviving half has grown by more than half again in eighteen years.

The listed parent was incorporated in Delaware in May 2008, three months before the separation closed, which is the corporate trace of the same event.

Where Booz Allen is, and where it is moving

Booz Allen's headquarters is at 8283 Greensboro Drive in McLean, Virginia, in a building it calls the Hamilton Building. It has announced a move to Reston that completes in 2027.

The locations page read on 8 October 2026 organizes the footprint into three regions: North America, Southeast Asia and Europe. The United States list covers twenty-six states plus the District of Columbia, running from Alabama and Hawaii to West Virginia. The concentration is visible without counting: Virginia, Maryland and the District hold the bulk of the addresses, which follows from a customer base of federal agencies.

The filing counts the footprint differently, with "23 countries, with 32 major business centers and more than 20 engineering, manufacturing, and R&D facilities." Those two counts measure different things, and neither is a count of offices. No Booz Allen page we read gives one.

The properties item in the filing adds a fact that surprises people about a company this size: "We do not own any facilities or real estate." Everything is leased, totaling "approximately 2 million square feet," and the filing adds that "many of our employees are located in facilities provided by the U.S. government." It also names the principal offices outside McLean: Annapolis Junction, Washington, Chantilly, Laurel, Panama City Beach, Arlington, Bethesda, Alexandria and Colorado Springs.

The move is dated in the filing itself: "We plan to relocate our headquarters in the fall of 2027 to Reston, Virginia, dependent upon the timing of the completion of various tenant improvements." A release of 17 November 2025 gives the address, The Row at Reston Station, with "interior build-out in the recently completed building scheduled to begin in Summer 2026."

So the correct answer to where the headquarters is depends on when you ask. The 10-K filed for the year ended 31 March 2026 still gives the McLean address, and any page that lists Reston as the current headquarters is a year early.

The purpose line and the five values it prints

Booz Allen registers its purpose as a trademark and prints it as one sentence: "Empower People to Change the World.®" The registration mark is the firm's own.

Its values page names five, each with a definition the firm wrote.

These are worth reading before an interview for a narrow reason. The filing repeats the same five in a different order, which tells you they are maintained centrally rather than written for a careers page. A firm that puts the same five words in a securities filing is describing something it expects to be held to.

What the pages do not say is what the firm looks for in a candidate's personality, and this page does not supply that. The values describe conduct the company commits to. Turning them into a prediction about interview scoring would be our invention.

The five things Booz Allen leaves unstated

The filings answer more than most firms do, which makes the remaining gaps sharper. Five of them matter, and one of them is structural rather than discretionary.

• Revenue by market. There is no split between defense, intelligence, civil and commercial, and there cannot be one in the filing: the company "reports operating results and financial data in one operating and reportable segment." The absence follows from an accounting choice.
• A count of offices. The filing gives 32 major business centers and more than 20 engineering facilities, and the locations page lists addresses without a total. Neither figure is an office count.
• Backlog by customer or agency. Three categories are published and nothing beneath them.
• An absolute number of cleared employees. The 77 percent is self-reported, so the denominator is soft, and the filing says so.
• Pay bands outside individual postings. Workday postings carry ranges one at a time. No company page aggregates them.

Two access notes belong here, because the difference between a silence and a locked door matters. The investor relations and newsroom subdomains answered 403 to every direct request we made on 8 October 2026, so the two press releases quoted above were read from dated Wayback captures served in their original form. The 10-K itself downloaded without obstacle from the main site. Nothing above is described as unpublished because a server refused us.

How we score a sizing answer, and why this firm invites one

A company whose revenue arrives through 5,026 contracts, whose backlog has three tiers, and whose largest customer is 10 percent of the top line is a company you can only understand by estimating. That is the same skill a case interview tests.

These are the dimensions our own grader measures on a market sizing answer, with the weight each carries out of a hundred. The weights are ours, and no firm publishes one.