Specialized talent solutions company Robert Half (NYSE: RHI) reported Q4 CY2025 results beating Wall Street’s revenue expectations, but sales fell by 5.8% year on year to $1.30 billion. Its GAAP profit of $0.32 per share was 8.4% above analysts’ consensus estimates.

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Company Overview

With roots dating back to 1948 as the first specialized recruiting firm for accounting and finance professionals, Robert Half (NYSE: RHI) provides specialized talent solutions and business consulting services, connecting skilled professionals with companies across various fields.

Revenue Growth

Examining a company’s long-term performance can provide clues about its quality. Any business can have short-term success, but a top-tier one grows for years.

With $5.38 billion in revenue over the past 12 months, Robert Half is one of the larger companies in the business services industry and benefits from a well-known brand that influences purchasing decisions. However, its scale is a double-edged sword because it’s harder to find incremental growth when you’ve penetrated most of the market. To expand meaningfully, Robert Half likely needs to tweak its prices, innovate with new offerings, or enter new markets.

As you can see below, Robert Half’s sales grew at a sluggish 1% compounded annual growth rate over the last five years. This shows it failed to generate demand in any major way and is a rough starting point for our analysis.

We at StockStory place the most emphasis on long-term growth, but within business services, a half-decade historical view may miss recent innovations or disruptive industry trends. Robert Half’s performance shows it grew in the past but relinquished its gains over the last two years, as its revenue fell by 8.3% annually.

This quarter, Robert Half’s revenue fell by 5.8% year on year to $1.30 billion but beat Wall Street’s estimates by 1.1%.

Looking ahead, sell-side analysts expect revenue to remain flat over the next 12 months. Although this projection implies its newer products and services will catalyze better top-line performance, it is still below the sector average.

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Operating Margin

Robert Half was profitable over the last five years but held back by its large cost base. Its average operating margin of 8.1% was weak for a business services business.

Looking at the trend in its profitability, Robert Half’s operating margin decreased by 9.8 percentage points over the last five years. This raises questions about the company’s expense base because its revenue growth should have given it leverage on its fixed costs, resulting in better economies of scale and profitability. Robert Half’s performance was poor no matter how you look at it - it shows that costs were rising and it couldn’t pass them onto its customers.

This quarter, Robert Half generated an operating margin profit margin of 1.7%, down 2.9 percentage points year on year. This contraction shows it was less efficient because its expenses increased relative to its revenue.

Earnings Per Share

Revenue trends explain a company’s historical growth, but the long-term change in earnings per share (EPS) points to the profitability of that growth – for example, a company could inflate its sales through excessive spending on advertising and promotions.

Sadly for Robert Half, its EPS declined by 13.2% annually over the last five years while its revenue grew by 1%. This tells us the company became less profitable on a per-share basis as it expanded due to non-fundamental factors such as interest expenses and taxes.

We can take a deeper look into Robert Half’s earnings to better understand the drivers of its performance. As we mentioned earlier, Robert Half’s operating margin declined by 9.8 percentage points over the last five years. This was the most relevant factor (aside from the revenue impact) behind its lower earnings; interest expenses and taxes can also affect EPS but don’t tell us as much about a company’s fundamentals.

Like with revenue, we analyze EPS over a shorter period to see if we are missing a change in the business.

For Robert Half, its two-year annual EPS declines of 41.4% show it’s continued to underperform. These results were bad no matter how you slice the data.

In Q4, Robert Half reported EPS of $0.32, down from $0.53 in the same quarter last year. Despite falling year on year, this print beat analysts’ estimates by 8.4%. Over the next 12 months, Wall Street expects Robert Half’s full-year EPS of $1.33 to grow 22.3%.

Key Takeaways from Robert Half’s Q4 Results

It was good to see Robert Half beat analysts’ EPS expectations this quarter. We were also happy its revenue narrowly outperformed Wall Street’s estimates. Overall, we think this was a decent quarter with some key metrics above expectations. The stock traded up 9.8% to $29.75 immediately following the results.

Sure, Robert Half had a solid quarter, but if we look at the bigger picture, is this stock a buy? If you’re making that decision, you should consider the bigger picture of valuation, business qualities, as well as the latest earnings. We cover that in our actionable full research report which you can read here (it’s free).