Insurance specialty broker Ryan Specialty (NYSE: RYAN) missed Wall Street’s revenue expectations in Q4 CY2025, but sales rose 13.2% year on year to $751.2 million. Its non-GAAP profit of $0.45 per share was 8.3% below analysts’ consensus estimates.
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Ryan Specialty (RYAN) Q4 CY2025 Highlights:
- Revenue: $751.2 million vs analyst estimates of $771 million (13.2% year-on-year growth, 2.6% miss)
- Adjusted EPS: $0.45 vs analyst expectations of $0.49 (8.3% miss)
- Adjusted EBITDA: $222.3 million vs analyst estimates of $240.4 million (29.6% margin, 7.5% miss)
- Operating Margin: 12.2%, down from 16.5% in the same quarter last year
- Market Capitalization: $5.54 billion
Company Overview
Founded in 2010 by insurance industry veteran Patrick Ryan, Ryan Specialty (NYSE: RYAN) is a wholesale insurance broker and underwriting manager that helps retail brokers place complex or hard-to-place risks with insurance carriers.
Revenue Growth
Examining a company’s long-term performance can provide clues about its quality. Any business can experience short-term success, but top-performing ones enjoy sustained growth for years.
With $3.05 billion in revenue over the past 12 months, Ryan Specialty is a mid-sized business services company, which sometimes brings disadvantages compared to larger competitors benefiting from better economies of scale. On the bright side, it can still flex high growth rates because it’s working from a smaller revenue base.
As you can see below, Ryan Specialty grew its sales at an incredible 24.5% compounded annual growth rate over the last five years. This is a great starting point for our analysis because it shows Ryan Specialty’s demand was higher than many business services companies.
Long-term growth is the most important, but within business services, a half-decade historical view may miss new innovations or demand cycles. Ryan Specialty’s annualized revenue growth of 21.2% over the last two years is below its five-year trend, but we still think the results suggest healthy demand. 
This quarter, Ryan Specialty’s revenue grew by 13.2% year on year to $751.2 million but fell short of Wall Street’s estimates.
Looking ahead, sell-side analysts expect revenue to grow 17.1% over the next 12 months, a deceleration versus the last two years. Still, this projection is commendable and indicates the market sees success for its products and services.
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Operating Margin
Operating margin is one of the best measures of profitability because it tells us how much money a company takes home after subtracting all core expenses, like marketing and R&D.
Ryan Specialty has been an efficient company over the last five years. It was one of the more profitable businesses in the business services sector, boasting an average operating margin of 16.3%.
Looking at the trend in its profitability, Ryan Specialty’s operating margin rose by 3.2 percentage points over the last five years, as its sales growth gave it operating leverage.
This quarter, Ryan Specialty generated an operating margin profit margin of 12.2%, down 4.3 percentage points year on year. This contraction shows it was less efficient because its expenses grew faster than 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.
Ryan Specialty’s full-year EPS grew at an astounding 15.6% compounded annual growth rate over the last four years, better than the broader business services sector.
Like with revenue, we analyze EPS over a more recent period because it can provide insight into an emerging theme or development for the business.
Ryan Specialty’s spectacular 19.5% annual EPS growth over the last two years aligns with its revenue trend. This tells us it maintained its per-share profitability as it expanded.
In Q4, Ryan Specialty reported adjusted EPS of $0.45, in line with the same quarter last year. This print missed analysts’ estimates, but we care more about long-term adjusted EPS growth than short-term movements. Over the next 12 months, Wall Street expects Ryan Specialty’s full-year EPS of $1.97 to grow 21.4%.
Key Takeaways from Ryan Specialty’s Q4 Results
We struggled to find many positives in these results. Its revenue missed and its EPS fell short of Wall Street’s estimates. Overall, this quarter could have been better. The stock traded down 11.1% to $39.47 immediately following the results.
The latest quarter from Ryan Specialty’s wasn’t that good. One earnings report doesn’t define a company’s quality, though, so let’s explore whether the stock is a buy at the current price. When making that decision, it’s important to consider its valuation, business qualities, as well as what has happened in the latest quarter. We cover that in our actionable full research report which you can read here (it’s free).
