QualityDipStocks / Finance · Investment Managers
Houlihan Lokey HLI
Outside our quality screen, so we don’t track its dips. It’s 31% below its 52-week high.
Outside our quality screen, trading well above our fair value estimate.
- Fair value est.
- $79.74−42%
- Market Value
- forming
- Off 52-wk high
- −31%
- Risk vs market
- Below marketbeta 0.70
4 bullish · 5 bearish See why
Key levels
Every level vs today’s $138.00
- Fair value est.base case$79.74−42.2%
- 52-wk lowlowest close, 1 year$123.39−10.6%
- PriceFri Oct 30 close$138.00you are here
- 52-wk highhighest close, 1 year$199.29+44.4%
Fair value estimate
How the range is computed
Financials model (residual income). Same residual-income model as the base: cost of equity 9.5% ±1 point and return on equity 18.7% ±2 points. Bear = 10.5% and 16.7%; bull = 8.5% and 20.7%. A model estimate from public filings, not a forecast of where the price will go.
Price is above even the bull case.
What the price implies To be worth today’s price, HLI would need a return on equity of about 27% a year; our estimate uses 19%.
Risk vs market
How risk vs market is measured
One year of daily returns (Oct 30 to Oct 30, 252 sessions). Beta = how much HLI moved for each 1% move in the S&P 500 (SPY); 1.0 moves with the market. Volatility is the yearly standard deviation of daily returns. Past behavior, not a forecast.
Moves a bit less than the market, but its own price swings are 2.4× the S&P 500’s (it moves on its own news).
- Beta vs S&P 500
- 0.70
- Volatility
- 31% vs 13% SPY
- Correlation SPY
- 0.29
- Correlation QQQ
- 0.14
Bull vs bear
Rule-based from the data on this page, strongest first. Not advice.
Top bullish points 4 of 5
GrowthSales compounded 13% a year from FY2023 to FY2026.
Cash returnsShare count down 2.3% in a year.
ProfitabilityReturn on equity of 18% over the last 12 months.
Cash returnsDividend yield of 2.0% ($187M paid over 12 months, 46% of earnings).
Top bearish points 5 of 5
ValuationOur residual-income fair value estimate is $79.74, 42% below the price.
GrowthSales growth slowed to −0% over the last 12 months, from 13% a year over the prior three fiscal years.
ValuationPrice / book of 4.0×, above the 1.8× median for the 143 Finance companies we cover.
ValuationP/E of 22.9×, above the 13.5× median for the 151 Finance companies we cover.
QualityDoesn’t pass our quality screen: no positive free cash flow.
Who’s talking about it
Notable investors, executives, analysts and public figures on Houlihan Lokey in the last 48 hours. Headlines as published, each linked. Their words, not ours.
No notable mentions in the last 48 hours. Checked Nov 1, 9:09 PM ET.
Compare with peers
Closest in size in Investment Managers
All fundamentals
P/E 22.9 · ROE 18% · Sales −0%
Valuation
- P/E
- 22.9×Finance median 13.5×
- Price / FCF
- n/acash flow isn't a clean measure for a lender
- FCF yield
- n/acash flow isn't a clean measure for a lender
- EV / EBITDA
- n/anot meaningful for a lender
- Price / sales
- 3.62×
- Price / book
- 4.01×
- Market cap
- $9.2Bprice × diluted shares
- Enterprise value
- n/anot reported in its SEC filings
Growth
- Revenue, 12 months
- $2.6B
- Sales growth, 12 months
- −0.4%vs the 12 months before
- Sales growth, 3 yrs
- +13.1%/yrfrom FY2023
- Diluted EPS, 12 months
- $5.96
- EPS growth, last FY
- +6.9%
- Net income, 12 months
- $404M
- Net income growth
- −5%12 months vs before
Profitability
- Gross margin
- n/anot meaningful for a lender
- Operating margin
- 20.3%
- Net margin
- 15.8%
- FCF margin
- 15.7%
- Return on equity
- 18%
- Return on invested capital
- n/anot meaningful for a lender
Balance sheet
- Cash & short-term inv.
- $837M
- Total debt
- n/anot reported in its SEC filings
- Net cash
- n/anot meaningful for a lender
- Debt / equity
- n/adeposits/float make debt/equity not comparable for a lender
- Interest coverage
- n/anot meaningful for a lender
Cash flow & returns
- Free cash flow, 12 months
- $402M
- FCF growth, 12 months
- −49%
- Dividend yield
- 2.02%$187M paid
- Payout ratio
- 46%
- Buybacks, 12 months
- n/anot reported in its SEC filings
- Share count, 1 year
- −2.3%diluted shares vs a year ago
- Stock-based comp
- $199M
Trailing 12 months to Sep 30, 2026; balance sheet at Sep 30, 2026. From Houlihan Lokey’s SEC filings. Sparklines show up to six fiscal years. n/a means we don’t hold that number, with the reason. How each is computed.
Valuation details
DCF $79.74
Financials model (residual income): book value $35.18 a share on Sep 30, 2026, plus the earnings above a 9.5% cost of equity. ROE 18.7%, the average of 17.4% for the trailing 12 months to Sep 30, 2026 and 19.9% over fiscal 2022–2026, on average common equity; payout 48% of earnings (dividends 48%), so book grows by the retained rest; the return above 9.5% fades halfway toward 9.5% over 10 years, then grows at 3% (terminal value). From the 10-Q filed Oct 30, 2026.
Setup & signals
No setup armed
No setup armed, so there’s no trigger or stop to track yet. Reversal signal rules only run on companies that pass our quality screen.
Momentum & 52-week range
RSI 62 · 5 days +5.1%
The business
Sales +5%
- Gross margin94%
- Operating margin24%
- Return on invested capital34%
- Return on equity17%
- Sales growth (latest quarter vs year-ago quarter)+5%
Information only, not investment advice. Fair value estimates and talking points are rule-based model output from public data and can be wrong; stop levels are reference points, not orders. How every number is computed.
HLI is outside our quality screen
One text when a published rule fires on one of the 333 quality companies we track: the ticker, the price, the stop and a link to the numbers. Nothing else.