CRA International: A High-Quality Consulting Shop Just Outside the Sweet Spot

## Why CRA International (CRAI) stands out today

CRA International, the economic and management consulting firm, is one of the names we track that combines high quality with a projected annual return (PAR) close to — though just below — our "sweet spot" band.

**The numbers, as we see them:**

- **Quality: 94.6** on our 0-100 percentile scale, which measures a company's financial strength, EPS stability, and relative sales growth and profitability against the rest of our database. A ranking above 80 is considered excellent, and CRAI sits well above that.
- **PAR: 14.4%.** PAR is our five-year annualized return projection, built from growth, projected profitability, and the valuation we expect the market to assign down the road. With MIPAR (the median PAR across everything we follow) at 9.5%, our sweet spot band runs from 14.5% to 19.5%. CRAI's 14.4% lands just below that range.
- **Core Score: 263 out of 300.** This is simply quality percentile plus financial strength plus EPS stability, each scored 0-100. A total above 225 is the threshold we associate with a potential "core holding" candidate, so CRAI clears that bar with room to spare.
- **Financial strength: 76 out of 100** — a solid balance sheet reading, not fortress-level, but comfortably in the "solid" range.
- **EPS stability: 92 out of 100.** Earnings have been unusually smooth and predictable for a professional-services firm, which is a meaningful input into that quality score.
- **Growth forecast: 8.1%** annually, the underlying earnings growth assumption feeding the PAR projection.
- **52-week context:** shares trade about 26.4% below their 52-week high of $227.29 and roughly 26.6% above their 52-week low of $132.17 — a name that has pulled back from its highs without sitting at rock bottom.
- **Dividend: 1.04%** current and projected yield, modest but present.

**Why today specifically:** CRA International has scheduled its second-quarter fiscal 2026 earnings call for **August 6**, per the company's own announcement this week. That's a near-term catalyst worth watching, since any update to growth or margin assumptions could move the PAR in either direction once results land. In the meantime, the company has been making smaller moves that speak to its niche: it just added a Yale School of Management professor as an academic affiliate to its antitrust practice, reinforcing the expert-network model that underlies its consulting revenue. Separate commentary from Zacks this month also pointed to the firm's shareholder-return approach, though we'd note that's third-party commentary rather than one of our own recorded figures.

**How we'd frame it:** CRA International isn't flagged as a Triple Play in our system (that designation requires a specific combination of depressed price, room for P/E expansion, and margin enhancement potential, hand-flagged in our analyst file). It's also not currently inside our sweet spot band — its PAR sits just below the 14.5% threshold. But the combination of a 94.6 quality percentile and a core score of 263 is exactly the kind of setup worth watching: a business with a demonstrated track record of consistent earnings, trading at a level where our projections suggest solid, if not quite sweet-spot, forward returns. As always, an upcoming earnings report is a reminder that today's PAR reflects current assumptions, not a guarantee of what August 6 will bring.