PJT · Financials(investment advice) · 10 years of annual accounts filed with the SEC · latest fiscal year ended 2025-12-31
Signed in, this page also says what this company is inside your own portfolio: its weight, its share of your risk, and what buying or selling some of it would change. Sign in ›
PJT Partners Inc. reported revenue of $1.7 billion in fiscal 2025, after growing 14.6% a year over the previous 9 years. Its operating margin widened from 2.9% in 2016 to 20.2%. Of the $2.9 billion its operations generated over 10 years, 31.9% went to buybacks and 6.8% to dividends. On the accounting screens, it passes 5 of 5 Piotroski tests; 1 of the six cross-checks between its statements fires.
Revenue, fiscal 20251.7B+14.6% a year over 9 years
Operating margin20.2%gross margin —
Return on invested capital—
Free cash flow after stock pay246.1M14.5% of revenue
Net debt ÷ EBITDA—net debt —
Piotroski F-score5/5tests of improvement passed
Is it growing?
Revenue and the operating income it turns into. Growth that does not reach operating income is growth bought with margin.
RevenueOperating income
0500.0M1.0B1.5B2.0B
2016Revenue 499.4MOperating income 14.5M
2017Revenue 499.3MOperating income 10.1M
2018Revenue 575.7MOperating income 41.5M
2019Revenue 716.8MOperating income 82.2M
2020Revenue 1.0BOperating income 248.0M
2021Revenue 986.4MOperating income 219.4M
2022Revenue 1.0BOperating income 201.5M
2023Revenue 1.1BOperating income 177.6M
2024Revenue 1.5BOperating income 270.6M
2025Revenue 1.7BOperating income 342.9M
2016201720182019202020212022202320242025
Compound growth a year
3 yrs
5 yrs
9 yrs
Revenue
+18.2%
+10.2%
+14.6%
Operating income
+19.4%
+6.7%
+42.1%
Net income
+25.8%
+8.9%
—
Falling shares are buybacks: each remaining share owns more of the company.
Does it earn more than its capital costs?
Margins say how much of each sale is kept; return on invested capital says how much the business earns on the money it needs to operate. Growth only creates value when that return is above the cost of the capital.
GrossOperatingNetFree cash flow
-20.0%0.0%20.0%40.0%60.0%
2016Operating 2.9%Net -0.6%Free cash flow 20.8%
2017Operating 2.0%Net -6.5%Free cash flow 22.1%
2018Operating 7.2%Net 4.7%Free cash flow 20.1%
2019Operating 11.5%Net 4.1%Free cash flow 28.2%
2020Operating 23.7%Net 11.2%Free cash flow 44.1%
2021Operating 22.2%Net 10.8%Free cash flow 11.9%
2022Operating 19.6%Net 8.8%Free cash flow 23.3%
2023Operating 15.5%Net 7.1%Free cash flow 38.2%
2024Operating 18.3%Net 9.1%Free cash flow 35.7%
2025Operating 20.2%Net 10.6%Free cash flow 28.3%
2016201720182019202020212022202320242025
Return on invested capital
Economic profit
Needs a cost of capital, which comes from the valuation below.
Return on equity
58.4%
Return on assets
9.8%
Asset turnover
0.92×
Is the profit cash, and where does the cash go?
Net income is an accounting opinion; free cash flow is what was left in the bank after investing. Stock-based pay does not leave the bank — shareholders pay it through dilution — so it is shown taken off as well.
Net incomeFree cash flowAfter stock-based pay
-200.0M0200.0M400.0M600.0M
2016Net income -3.0MFree cash flow 103.8MAfter stock-based pay 14.8M
2017Net income -32.6MFree cash flow 110.2MAfter stock-based pay -5.8M
2018Net income 27.2MFree cash flow 115.7MAfter stock-based pay -2.3M
2019Net income 29.6MFree cash flow 202.4MAfter stock-based pay 90.9M
2020Net income 117.5MFree cash flow 460.6MAfter stock-based pay 339.7M
2021Net income 106.2MFree cash flow 117.7MAfter stock-based pay 8.8M
2022Net income 90.5MFree cash flow 239.3MAfter stock-based pay 73.8M
2023Net income 81.8MFree cash flow 437.6MAfter stock-based pay 259.1M
2024Net income 134.4MFree cash flow 527.7MAfter stock-based pay 318.5M
2025Net income 180.1MFree cash flow 480.4MAfter stock-based pay 246.1M
2016201720182019202020212022202320242025
Where 10 years of operating cash went, 2016–2025
2.9B generated by the business. Each band is its share of that total.
Reinvested in the business 4%102.0M
Acquisitions 2%72.2M
Dividends 7%197.0M
Share buybacks 32%923.5M
Kept, or used to pay down debt 55%1.6B
Over the same years it paid 1.5B in stock. The buybacks did not even cover what was handed out in stock.
Per share
Shares outstanding
How strong is the balance sheet?
Debt is not bad in itself; debt the business cannot service in a bad year is. Net debt is debt minus cash, and below zero the company holds more cash than it owes.
Net debt ÷ EBITDA
—
Interest coverage
— operating income ÷ interest
Current ratio
— current assets ÷ current liabilities
Cash conversion cycle
—
Three classic screens of the accounts
Each asks a different question of the same statements — is it improving, does it look like a company heading for distress, do the accounts resemble ones that were manipulated. None is a verdict; each shows what moves it.
Piotroski F-score
Is the business improving? Nine yes-or-no tests, this year against last.
5of 5 tests passed
✓ProfitableReturn on assets above zeropassed
✓Cash from operationsOperating cash flow above zeropassed
✓Profitability improvedReturn on assets higher than a year beforepassed
✓Profit backed by cashOperating cash flow above net income (low accruals)passed
–Less long-term debtLong-term debt as a share of assets fell — not reportedno data
–More liquidCurrent ratio higher than a year before — not reportedno data
–No new sharesShare count did not grow — not reportedno data
–Better gross marginGross margin higher than a year before — not reportedno data
✓Sells more per assetAsset turnover higher than a year beforepassed
Where it misleads: it measures change, not level. An excellent business that stood still for a year scores low; a poor one recovering from a disaster scores high.
Altman Z''-score
Does the balance sheet look like those of companies that went bankrupt?
The accounts lack a line it needs (retained earnings, current assets or liabilities).
Beneish M-score
Do the accounts resemble those of companies that manipulated their earnings?
The accounts lack too many of the lines it needs.
Where the statements disagree
Cross-checks between the income statement, the balance sheet and the cash flow for the latest year, each with the benign reading and the worrying one.
The effective tax rate is 9.7%.
Benign
A favourable geographic mix, or legitimate tax credits.
Worrying
Not sustainable; projecting it forward inflates the valuation.
What is it worth, under which assumptions?
A company is worth the cash it will generate, brought back to today. This model projects revenue with growth that fades over the years, applies a free cash flow margin, and discounts the result at the cost of capital. Every assumption says where it came from, and all of them can be changed.
The SEC accounts lack the lines needed for revenue, free cash flow or the share count, so there is no DCF for this company.
What it has filed lately
The last twelve months at the SEC, most important first: annual and quarterly reports, events, large holders and insiders.
Accounts from the company's own SEC filings; lines some companies do not report are shown as a dash rather than estimated. The risk-free rate is the 10-year US Treasury yield. A DCF is a way of making assumptions explicit, not a forecast: it states what the company would be worth if the assumptions held. The scores are screens that point where to look, not verdicts. Nothing here is a recommendation to buy or sell.