Helicopter services provider Bristow Group (NYSE:VTOL) reported Q1 CY2026 results beating Wall Street’s revenue expectations, with sales up 10.9% year on year to $388.7 million. Its GAAP profit of $0.44 per share was 54.2% below analysts’ consensus estimates.
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Bristow Group (VTOL) Q1 CY2026 Highlights:
- Revenue: $388.7 million vs analyst estimates of $384.5 million (10.9% year-on-year growth, 1.1% beat)
- EPS (GAAP): $0.44 vs analyst expectations of $0.96 (54.2% miss)
- Adjusted EBITDA: $59.28 million vs analyst estimates of $66.89 million (15.2% margin, 11.4% miss)
- Operating Margin: 8.9%, in line with the same quarter last year
- Free Cash Flow was -$11.77 million compared to -$52.66 million in the same quarter last year
- Market Capitalization: $1.46 billion
"Bristow's first quarter results place us on track for what is expected to be a transformational year for the Company in 2026," said Chris Bradshaw, President and CEO of Bristow Group.
Company Overview
Operating what's essentially an airborne taxi service for some of the world's most remote workplaces, Bristow Group (NYSE:VTOL) operates helicopters that transport workers to offshore oil and gas platforms and conduct search and rescue operations.
Revenue Growth
A company’s long-term performance can give signals about its business quality. Even a bad business, especially in a cyclical industry, can shine for a year or so, but a top-tier one should exhibit resilience through cycles. Regrettably, Bristow Group’s sales grew at a sluggish 6.1% compounded annual growth rate over the last five years. This was below our standard for the energy upstream and integrated energy sector and is a tough starting point for our analysis.
Within Energy, a singular timeframe, even if it’s quite long-term, only sheds light on how well a company rode the last commodity cycle. To better assess whether a company compounds through cycles, we validate our view with an even longer, ten-year view. Bristow Group’s recent performance shows its demand has accelerated as its revenue was flat over the last ten years.
This quarter, Bristow Group reported year-on-year revenue growth of 10.9%, and its $388.7 million of revenue exceeded Wall Street’s estimates by 1.1%.
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Adjusted EBITDA Margin
Bristow Group was profitable over the last five years but held back by its large cost base. Its average EBITDA margin of 10% was among the worst in the energy upstream and integrated energy sector.
On the plus side, Bristow Group’s EBITDA margin rose by 4.5 percentage points over the last year.
This quarter, Bristow Group generated an EBITDA margin profit margin of 15.2%, down 1.1 percentage points year on year. This reduction is quite minuscule and indicates the company’s overall cost structure has been relatively stable. This adjusted EBITDA fell short of Wall Street’s estimates.
Cash Is King
Adjusted EBITDA shows how profitable a company’s existing wells are before financing and reinvestment decisions, but free cash flow shows how much value remains after paying the cost of replacing those wells. In upstream energy, production naturally declines over time, so companies must continuously reinvest just to stand still. A producer can report strong EBITDA margins yet generate little or no free cash flow if its wells decline quickly or if new drilling is expensive. Free cash flow therefore captures not only how efficiently a company produces hydrocarbons today, but also how costly it is to sustain that production into the future.
Bristow Group broke even from a free cash flow perspective over the last five years, giving the company limited opportunities to return capital to shareholders.
The level of free cash flow is important, but its durability across cycles is just as critical. Consistent margins are far more valuable than volatile swings driven by commodity prices.
Bristow Group’s ratio of quarterly free cash flow volatility to WTI crude price volatility over the past five years was 1,385 (lower is better), indicating that its cash generation is far more sensitive to commodity-price swings than most peers. This elevated volatility limits its access to capital in downturns and makes it unlikely to act as a consolidator when weaker competitors come under pressure.
You may be asking why we wait until the free cash flow line to perform this stability analysis versus commodity prices. Why not compare revenue or EBITDA to WTI Crude prices in the case of Bristow Group? Because what ultimately matters is not how much revenue or profit you earn when prices are high but how much cash you can generate when prices are low. Free cash flow is the superior metric because it includes everything from hedging prowess to growth and maintenance capex to management behavior during good times and bad.
Bristow Group burned through $11.77 million of cash in Q1, equivalent to a negative 3% margin. The company’s cash burn slowed from $52.66 million of lost cash in the same quarter last year.
Key Takeaways from Bristow Group’s Q1 Results
It was good to see Bristow Group narrowly top analysts’ revenue expectations this quarter. On the other hand, its EBITDA missed and its EPS fell short of Wall Street’s estimates. Overall, this was a softer quarter. The stock traded down 9.3% to $44.36 immediately after reporting.
Bristow Group’s earnings report left more to be desired. Let’s look forward to see if this quarter has created an opportunity to buy the stock. What happened in the latest quarter matters, but not as much as longer-term business quality and valuation, when deciding whether to invest in this stock. We cover that in our actionable full research report which you can read here (it’s free).