Helicopter services provider Bristow Group (NYSE:VTOL) reported Q2 CY2026 results exceeding the market’s revenue expectations, with sales up 9.4% year on year to $411.8 million. The company’s full-year revenue guidance of $1.68 billion at the midpoint came in 2.6% above analysts’ estimates. Its GAAP profit of $0.70 per share was 17.6% below analysts’ consensus estimates.
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Bristow Group (VTOL) Q2 CY2026 Highlights:
- Revenue: $411.8 million vs analyst estimates of $408 million (9.4% year-on-year growth, 0.9% beat)
- EPS (GAAP): $0.70 vs analyst expectations of $0.85 (17.6% miss)
- Adjusted EBITDA: $79.81 million vs analyst estimates of $72.1 million (19.4% margin, 10.7% beat)
- EBITDA guidance for the full year is $310 million at the midpoint, in line with analyst expectations
- Operating Margin: 9.6%, in line with the same quarter last year
- Free Cash Flow Margin: 8.3%, down from 17.9% in the same quarter last year
- Market Capitalization: $1.35 billion
"We completed the acquisition of Berry Aviation last month, adding differentiated special mission capabilities and long-standing relationships with U.S. defense and government customers, further strengthening Bristow's Government Services offerings," 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
Cyclical industries such as Energy can make mediocre companies look great for a time, but a long-term view reveals which businesses can actually withstand and adapt to changing conditions. Regrettably, Bristow Group’s sales grew at a sluggish 6.1% compounded annual growth rate over the last five years. This fell short of our benchmark for the energy upstream and integrated energy sector and is a tough starting point for our analysis.
Energy cycles can be long enough that a single five-year period can still reflect one price environment, which is why an additional, decade-long view can help capture through-cycle performance. Bristow Group’s annualized revenue growth of 0.1% over the last ten years is below its five-year trend, but we still think the results were respectable.
This quarter, Bristow Group reported year-on-year revenue growth of 9.4%, and its $411.8 million of revenue exceeded Wall Street’s estimates by 0.9%.
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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 10.4% was among the worst in the energy upstream and integrated energy sector.
On the plus side, Bristow Group’s EBITDA margin rose by 6.2 percentage points over the last year.
In Q2, Bristow Group generated an EBITDA margin profit margin of 19.4%, up 4.2 percentage points year on year. This increase was a welcome development and shows it was more efficient. This adjusted EBITDA beat Wall Street’s estimates by 10.7%.
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 1,814 (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 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’s free cash flow clocked in at $34.29 million in Q2, equivalent to a 8.3% margin. The company’s cash profitability regressed as it was 9.6 percentage points lower than in the same quarter last year, but it’s still above its five-year average. We wouldn’t read too much into this quarter’s decline because investment needs can be seasonal, leading to short-term swings. Long-term trends carry greater meaning.
Key Takeaways from Bristow Group’s Q2 Results
It was great to see Bristow Group’s full-year revenue guidance top analysts’ expectations. We were also glad its EBITDA outperformed Wall Street’s estimates. On the other hand, its EPS missed and its full-year EBITDA guidance was in line with Wall Street’s estimates. Overall, this print was mixed but still had some key positives. The stock remained flat at $47.77 immediately after reporting.
Big picture, is Bristow Group a buy here and now? We think that the latest quarter is only one piece of the longer-term business quality puzzle. Quality, when combined with valuation, can help determine if the stock is a buy. We cover that in our actionable full research report which you can read here (it’s free).