H&R Block's (HRB) Fiscal 2026 Earnings: A Beat, a Dividend Hike, and a Stock That's Actually Cheap
Numbers below are current as of the evening of August 11, 2026, right after the call.
What Is This Article About
H&R Block reported its fiscal 2026 full year and fourth quarter results today. I'll cover what was said on the call, what went right, what went wrong, then do the math on the valuation. I'll end with my own take on whether it's worth buying. This is not financial advice, just my own reading of the numbers.
What Was Discussed on the Call
Here are the numbers, for the full fiscal year ended June 30, 2026:
Revenue: $3.95 billion. Up 4.9% from $3.76 billion last year.Net income from continuing operations: $736.3 million. Up 20.8%.GAAP earnings per share: $5.69. Up 28.7%.Adjusted earnings per share: $5.31. Up 13.9%. This strips out a one-time tax benefit.Operating cash flow: up 23% year over year.And for the fourth quarter alone:
Revenue: $1.14 billion, beating what analysts expected.Earnings per share: $2.38, beating the roughly $2.22 estimate.CEO Curtis Campbell said the results reflect improving client mix and the company's expert-led, technology-enabled strategy paying off. CFO Tiffany Mason pointed to accelerating revenue growth, margin expansion, and higher cash generation. The board raised the quarterly dividend by 10% to $0.46 a share, the ninth straight annual increase, and management guided fiscal 2027 revenue to $4.11 to $4.16 billion and adjusted earnings per share to $6.04 to $6.24, both ahead of what Wall Street was modeling. The stock jumped roughly 12% after hours on the news.
What Are the Wins
Revenue and earnings both beat estimates, and next year's guidance came in above expectations too. Here's the short version:
Adjusted EPS: up 13.9%, to $5.31.Operating cash flow: up 23%.Revenue growth: accelerated to 4.9%, fast for a company this mature.Fiscal 2027 guidance: raised above Wall Street's numbers on both revenue and earnings.Q4 results: beat on both revenue and EPS.The capital return story is the real standout here:
Dividend: raised 10%, to $0.46 a share quarterly. Ninth consecutive annual increase.Shares repurchased: 10.5 million, about 7.9% of shares outstanding, for $500.3 million.Total cash returned to shareholders this year: $713.7 million.Buyback authorization remaining: about $600 million of the $1.5 billion program.Shares outstanding: down almost 6% over the past year from buybacks alone, which directly lifts earnings per share going forward.What Are the Losses
Not everything in this report was as clean as the headline numbers suggest.
One-time tax benefit: $0.65 of the $5.69 GAAP EPS came from a non-recurring IRS examination resolution, not from the actual business running better.The real growth rate: adjusted EPS, which strips that out, grew 13.9%. Still good, just not as flashy as the 28.7% headline.Operating expenses: up 3.6%, with occupancy and technology costs both rising.The stock was down almost 17% over the prior 52 weeks heading into today, so even after this jump, some of it is just recovering lost ground.Short interest: sits at 14% of shares outstanding, unusually high for a company like this, a sign some investors are betting the story doesn't hold up.Balance sheet: carries net debt of about $1.16 billion and slightly negative book equity, a result of years of aggressive buybacks. Not alarming given strong free cash flow and 11x interest coverage, but a different picture than a company sitting on a pile of net cash.Analysis
Trailing P/E:
Trailing GAAP EPS: $5.69.Trailing adjusted EPS: $5.31.At an estimated after-hours price of about $51.50 (based on the reported 12% jump from a pre-earnings price near $46), trailing GAAP P/E is about 9.1x.Trailing adjusted P/E is about 9.7x, the more honest number since it excludes the one-time tax item.Forward P/E:
Fiscal 2027 guidance midpoint for adjusted EPS: $6.14.Forward P/E: $51.50 / $6.14, or about 8.4x.For comparison, SpaceX traded at roughly 190x forward earnings after its own first report, and AMD traded near 63x forward earnings after its last print.Price-to-sales and shareholder yield:
Market cap: roughly $6.5 billion at the after-hours price.Trailing revenue: $3.95 billion.That's about 1.6x sales, cheap next to SpaceX's 81x and AMD's roughly 80x trailing sales multiple.Shareholder yield, dividends plus buybacks combined: roughly 8 to 9% of market cap returned to shareholders this year alone.What fair value could look like, using a range of more typical multiples on that $6.14 forward EPS estimate:
At 10x earnings: $61.40.At 12x earnings: $73.68.At 14x earnings: $85.96.HRB has historically traded somewhere in the 8x to 13x earnings range depending on the year.The average analyst price target on record is $42 with a "Hold" rating, but that predates today's beat and raise, so it's stale and likely to move higher.For context on scale:
Roughly 150 million individual tax returns get filed in the US every year.H&R Block's free online product alone serves around 3 million taxpayers a year.Its closest brick-and-mortar competitor, Jackson Hewitt, handles about 2 million returns a year, far smaller than H&R Block's footprint.H&R Block's assisted-channel market share improved for the third straight year in the 2026 tax season.Is This a Good Company to Invest in Right Now
As a company, H&R Block looks like a well-run, cash-generative business with a long track record of returning money to shareholders instead of chasing expensive growth. The valuation isn't stretched at all.
Final Thoughts on Whether to Invest or Not
Personally, I'd put this as a reasonably priced, boring-in-a-good-way value stock that just proved its execution is working. I'd want to watch the short interest and see whether DIY competition picks back up before sizing up a position, but this is a name I'd be comfortable owning for the cash flow rather than watching from the sidelines.
Disclaimer:
I am not a financial advisor. This article is based on publicly available earnings data and my own personal analysis and views. It is not financial advice. Please do your own research or talk to a licensed financial advisor before making any investment decisions.
H&R Block's (HRB) Fiscal 2026 Earnings: A Beat, a Dividend Hike, and a Stock That's Actually Cheap
Numbers below are current as of the evening of August 11, 2026, right after the call.
What Is This Article About
H&R Block reported its fiscal 2026 full year and fourth quarter results today. I'll cover what was said on the call, what went right, what went wrong, then do the math on the valuation. I'll end with my own take on whether it's worth buying. This is not financial advice, just my own reading of the numbers.
What Was Discussed on the Call
Here are the numbers, for the full fiscal year ended June 30, 2026:
Revenue: $3.95 billion. Up 4.9% from $3.76 billion last year.Net income from continuing operations: $736.3 million. Up 20.8%.GAAP earnings per share: $5.69. Up 28.7%.Adjusted earnings per share: $5.31. Up 13.9%. This strips out a one-time tax benefit.Operating cash flow: up 23% year over year.And for the fourth quarter alone:
Revenue: $1.14 billion, beating what analysts expected.Earnings per share: $2.38, beating the roughly $2.22 estimate.CEO Curtis Campbell said the results reflect improving client mix and the company's expert-led, technology-enabled strategy paying off. CFO Tiffany Mason pointed to accelerating revenue growth, margin expansion, and higher cash generation. The board raised the quarterly dividend by 10% to $0.46 a share, the ninth straight annual increase, and management guided fiscal 2027 revenue to $4.11 to $4.16 billion and adjusted earnings per share to $6.04 to $6.24, both ahead of what Wall Street was modeling. The stock jumped roughly 12% after hours on the news.
What Are the Wins
Revenue and earnings both beat estimates, and next year's guidance came in above expectations too. Here's the short version:
Adjusted EPS: up 13.9%, to $5.31.Operating cash flow: up 23%.Revenue growth: accelerated to 4.9%, fast for a company this mature.Fiscal 2027 guidance: raised above Wall Street's numbers on both revenue and earnings.Q4 results: beat on both revenue and EPS.The capital return story is the real standout here:
Dividend: raised 10%, to $0.46 a share quarterly. Ninth consecutive annual increase.Shares repurchased: 10.5 million, about 7.9% of shares outstanding, for $500.3 million.Total cash returned to shareholders this year: $713.7 million.Buyback authorization remaining: about $600 million of the $1.5 billion program.Shares outstanding: down almost 6% over the past year from buybacks alone, which directly lifts earnings per share going forward.What Are the Losses
Not everything in this report was as clean as the headline numbers suggest.
One-time tax benefit: $0.65 of the $5.69 GAAP EPS came from a non-recurring IRS examination resolution, not from the actual business running better.The real growth rate: adjusted EPS, which strips that out, grew 13.9%. Still good, just not as flashy as the 28.7% headline.Operating expenses: up 3.6%, with occupancy and technology costs both rising.The stock was down almost 17% over the prior 52 weeks heading into today, so even after this jump, some of it is just recovering lost ground.Short interest: sits at 14% of shares outstanding, unusually high for a company like this, a sign some investors are betting the story doesn't hold up.Balance sheet: carries net debt of about $1.16 billion and slightly negative book equity, a result of years of aggressive buybacks. Not alarming given strong free cash flow and 11x interest coverage, but a different picture than a company sitting on a pile of net cash.Analysis
Trailing P/E:
Trailing GAAP EPS: $5.69.Trailing adjusted EPS: $5.31.At an estimated after-hours price of about $51.50 (based on the reported 12% jump from a pre-earnings price near $46), trailing GAAP P/E is about 9.1x.Trailing adjusted P/E is about 9.7x, the more honest number since it excludes the one-time tax item.Forward P/E:
Fiscal 2027 guidance midpoint for adjusted EPS: $6.14.Forward P/E: $51.50 / $6.14, or about 8.4x.For comparison, SpaceX traded at roughly 190x forward earnings after its own first report, and AMD traded near 63x forward earnings after its last print.Price-to-sales and shareholder yield:
Market cap: roughly $6.5 billion at the after-hours price.Trailing revenue: $3.95 billion.That's about 1.6x sales, cheap next to SpaceX's 81x and AMD's roughly 80x trailing sales multiple.Shareholder yield, dividends plus buybacks combined: roughly 8 to 9% of market cap returned to shareholders this year alone.What fair value could look like, using a range of more typical multiples on that $6.14 forward EPS estimate:
At 10x earnings: $61.40.At 12x earnings: $73.68.At 14x earnings: $85.96.HRB has historically traded somewhere in the 8x to 13x earnings range depending on the year.The average analyst price target on record is $42 with a "Hold" rating, but that predates today's beat and raise, so it's stale and likely to move higher.For context on scale:
Roughly 150 million individual tax returns get filed in the US every year.H&R Block's free online product alone serves around 3 million taxpayers a year.Its closest brick-and-mortar competitor, Jackson Hewitt, handles about 2 million returns a year, far smaller than H&R Block's footprint.H&R Block's assisted-channel market share improved for the third straight year in the 2026 tax season.Is This a Good Company to Invest in Right Now
As a company, H&R Block looks like a well-run, cash-generative business with a long track record of returning money to shareholders instead of chasing expensive growth. The valuation isn't stretched at all.
Final Thoughts on Whether to Invest or Not
Personally, I'd put this as a reasonably priced, boring-in-a-good-way value stock that just proved its execution is working. I'd want to watch the short interest and see whether DIY competition picks back up before sizing up a position, but this is a name I'd be comfortable owning for the cash flow rather than watching from the sidelines.
Disclaimer:
I am not a financial advisor. This article is based on publicly available earnings data and my own personal analysis and views. It is not financial advice. Please do your own research or talk to a licensed financial advisor before making any investment decisions.
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