Professional services firm Marsh (NYSE: MRSH) reported Q2 CY2026 results topping the market’s revenue expectations, with sales up 6.2% year on year to $7.40 billion. Its non-GAAP profit of $2.96 per share was 2.3% above analysts’ consensus estimates.

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Company Overview

With roots dating back to 1871 and a presence in over 130 countries, Marsh (NYSE: MRSH) is a global professional services firm that helps organizations manage risk, strategy, and workforce challenges through its four specialized businesses.

Revenue Growth

Examining a company’s long-term performance can provide clues about its quality. Any business can experience short-term success, but top-performing ones enjoy sustained growth for years.

With $27.95 billion in revenue over the past 12 months, Marsh is a behemoth in the business services sector and benefits from economies of scale, giving it an edge in distribution. This also enables it to gain more leverage on its fixed costs than smaller competitors and the flexibility to offer lower prices.

As you can see below, Marsh grew its sales at a solid 8.6% compounded annual growth rate over the last five years. This is a good starting point for our analysis because it shows Marsh’s demand was higher than many business services companies.

We at StockStory place the most emphasis on long-term growth, but within business services, a half-decade historical view may miss recent innovations or disruptive industry trends. Marsh’s annualized revenue growth of 8.8% over the last two years aligns with its five-year trend, suggesting its demand was predictably strong.

We can better understand the company’s sales dynamics by analyzing its organic revenue, which strips out one-time events like acquisitions and currency fluctuations that don’t accurately reflect its fundamentals. Over the last two years, Marsh’s organic revenue averaged 4.6% year-on-year growth. Because this number is lower than its two-year revenue growth, we can see that some mixture of acquisitions and foreign exchange rates boosted its headline results.

This quarter, Marsh reported year-on-year revenue growth of 6.2%, and its $7.40 billion of revenue exceeded Wall Street’s estimates by 1.8%.

Looking ahead, sell-side analysts expect revenue to grow 4.2% over the next 12 months, a deceleration versus the last two years. This projection doesn’t excite us and indicates its products and services will see some demand headwinds. At least the company is tracking well in other measures of financial health.

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Adjusted Operating Margin

Adjusted operating margin is a key measure of profitability. Think of it as net income (the bottom line) excluding the impact of non-recurring expenses, taxes, and interest on debt - metrics less connected to business fundamentals.

Marsh has been a well-oiled machine over the last five years. It demonstrated elite profitability for a business services business, boasting an average adjusted operating margin of 26%.

Analyzing the trend in its profitability, Marsh’s adjusted operating margin rose by 2.8 percentage points over the last five years, as its sales growth gave it operating leverage.

This quarter, Marsh generated an adjusted operating margin profit margin of 26.9%, down 2.6 percentage points year on year. This contraction shows it was less efficient because its expenses grew faster than its revenue.

Earnings Per Share

Revenue trends explain a company’s historical growth, but the long-term change in earnings per share (EPS) points to the profitability of that growth — for example, a company could inflate its sales through excessive spending on advertising and promotions.

Marsh’s EPS grew at 12.2% compounded annual growth rate over the last five years, higher than its 8.6% annualized revenue growth. This tells us the company became more profitable on a per-share basis as it expanded.

We can take a deeper look into Marsh’s earnings quality to better understand the drivers of its performance. As we mentioned earlier, Marsh’s adjusted operating margin declined this quarter but expanded by 2.8 percentage points over the last five years. Its share count also shrank by 6%, and these factors together are positive signs for shareholders because improving profitability and share buybacks turbocharge EPS growth relative to revenue growth.

Like with revenue, we analyze EPS over a shorter period to see if we are missing a change in the business.

For Marsh, its two-year annual EPS growth of 9.3% was lower than its five-year trend. This wasn’t great, but at least the company was successful in other measures of financial health.

In Q2, Marsh reported adjusted EPS of $2.96, up from $2.72 in the same quarter last year. This print beat analysts’ estimates by 2.3%. Over the next 12 months, Wall Street expects Marsh’s full-year EPS to grow 6.6% from $10.22 to $10.90.

Key Takeaways from Marsh’s Q2 Results

It was good to see Marsh narrowly top analysts’ organic revenue expectations this quarter. We were also happy its revenue outperformed Wall Street’s estimates. Overall, this print had some key positives. The stock traded up 2% to $185.78 immediately following the results.

Sure, Marsh had a solid quarter, but if we look at the bigger picture, is this stock a buy? 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).