CEO, Chad Holmes, Chief Corporate Development Officer, and Eric Nierenberg, Chief Financial Officer. Before we begin, just a reminder, we will have time for Q&A following prepared remarks. If you would like to ask a question, feel free to submit those at any time by clicking on the prompt at the bottom of your screen. There's no need to wait until the end for those. With that, we can turn the floor over to Charles River. Good morning, gentlemen. Thank you for joining us.
Thanks, Marc, good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining me on this overview of Charles River Associates. Okay, here we go. I've been at CRA a long time, it really has been an honor to be part of the organization for the past 37 years. One of the things that I have really valued during my tenure is the consistency of vision of the organization. Our founders envisioned a company that would bring the developing expertise of academia, particularly in quantitative methods and economics, to the business world to help leaders make more informed decisions. That same vision still resonates through our organization and through all of our practices today. We have two main lines of business that we apply this expertise in, one that could be described as legal and regulatory, and the other as more traditional management consulting.
The splits between the two are about 80% of the revenue comes from legal and regulatory, and the remaining 20% from our management consulting services. Look at that, I've messed up my order of my slides already. I apologize. Any good organization, any good consulting organization, starts and ends with the quality of its people, I really have been fortunate to have such a remarkable set of colleagues at CRA. We are a highly academic pedigreed sh op with about 70% of my senior colleagues all having advanced degrees and almost 40% of them having PhDs, the majority of them in the areas of economics, finance, accounting, but we also have a number of PhDs in what I would call the pure sciences of biology, chemistry, and also a few doctors spattered throughout.
With this high pedigreed staff, the other thing that we really strive to do is to create an environment for these talented people to do special things. We look at that, our success in our efforts, by the tenure of our people. Almost half of my senior colleagues have been at CRA more than five years, with almost 20% of the senior colleagues exceeding 10 years at CRA. That is saying something, particularly given the growth that we have enjoyed at CRA in the past 10 years, approaching 9%, 10% per annum per year. We are a highly selective organization. If we were a university, we would be the most selective university in the world. We accept less than 1% of our campus applicants.
The other statistic that I am really proud of, it is in the upper right-hand corner of this slide that reads, "Less than 5% voluntary turnover amongst top revenue generators over the past five years." Let me explain that a little bit, in that at the end of every quarter, particularly that we just completed our fourth quarter reporting, we just had our Q1 reporting, we present to the board our top 30 revenue generators, we go through various diagnostics as to the di stribution, what the practice is, the rates of pay, and so on. If I look at the union of these top 30 generators over the past five years, I have roughly 55, 60 very highly productive vice presidents.
When you look at the statistic of less than 5% voluntary turnover, that's not 5% per annum. That is 5% in total. Over the last five years, we've lost less than three people of our top revenue generators. The reason I highlight this is these people can go anywhere they want, but they're choosing to make CRA their professional home. We talked about the two lines of business a little earlier. Here are the practices that you'll hear us reference during our earnings call. Management consulting is made up of Life Sciences, Energy, and Marakon, again, comprising almost 20% of our aggregate revenue. All the other practices are making up legal and regulatory. Our Antitrust & Competition Economics practice is the largest practice at CRA, comprising roughly 45% of total CRA revenue.
If I look at the three largest practices at CRA, they would be comprised of the competition practice, our Forensic Services practice, and our Life Sciences practice, together making up in the ballpark of 70%-75% of total firm revenue. Who are we working for with all of these practices? You may not have heard of CRA, but I'm pretty sure you've heard of our clients. In just the past two years, we have worked for 88 of the Fortune 100 companies. The thing to highlight here is this is just the past two years. If I go back last year or five years ago, you would see the statistics to be 85, 89 of the Fortune 100 companies. What is striking about this statistic is that we are not an annuity-based consultancy. We are not a subscription-based consultancy.
Clients come to us for specific needs and specific projects. The fact that these top clients, who can go anywhere they want, are coming to CRA to help them on their most pressing needs. If 88 out of 100 is not gaudy enough, if you look at the law firms that retain us on our legal regulatory matters, that is 98 of the top 100 law firms in the past two years have retained CRA to assist them on legal and regulatory matters. We're quite proud of this, we know that these kind of statistics have to be earned, thus we continually strive to provide higher value-added services for our clients. This client depth has resulted in very strong financial results through a number of environments.
Spanning from all the different macroeconomic shocks that we may have endured, micro shocks that we may have endured. What you see is irrespective of whether you look at the quarter, the last year, the last five years, even if you want to go back the last 10 years, you'll see a consistent financial story in that we're able to grow 9%-10% a year. We're able to grow profits at a faster rate than that, which means we're expanding margins, and we're able to return substantive capital back to our shareholders. Oh, and by the way, we're doing this 100% funded by internal operations. No debt. We have a line of credit that we access for working capital needs. All of this, the growth and the return of capital to our shareholders, is through internal operations.
Our view is that nothing much should change going forward with it. We think there's a lot of runway for us to continue to add depth to our services and continue to provide these high value-added services to our client base. Our financial or investment objective is really quite simple. It's to maximize CRA's long-term value per share. We have an aim that we took on probably about a half dozen years ago, maybe a little longer, to return about half of our capital back to our shareholders through redistributions. We believe we can do that and still grow at the rates that we have observed historically. These days, I don't know how you have any conversation without discussing AI and the possibility of AI cannibalizing your entire business.
We included this slide a quarter or two to try to address CRA's position as it relates to AI. In short, we see AI as both a demand amplifier for CRA and a productivity enhancer, and believes it actually strengthens the positions of firms like CRA, who have deep expertise, strong governance, and an established credibility for our clients. Clients want to make sure their information is secure and we are using it responsibly. They also want to make sure, particularly on the legal regulatory side, that we are not going to put them into peril's way through the use of AI or the introduction of unwanted errors across it. As you all have probably heard, expertise becomes more valuable in an AI-dominated world, and top to bottom, we believe we are well positioned for that.
We talk about profitability, when you think about profitability and you think about CRA, there is one added complication, particularly as you look at our income statement and our cash flow statements, in that we have a very large non-cash expense that flows through our P&L that is related to our talent investments. A lot of our talent investments are made at the individual level or at the group higher level. Occasionally, we will do sort of the C-corp acquisitions, but most often it is recruiting, more of a rifled approach to adding depth to our portfolio. You see the revenue, you see EBITDA all reported in our income statement. You also, if you look at the financials, you'll see this non-cash amortization of forgivable loans.
This is the amortization of the purchase price that we pay to bring on incremental streams of revenue and profits. The SEC didn't really like that and said we can show you both numbers, we could even put them on the same page, we just can't add them for you. What this shows is if you want to look at our profitability as defined by adjusted EBITDA, and you add the two together, you'll notice that 2025 was a peak year of profitability for CRA, and in the first quarter of 2026, we matched that level of profitability. What you can see, the next handful of slides demonstrate that it's not smoke and mirrors that I'm talking about. This is real in terms of its impact on the cash flows.
Many organizations or many consultancies will talk about their ability to convert EBITDA into cash flows, many of them touting ratios that are south of one. CRA for the last year, for the last three, five, even if you go back the last 10, convert in excess of one. For every dollar of EBITDA, we convert that dollar of EBITDA to roughly $1.12 of cash flows. That has been consistent with the fundamentals of our model, and we also view that as to be a good benchmark going forward. Another way to look at the uses. I've summarized the uses of our capital over the last five years into three buckets: talent investments, CapEx, and the redistribution to our shareholders.
The important thing to note is that the uses of our capital from 2021 to 2025 equal the sources of our capital, because we have no debt. All of the outlays of capital that we have made are funded by the sources of that capital. I'm just going to take you through these three buckets in the last couple of minutes here. First, talent investments. We've deployed a little south of $230 million for talent investments that make up acquisition capital and some for retention capital. The majority of it, though, being on acquisition capital. What you can see is through 2025, that accounts for roughly $240 million of revenue.
That number, on a fully ramp basis of our acquisitions, would be north of $240 because we added almost 20 new vice presidents during 2025 who have yet to ramp and have yet to reach their expected revenue levels. Even with these partial contributions, our multiple of revenue to acquisition capital is less than one. CapEx is pretty minimal at CRA. Here you'll see that it's roughly $5 million-$6 million. One could expect in their modeling of CRA going forward that that will probably be pretty typical of our traditional CapEx going forward. With respect to the redistribution of capital, we've returned, again, a little south of $240 million over the past five years. Dominated by share repurchases make up roughly 75% of our redistributions, and the remaining dollars or $55 million is in dividend payments.
We initiated dividends probably about in 2016 at $0.14. We have quadrupled that in the time period since, growing it quite attractively. Right above you see that the $200 or the $184 million of share repurchases have been a pretty good investment. Even with the recent decline due to the AI weight on CRA share price, the average purchase price has been about $110 per share. Marc, I think I'm going to stop there, happy to dig into any of these areas with any of the Q&A.
Thank you very much. Once again, if you would like to ask a question, feel free to just click on the Q&A prompt at the bottom of the screen. Paul, why don't we start with some of the top-line strength that we've seen over the last few quarters and some of the drivers there. I know that we've, in the past, talked quite a bit about global M&A activity and the strength that we've seen there. Also, particularly over the last, I guess it was maybe it started maybe three or so quarters ago, the pickup in legal and regulatory on the filing side, maybe you could talk a little bit about what you're seeing there and the strength of that and maybe where some of that's coming.
Sure. As Marc has highlighted, our legal and regulatory area has been growing double digits now for the past half dozen years or so. Clearly, M&A activity over the past couple of years has contributed to our recent success. The fact is, as I talked about on that summary financial slide, the rates of growth that we have enjoyed have been pretty consistent irrespective of the time period one wants to pick. Although we are benefiting from M&A activity now, we have produced similar kind of results during periods of more weakened M&A activity. We have seen an uptick in legal case filings and legal court decisions over the past 12 to 24 months, I'm pretty excited that we seem to be getting our fair share of these new cases.
As we look into the beginning of 2026, even looking towards the end of 2025, I've seen new lead flow and new project originations at CRA at levels that I haven't seen before, at rates of growth that I have not seen before. The good news and exciting news is that the conversion rate of those leads to new project opportunities has been consistent with what we've enjoyed in the past, which is roughly two-thirds of these opportunities have translated into new projects. It is pretty well distributed across the portfolio, it is not just the Antitrust & Competition Economics practice, but all the others, the Forensic Services practice, the IP practice. Life Sciences has seen a nice resurgence of growth.
Our Energy practice has been enjoying some of the direct benefits of all the AI investments and data centers from the consulting services that they're providing to the tech companies and to the utilities themselves. Pretty well distributed, has me pretty confident, or cautiously optimistic, I should say, for the quarters ahead.
Excellent. That actually touches on sort of where I was going to go next, because even in the 1Q reporting, a lot of the growth, which has been broad-based for quite some time, but highlighted some of the areas, particularly with the Energy pickup that you've seen there, and Life Sciences. There was also strength internationally. Can you talk a little bit about what you're seeing there and maybe where some of that's coming from despite the sort of geopolitical challenges that are out there these days?
Yeah. That's a real good question, and I really wish I understood it more fully, other than to, say, provide a self-serving answer in that the quality of my colleagues across our international offices is really rather extraordinary, and they're taking share. I don't know anywhere else to put it. We've been seeing growth now for the last two, three quarters that are in excess of 20% for the international operations, and we're not talking about necessarily a small base. International operations make up 20%, 25% of total firm revenue. The two main practices that are driving that is Life Scie nces. The European portion has been also enjoying that resurgence, but our Antitrust & Competition Economics practice in Europe has been going like gangbusters now for well over a year.
Yes, we see the case filings, but the rate of growth has been really impressive, and all the credit goes to my colleagues.
Excellent. We do have a question that came in asking about the employees, and you're mentioning about how CRA, if it were a university, it would be the most competitive in the world. Maybe you could talk a little bit about the hiring funnel, if you will, and the extent to which it's changed or how it's changed over the last few years. I think also as far as the 1Q headcount was up a little bit, maybe you could talk a little bit about that as well.
Sure. We hire either at the university level, undergrad or graduate school levels. We hire in the lateral markets. Right now, if I look at the hiring at the university level, it is probably a bit more of a buyer's market right now. We are getting a wonderful set of applicants for which to choose from. It's really hard to make a mistake given the quality of the inflow. We've been getting to be very selective there, and we are trying to take advantage of that quality, particularly at the graduate level, by strengthening our middle management at the firm. With respect to the laterals, Chad oversees our corporate development and our inorganic growth at CRA. The funnel is quite rich, as you can see from the nearly 20 new VPs that we brought on in 2025.
That funnel is as robust today as it was previously, and we're doing our best to add the right kind of resources. Other things that I can say is that the purchase price of this incremental revenue is largely consistent with what we have paid in the past. We have not seen any kind of appreciation in the rate of pay that we have to pay for inorganic growth.
Excellent. I wonder if you could talk a little bit about the practice areas that maybe some investors may not be as familiar with, and maybe you can sort of talk about some of the things that you're seeing in areas that are sort of maybe a little bit under the radar, and areas that you might be optimistic about going forward.
Yeah. I know we spend a lot of time always talking about the Antitrust & Competition Economics practice. I will just quickly plug that that is the leading practice globally in the consulting space, and they continue to just do amazing things quarter after quarter. Continue to be quite bullish there. Very excited about Life Sciences, as you see some of the pharma companies start to see an improved financial situation. We are enjoying that, and also the complexities that are going on today with respect to the rollout of drugs and the pricing of drugs, all the disputes about favored nation status here, is increasing the need for the kinds of services that CRA provides.
I mentioned our Energy practice, who the majority of their clients are electric utilities, and for decades that industry has been rather slow in its movement. Over the last three to five years, it has been meteoric in terms of the rates of change. They are now needing to look at ways to increase their load to try to provide more energy given the surging needs with all the data centers. We are providing that kind of planning services to the utilities. We are helping them negotiate these new data center arrangements, and we're also working for many of the tech companies on helping them decide where to position the centers, the kinds of rate agreements they should strike with utilities, and the various power authorities.
That is an area we're quite bullish on. Lastly, the last one I would touch is the Forensic Services. You hear all about the concerns about cyber threats associated with AI. Well, that practice is seeing just a surge in their incident response work, because cyber threats are becoming easier, right? AI is adding a lot of efficiencies to the world, but it's also making it easier for hackers to put at risk clients' core information and operations. We are seeing a surge of opportunities in that space. Those are three, four practices that I think are worth highlighting for the investors on the call.
We're at the end of our time together today, which always goes by so quickly. I want to thank everybody for joining us, and, Paul, just see if you would like to add any closing remarks to our time together today.
No, I really appreciate it, and I might as well add a closing remark that is shown on this slide. A lot of times firms will use their capital to buy back shares, but the fact that CRA, we've been using our capital to buy back shares, and this says in the past 10 years, we reduced the share count by 25%. You go back the past dozen years, it's over 30%, and even over this shorter window of time. We're making substantive headway into reducing our share count, thus going to the investment thesis of maximizing long-term value per share. Thank you, Marc, and thank you for everyone for giving me your time this morning.
Thank you everyone for joining us. Everybody have a wonderful and productive remainder of the day.
Thank you. Thank you guys.
Thank you so much.