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Korn Ferry

KFY on NYSE. Korn Ferry sells consulting services about hiring, leadership, and pay to organizations. Market value $3.9bn.

Watch this stockFree. We tell you when something changes.

Price checks use the past 12 months to July 2026. Quality checks use five annual reports, the latest for the year to April 2026.

Should I look at this?

Worth a closer look

Why it could be worth it

What to watch out for

Nothing stood out in the numbers we check.

Read what could go wrong

This is not advice. Check the numbers below.

Compare with another stock

Cash yield
past 12 months to July 2026
8.1%high

For every $100 of what the whole company costs, it produced $8.15 of spare cash in the past 12 months. A savings account pays about $4.

Price to profit
past 12 months to July 2026
9.1×cheap

You pay 9.1 years of operating profit for the business. The average large US company costs around 18.

Return on capital
five annual reports to April 2026
21.7%five-year median

Each dollar kept in the business earns 22 cents a year. Above 10 is good.

Quality score: 96 of 100. Price score: 100 of 100. Our list needs 70 on quality and 60 on price.

$71.71 a share, 22% above its 1-year low

Over the past year the price has ranged from $58.95 to $87.51.

Dividend: 2.7% a year

Paid every year for at least 5 years

Payouts have jumped around in recent years, so this may not repeat.

Prices from Monday’s close (5 October).

Five years of cash, in billions

0.5
0.3
0.2
0.3
0.3
0.3
2022202320242025202612 monthsto Jul '26
Revenue
$2.6bn$2.9bn$2.8bn$2.8bn$2.9bn
Operating margin
17.8%11.0%7.6%12.5%12.8%
Debt to equity
0.260.240.230.210.20
Shares outstanding
0.05bn0.05bn0.05bn0.05bn0.05bn

Health checks

  • Free cash flow positive5 of 5 years
  • Accounting looks honest (Beneish)Not enough data
  • Financial strength (Piotroski)7 of 8 checks we could run
  • Profit backed by cash (accruals)Yes
  • Debt0.20× equity
  • Revenue growth, five yearsStrong, 10.1% a year
  • Buying back its own sharesRoughly flat

The quarter to July 2026

How the business did, compared with the same quarter a year earlier.

  • Sales: $765 million last quarter, up 7% on a year ago.
  • Profit: $69 million, up 4% on a year ago.
  • It keeps 13 cents of each $1 of sales as operating profit, about the same as a year earlier.
  • Spare cash over the past 12 months: $319 million, up from $280 million.
  • 2% fewer shares than a year ago. Each share owns a bit more of the company.
  • It has $397 million more cash than debt, up from $284 million a year ago.
  • Sales grew on a year ago in each of the last 4 quarters.
Sales by quarter
Sales by quarter
Quarter toAmount
October 2024$682m
January 2025$677m
April 2025$720m
July 2025$716m
October 2025$730m
January 2026$725m
April 2026$768m
July 2026$765m
Profit by quarter
Profit by quarter
Quarter toAmount
October 2024$61m
January 2025$58m
April 2025$64m
July 2025$67m
October 2025$72m
January 2026$65m
April 2026$73m
July 2026$69m

From the company's quarterly reports to the SEC.

Dates

Next results (estimated)
n/a
Last annual report (10-K)
26 June 2026
Next quarterly (estimated, 10-Q)
9 December 2026

Who owns it

8 long-term investors we follow own it, unchanged from 8 last quarter. 362 funds in all.

Jun '25
Dec '25
Jun '26

Sold out this quarter

Largest holders overall

From 13F filings for the quarter ended 30 June 2026.

Big holders and activists

5 investors own more than 5%.

From Schedule 13D and 13G filings: anyone owning more than 5% must file one.

What insiders did

No insider bought shares on the open market in the last 12 months. 6 sold $7m.

  • ROZEK ROBERT P
    EVP, CFO & CCO
    Sold
    Date
    23 September 2026
    Shares
    3,709
    Price
    $75.03
    Value
    $278,283
  • MARTINEZ ANGEL R
    Director
    Sold
    Date
    17 July 2026
    Shares
    3,740
    Price
    $79.00
    Value
    $295,460
  • Uren Lesley
    CEO of Consulting
    Sold
    Date
    16 July 2026
    Shares
    2,000
    Price
    $78.75
    Value
    $157,500
  • Distefano Michael
    See Remarks
    Sold
    Date
    15 July 2026
    Shares
    3,370
    Price
    $74.55
    Value
    $251,234
  • Robinson Lori Jean
    Director
    Sold
    Date
    14 October 2025
    Shares
    2,000
    Price
    $69.44
    Value
    $138,880
  • BURNISON GARY D
    CEO, Director
    Sold
    Date
    9 October 2025
    Shares
    16,864
    Price
    $70.01
    Value
    $1m
  • BURNISON GARY D
    CEO, Director
    Sold
    Date
    8 October 2025
    Shares
    31,784
    Price
    $70.59
    Value
    $2m
  • BURNISON GARY D
    CEO, Director
    Sold
    Date
    7 October 2025
    Shares
    28,352
    Price
    $70.61
    Value
    $2m

From Form 4 filings: insiders must report trades in their own company's shares within two days.

Warning signs in its filings

Problems the company itself reported to the SEC, in its own words.

None of the warning signs we check for were found.

We look for five warning signs: doubt it can keep going, weak checks on its own accounts, a notice that its past accounts can't be relied on, a change of auditor, and one customer bringing in a big share of sales. We don't check lawsuits, investigations or debt yet.

We checked the auditor's report, internal controls, restatement notices, auditor changes and big customers in the 10-K filed 26 Jun 2026, plus the 10-Q filed 9 Sep 2026 and 10 later 8-Ks.

A 10-K is the yearly report every US company files with the SEC. An 8-K is a short notice of a big event.

What could go wrong

Cheap for a reason is the question the numbers cannot answer.

Whether the price already reflects the risks is what the deep dive is for.

What changed in the risks this year

Companies must list what could hurt them each year. These are the parts that changed since last year’s report.

  • Our development and use of AI, as well as the adoption of AI by our clients, candidates, and competitors, present competitive, operational, financial, cybersecurity, legal, regulatory, and reputational risks that could adversely affect our business, financial condition, and results of operations.

    Could happen
    • Data - Our use of AI depends on the integrity, quality and availability of large data sets and systems; corrupted, incomplete, biased or unreliable data, model drift, or outages could produce flawed or biased output or disrupt our services.

  • Our development and use of AI, as well as the adoption of AI by our clients, candidates, and competitors, present competitive, operational, financial, cybersecurity, legal, regulatory, and reputational risks that could adversely affect our business, financial condition, and results of operations.

    Could happen
    • Cost and pricing models - The cost of the AI tools and infrastructure on which we rely is uncertain and may increase materially as providers rapidly change their pricing models, often with limited notice. We may be unable to control these costs or pass them through to clients, compressing our margins, and because a limited number of providers hold significant pricing power, switching or developing alternatives could require significant investment or be unavailable on commercially reasonable terms — any of which could adversely affect our results of operations.
    Read more

  • Our development and use of AI, as well as the adoption of AI by our clients, candidates, and competitors, present competitive, operational, financial, cybersecurity, legal, regulatory, and reputational risks that could adversely affect our business, financial condition, and results of operations.

    Could happen
    We use, and intend to further develop and utilize, AI, including generative AI, across our businesses, digital products and operations. Key risks relating to our use of AI and the expansion of AI’s capabilities in our industry include, but are not limited to:

  • Our development and use of AI, as well as the adoption of AI by our clients, candidates, and competitors, present competitive, operational, financial, cybersecurity, legal, regulatory, and reputational risks that could adversely affect our business, financial condition, and results of operations.

    Could happen
    • Talent-model transformation - AI is reshaping the nature of work and the talent markets central to our business, and may require us to redesign our offerings and reskill or restructure our own workforce.

  • Our development and use of AI, as well as the adoption of AI by our clients, candidates, and competitors, present competitive, operational, financial, cybersecurity, legal, regulatory, and reputational risks that could adversely affect our business, financial condition, and results of operations.

    Could happen
    • Reliance on third party providers - We depend on a limited number of third party providers to access, use and develop AI in our business. We do not control these providers, and we are subject to risk if they fail to comply with applicable law, suffer a cybersecurity breach or service outage, degrade, deprecate, or discontinue models or services on which we rely, or change their pricing, terms, or availability (as described above).
    Read more

Read it in the annual report

The deep dive

Everything above is arithmetic on public filings. The deep dive reads the last ten years of annual reports, the proxy statements, and the earnings calls, then argues the case the way Buffett, Klarman, and Hohn would, and checks every claim against the source.

  • What the business is worth, as a range, and the margin of safety at today’s price
  • Prices to start buying, buy, and buy hard
  • The three things that would make this a mistake
  • Every number footnoted to the filing it came from
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What a finished deep dive looks like

Not advice. Numbers on this page come from SEC filings and are updated each night; prices are updated again after the US market closes. The five-year figures are rounded.