Primoris (NYSE:PRIM) Misses Q2 CY2026 Sales Expectations

Infrastructure construction company Primoris (NYSE:PRIM) fell short of the market’s revenue expectations in Q2 CY2026, with sales falling 10.7% year on year to $1.69 billion. Its non-GAAP profit of $0.27 per share was significantly above analysts’ consensus estimates.

Is now the time to buy Primoris? Find out by accessing our full research report, it’s free.

Company Overview

Listed on the NASDAQ in 2008, Primoris (NYSE:PRIM) builds, maintains, and upgrades infrastructure in the utility, energy, and civil construction industries.

Revenue Growth

Examining a company’s long-term performance can provide clues about its quality. Any business can put up a good quarter or two, but the best consistently grow over the long haul. Thankfully, Primoris’s 15.5% annualized revenue growth over the last five years was incredible. Its growth beat the average industrials company and shows its offerings resonate with customers, a helpful starting point for our analysis.

Long-term growth is the most important, but within industrials, a half-decade historical view may miss new industry trends or demand cycles. Primoris’s annualized revenue growth of 10% over the last two years is below its five-year trend, but we still think the results suggest healthy demand.

Primoris also reports its backlog, or the value of its outstanding orders that have not yet been executed or delivered. Primoris’s backlog reached $13.86 billion in the latest quarter and averaged 75.5% year-on-year growth over the last two years. Because this number is better than its revenue growth, we can see the company accumulated more orders than it could fulfill and deferred revenue to the future. This could imply elevated demand for Primoris’s products and services but raises concerns about capacity constraints.

This quarter, Primoris missed Wall Street’s estimates and reported a rather uninspiring 10.7% year-on-year revenue decline, generating $1.69 billion of revenue.

Looking ahead, sell-side analysts expect revenue to grow 8.1% over the next 12 months, a slight deceleration versus the last two years. Despite the slowdown, this projection is above average for the sector and suggests the market is forecasting some success for its newer products and services.

WHILE YOU’RE HERE: The Next Palantir? One satellite company captures images of every point on Earth. Every single day. The Pentagon wants it. Hedge funds are using it to beat earnings. You’ve probably never heard of it.

This is what the early days of Palantir looked like before it became a giant. Same playbook. Different technology. If you missed Palantir, you need to see this. Claim The Stock Ticker for Free HERE.

Operating Margin

Primoris was profitable over the last five years but held back by its large cost base. Its average operating margin of 4.4% was weak for an industrials business. This result isn’t too surprising given its low gross margin as a starting point.

Looking at the trend in its profitability, Primoris’s operating margin decreased by 1.8 percentage points over the last five years. This raises questions about the company’s expense base because its revenue growth should have given it leverage on its fixed costs, resulting in better economies of scale and profitability. Primoris’s performance was poor no matter how you look at it - it shows that costs were rising and it couldn’t pass them onto its customers.

This quarter, Primoris generated an operating margin profit margin of negative 1.6%, down 8.3 percentage points year on year. Since Primoris’s operating margin decreased more than its gross margin, we can assume it was less efficient because expenses such as marketing, R&D, and administrative overhead increased.

Earnings Per Share

We track the long-term change in earnings per share (EPS) for the same reason as long-term revenue growth. Compared to revenue, however, EPS highlights whether a company’s growth is profitable.

Primoris’s EPS grew at a decent 9.8% compounded annual growth rate over the last five years. However, this performance was lower than its 15.5% annualized revenue growth, telling us the company became less profitable on a per-share basis as it expanded.

We can take a deeper look into Primoris’s earnings quality to better understand the drivers of its performance. As we mentioned earlier, Primoris’s operating margin declined by 1.8 percentage points over the last five years. This was the most relevant factor (aside from the revenue impact) behind its lower earnings; interest expenses and taxes can also affect EPS but don’t tell us as much about a company’s fundamentals.

Like with revenue, we analyze EPS over a more recent period because it can provide insight into an emerging theme or development for the business.

For Primoris, its two-year annual EPS growth of 6.3% 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, Primoris reported adjusted EPS of $0.27, down from $1.68 in the same quarter last year. Despite falling year on year, this print easily cleared analysts’ estimates. Over the next 12 months, Wall Street expects Primoris’s full-year EPS to grow 7% from $3.82 to $4.09.

Key Takeaways from Primoris’s Q2 Results

It was good to see Primoris beat analysts’ EPS expectations this quarter. We were also excited its EBITDA outperformed Wall Street’s estimates by a wide margin. On the other hand, its revenue missed. Overall, we think this was a solid quarter with some key areas of upside. The market seemed to be hoping for more, and the stock traded down 1.7% to $90.25 immediately following the results.

Is Primoris an attractive investment opportunity at the current price? When making that decision, it’s important to consider its valuation, business qualities, as well as what has happened in the latest quarter. We cover that in our actionable full research report which you can read here (it’s free).