Acacia Research Corporation (ACTG) Q2 2026 Earnings: Revenue $115M (+123.6%)
ACTG — Q2 2026 Financial Report Analysis
Q2 · Fiscal year 2026 · Published by Pham Hop
Acacia Research's Q2 2026 revenue more than doubled to $114.6M on $60.9M of one-off patent licenses, but royalties, legal fees and a $30.9M Viamet write-off left just $47,000 of net income, while Benchmark's oil business carried the operating results and Deflecto shrank.
Revenue
$115M
+123.6% YoY
Net income
$47K
Diluted EPS
$0.00
Operating margin
7.4%
This period vs a year ago
Same period last year
This period
Revenue▲+123.6%
≈$51M
$115M
Year-ago figures (≈) are worked out from the growth rate the company reported. Each row has its own scale.
Overview
Acacia Research is a holding company: it owns and runs a handful of unrelated businesses and keeps a large pile of cash to buy more. It reports four segments — Intellectual Property (patent licensing through Acacia Research Group), Energy (a 73.5% stake in Benchmark, an oil and gas producer in the Texas panhandle and western Oklahoma), Manufacturing (Deflecto, bought in October 2024, which makes HVAC air ducts, truck mud flaps and warning triangles, and office sign holders) and Industrial (Printronix, which makes heavy-duty line-matrix printers and the ribbons they use). Because the patent business books most of its revenue in occasional one-off settlements, the group's quarterly numbers swing hard.
The second quarter of 2026 was one of those swings. Total revenue more than doubled to $114.6 million from $51.2 million, almost entirely because the patent unit signed two paid-up licenses worth $60.6 million after booking essentially nothing a year earlier. But most of that windfall went straight out again as inventor royalties and contingency legal fees, and a $30.9 million write-off of an old life-sciences holding wiped out the rest, leaving net income attributable to Acacia at just $47,000 ($0.00 per diluted share), versus a $3.3 million loss a year ago.
At a glance
$60.9M of patent revenue, but only $9.4M of segment profit — inventor royalties ($18.4M) and contingent legal fees ($25.5M) took about 72 cents of every licensing dollar this quarter.
Benchmark earned $8.0M of segment operating income, up from $2.1M — its realized oil price rose 51% to $93.59 a barrel and oil output rose 11%, making it the steadiest earner in the group.
$30.9M impairment of MalinJ1 (Viamet) — Acacia's own share after minority holders was $19.9M before tax; excluding that and other items, the company's adjusted net income was $12.8M ($0.13 per share).
Results by segment
Segment (Q2, $M)
Revenue Q2 2026
Revenue Q2 2025
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Segment operating income Q2 2026
Segment operating income Q2 2025
Intellectual Property (patent licensing)
60.9
0.3
9.4
(7.6)
Energy (Benchmark, 73.5% owned)
20.5
15.3
8.0
2.1
Manufacturing (Deflecto)
27.1
29.0
(2.1)
(0.6)
Industrial (Printronix)
6.0
6.6
0.5
0.1
Parent company costs
—
—
(7.4)
(6.3)
Total
114.6
51.2
8.5
(12.4)
Headline figures
Metric
Q2 2026
Q2 2025
YoY Change
Total revenue
$114.6M
$51.2M
+123.6%
Operating income (loss)
$8.5M
($12.4M)
n/m
Operating margin
7.4%
(24.2%)
+31.6 pts
Net income (loss) attributable to Acacia
$0.05M
($3.3M)
n/m
Diluted EPS
$0.00
($0.03)
n/m
Adjusted net income (company's non-GAAP)
$12.8M
($5.9M)
n/m
New patent license agreements signed
2
0
+2
Benchmark realized oil price (per barrel)
$93.59
$61.90
+51%
Benchmark production (barrels of oil equivalent/day)
6,012
5,790
+4%
First-half revenue
$168.8M
$175.7M
−3.9%
First-half net income (loss) attributable to Acacia
($15.7M)
$21.0M
n/m
"Operating margin" is the share of revenue left after running the businesses, before investment gains or losses, interest and tax. "n/m" means not meaningful, because one of the two figures is a loss.
Patent licensing: a big quarter that mostly belongs to other people
The patent unit's revenue rose to $60.9 million from $329,000. The 10-Q attributes the $60.6 million increase in one-time "paid-up" license revenue — where a company pays once for the right to use the patents for their remaining life — to "an increase in the number of executed license agreements": two new agreements this quarter versus none a year ago.
The catch is the cost side. Acacia shares licensing proceeds with the inventors whose patents it licenses and pays its outside lawyers a percentage of what they win. Inventor royalties rose from $154,000 to $18.4 million and contingent legal fees from $18,000 to $25.5 million. Over the first half, contingent legal fees rose 430% while patent revenue fell 12%, which the filing puts down to "higher average contingent legal fee rates associated with the portfolios generating revenues during 2026." The segment's own overhead also jumped to $5.3 million from $1.4 million because of "legal fees related to a dispute with a service provider." What survives at the segment level is $9.4 million of operating income on $60.9 million of revenue.
Two other points in the filing matter for what comes next: Acacia acquired no new patent portfolios in the first half of 2026 (it bought one Wi-Fi 7 portfolio in 2025), and it has "no pending patent infringement case with scheduled trial dates in the next twelve months." Trial dates are often what pushes defendants to settle, so the pipeline for the next big licensing quarter is not visible from the filing.
Energy: higher oil prices did the work
Benchmark's revenue rose 34% to $20.5 million, which management called the business's strongest revenue quarter since the April 2024 Revolution acquisition. Oil sales rose 67% to $11.6 million on an 11% rise in oil volumes (to 1,359 barrels a day) and a realized price up 51%. Natural gas sales fell 12% because the gas price fell 16% to $2.32 per thousand cubic feet. Cost of production fell to $11.7 million from $12.3 million, which the 10-Q links (for the half-year) to lower depletion — the non-cash charge for using up reserves — after proved reserves were revised up at year-end, and lower well repair costs.
Benchmark hedges its output with commodity derivatives, which appear below operating income. In Q2 these produced a $3.3 million gain (versus $6.6 million a year earlier), but over the half-year they were a $7.4 million loss. So part of the oil-price windfall at the operating line is given back further down. Because Acacia owns 73.5%, $2.6 million of Benchmark's Q2 profit was allocated to minority owners.
Manufacturing and Industrial: shrinking sales, thinner margins at Deflecto
Deflecto's revenue fell 7% to $27.1 million, with declines in all three lines: air distribution −8% to $8.8 million, transportation safety −5% to $10.5 million and office products −6% to $7.9 million. Its cost of revenue still rose slightly, which the filing ties (for the half-year) to "higher material costs", so gross margin — revenue minus the direct cost of making the products, as a share of revenue — fell to 15.3% from 22.7%. The segment's operating loss widened to $2.1 million from $0.6 million. Management says the business "has seen tariff-specific demand headwinds" and is re-shoring some manufacturing to cut tariff costs.
Printronix's revenue fell 9% to $6.0 million on fewer printer units sold, but lower sales, marketing and admin costs lifted its operating income to $0.5 million from $0.1 million.
What the headline numbers hide
A large one-off write-off. The $30.9 million impairment relates to MalinJ1, a 63.9%-owned vehicle left over from Acacia's 2020 life-sciences portfolio purchase, whose only real asset is a 41% stake in Viamet. The filing says the investment "no longer had value" after the owner of Viamet's main asset decided to stop funding it. Minority owners absorbed $11.0 million, so the hit to Acacia's shareholders was $19.9 million before tax. It is non-cash and should not recur, but it is a real loss of value that was on the balance sheet at $30.9 million in December.
Gains from the stock portfolio helped. $9.4 million of realized and unrealized gains on Acacia's trading securities flowed through "other income" — useful, but not a repeatable operating result.
GAAP vs adjusted. Adjusted net income of $12.8 million ($0.13 per share) adds back the $19.9 million net impairment, $1.2 million of stock-based pay, $1.3 million of severance, $0.9 million of restructuring and $0.7 million of deal costs, and removes $4.9 million of unrealized securities gains and $3.8 million of unrealized hedge gains, net of $3.4 million of tax effects. Stripping out unrealized gains as well as losses is a fair treatment; stock-based pay and severance are recurring costs of running a business, so the adjusted figure is on the generous side.
The licensing cash hadn't arrived yet. Accounts receivable jumped to $86.7 million at June 30 from $26.2 million at year-end, and royalties and legal fees owed rose to $52.0 million from $6.8 million. The filing says this reflects the timing of licensing receipts and payments. The result: first-half operating cash flow was only $7.3 million, against $52.5 million a year earlier. Whether the Q2 revenue turns into cash for shareholders depends on collecting those receivables in Q3 — and roughly $45 million of it is already owed onward.
Rising overhead. Parent-company general and administrative costs rose 17% to $7.4 million in the quarter (27% in the half), driven by "parent company compensation and operating partner fees."
Balance sheet
Cash and cash equivalents were $307.6 million at June 30, and cash plus equity securities $326.8 million (the earnings release puts cash, securities and loans receivable at $334.6 million, or $3.43 per share). Debt sits at the subsidiaries — $59.5 million under Benchmark's revolving credit facility and $30.9 million under the Deflecto facility — and the release says there is no parent-company debt. Equity attributable to Acacia shareholders fell to $526.8 million from $543.5 million at year-end, mainly because of the first-half net loss.
Takeaway: The 124% revenue jump is a patent-settlement quarter, not a turnaround — after royalties, contingency legal fees and the $30.9 million Viamet write-off, Acacia's shareholders ended with $47,000 of profit. The part of the group that earns steadily, Benchmark, is riding a $93 oil price, while Deflecto, the biggest of the three non-patent businesses by revenue, is shrinking and losing money.
Outlook
Acacia gives no revenue or earnings guidance. The CEO said the company's focus is on "compounding long-term intrinsic value per share" and that its "acquisition pipeline remains active", with the $300+ million cash pile the main tool for that.
Our read: the next few quarters are likely to look much less flattering on revenue. There are no patent trials scheduled for the next 12 months and no new portfolios added this year, so another $60 million licensing quarter is not something the filing gives any basis to expect. Benchmark's results will track oil prices, with its hedges limiting both the upside and the downside. The things to watch in Q3 are (1) collection of the ~$87 million of receivables, which should lift operating cash flow, (2) whether Deflecto's gross margin stabilises or keeps sliding with weaker demand and higher materials costs, and (3) whether the cash is finally deployed into an acquisition, which is ultimately how the company says it intends to create value.
This is our first published analysis of Acacia Research, so there is no earlier outlook to check against.
Source: Acacia Research Corporation Form 10-Q for the quarter ended June 30, 2026 (filed August 6, 2026), with adjusted figures from the company's August 5, 2026 earnings release (Exhibit 99.1 to Form 8-K).