Brown & Brown's Q2 2026 revenue rose 30.4% to $1.68B on the Accession acquisition, but organic revenue fell 0.7% as catastrophe-property rates dropped; net income rose 24.7% while diluted EPS rose 7.7% to $0.84.
Revenue
$1.7B
+30.4% YoY
Net income
$288M
+24.7% YoY
Diluted EPS
$0.84
+7.7% YoY
Operating margin
22.9%
Overview
Brown & Brown, an insurance broker (it sells insurance on behalf of insurers and earns commissions and fees, rather than taking on the insurance risk itself), grew second-quarter 2026 revenue 30.4% to $1,676 million. Almost all of that growth was bought, not earned from existing clients: $393 million of the $365 million rise in core commissions and fees came from businesses acquired in the past year, mainly Accession Risk Management, which closed on August 1, 2025. The business Brown & Brown already owned a year ago shrank slightly. Organic revenue (revenue from operations owned in both years, after removing acquisitions, sales of businesses and currency effects) fell 0.7%, down from +3.6% in Q2 2025.
Net income attributable to the company rose 24.7% to $288 million. But the company issued new shares in June 2025 to help pay for Accession, so diluted EPS (profit per share, counting all shares that could be issued) rose only 7.7% to $0.84. About $0.09 of that EPS came from a one-off accounting gain: the company lowered the future "earn-out" payments it expects to owe sellers of businesses it bought.
Key figures
Metric
Q2 2026
Q2 2025
YoY Change
Total revenue
$1,676M
$1,285M
+30.4%
Commissions and fees
$1,654M
$1,249M
+32.4%
Contingent commissions
$85M
$45M
+88.9%
Organic revenue growth
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Diluted EPS – Adjusted (non-GAAP, per earnings release)
$1.07
$1.03
+3.9%
Brown & Brown doesn't report an "operating income" line. The GAAP measure closest to an operating margin is the pre-tax margin, which is income before taxes as a share of revenue. EBITDAC Margin – Adjusted is the company's preferred profitability measure. It is earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, amortization and earn-out changes, and it also excludes Accession deal and integration costs and some other items, all divided by revenue.
Year to date (six months): revenue $3,577 million (+33.0%), net income $714 million (+26.8%), organic revenue -0.3%, organic revenue with contingents +1.6%, EBITDAC Margin – Adjusted 37.2% (vs 37.4%). Diluted EPS for the six months was $1.90, down 1.6% from $1.93, while basic EPS rose to $2.14 from $1.94. The gap exists because accounting rules (ASC 260) require diluted EPS to exclude a $69 million year-to-date non-cash gain on the value of escrowed Accession shares and to count those escrowed shares. The earnings release (8-K Exhibit 99.1) reports adjusted diluted EPS of $2.46 for the half, up 6.0%.
Where the growth came from, and where it didn't
The 10-Q breaks the $365 million (30.3%) increase in core commissions and fees (commissions excluding contingents) into these parts:
Driver
Q2 2026 impact
Acquisitions with no prior-year revenue
+$393M
Currency translation
+$2M
Businesses sold
-$4M
"Litigation-Related Impact"
-$18M
Net new and renewal business (organic)
-$8M
The "Litigation-Related Impact" is revenue lost from specific client accounts, plus prior-year new business written by former employees, tied to a competitor that Brown & Brown is suing in several jurisdictions. It fell entirely on Retail: $18 million in Q2 and $28 million year to date. The company takes it out of the prior-year base, so the -0.7% organic figure already excludes those losses. Organic growth doesn't capture the full client attrition.
Segments: Retail up, Specialty Distribution down
After the Accession deal, the company merged its former Programs and Wholesale Brokerage segments into one Specialty Distribution segment. It now reports two segments.
Segment (Q2)
Commissions & fees
Total growth
Organic growth
Organic incl. contingents
EBITDAC Margin – Adj. (vs Q2 2025)
Retail
$940M
+35.4%
+1.5%
+2.5%
29.8% (27.5%)
Specialty Distribution
$714M
+28.6%
-3.5%
-1.6%
42.7% (46.7%)
Retail (selling insurance directly to businesses and individuals) grew organically by $10 million. Management says renewal growth was "moderated by slowing rate increases, rate decreases for certain lines of coverage, and a change to the revenue model for our specialty pharmacy consulting business." The margin rose 2.3 points because of higher contingents, spreading fixed costs over more revenue, and lower pay costs after the employee departures tied to the litigation.
Specialty Distribution (programs business Arrowhead, wholesale broker Bridge Specialty Group, and Arrowhead Specialty) lost $18 million of organic revenue. The filing blames declining rates on catastrophe ("CAT") property insurance, which outweighed new business and exposure growth. Brokers are paid a percentage of the premium, so when insurers charge less for storm and hurricane cover, the broker's commission shrinks too. Year to date the segment's organic revenue is down 2.7%. Its margin fell 4.0 points, which the company attributes to the organic decline and "investments to increase our capabilities in Europe," partly offset by higher contingents.
Contingent commissions carried the quarter
Contingent commissions are bonuses insurers pay brokers, mostly when the business the broker placed turned out profitable (low claims). They rose 88.9% to $85 million, from $45 million. Of the $85 million, $61 million was "organic," meaning it came from businesses owned in both years. The 10-Q credits improved underwriting results for carrier partners, premium growth, qualifying for contingents it missed last year, acquisitions, and an "enhanced carrier engagement model." Including organic contingents, the company grew 0.7% instead of shrinking 0.7%. Contingents depend on insurers' loss results, and over the past three years they have averaged about 4.4% of commissions and fees. They are a less dependable source of growth than new clients.
Takeaway: Brown & Brown's 30% revenue growth is almost all Accession. The existing business shrank 0.7% organically, with Specialty Distribution down 3.5% on falling catastrophe-property rates. Profit growth was helped by an 89% jump in contingent commissions and a $40 million earn-out credit. Those supports are less repeatable than organic growth, and the 7.7% EPS gain trails the 24.7% net-income gain because of the shares issued to fund the deal.
The cost of the Accession deal
More shares: diluted weighted-average shares rose to 334 million from 293 million (+14%). This reflects the June 2025 follow-on stock offering and about 4.4 million shares placed in escrow at closing. Those escrowed shares guarantee the sellers' indemnity obligations for businesses Accession is winding down.
More debt, higher interest: interest expense nearly doubled to $100 million from $51 million (+96.1%), which the 10-Q attributes to the Q2 2025 debt issuance used to fund the deal. Total debt was $7,759 million at June 30, 2026, up $146 million since year-end, mainly from a $225 million revolving-credit draw in Q1 used for share buybacks. $275 million was outstanding on the revolver at quarter end.
Amortization (the non-cash write-down of acquired intangibles such as customer relationships) more than doubled to $110 million from $50 million.
Integration costs: $31 million of acquisition/integration costs in the quarter, excluded from the adjusted figures.
Earn-out credit: the company cut its estimate of future earn-out payments by $44 million, "primarily related to revised estimates for companies acquired in the Transaction." After interest accretion, that produced a net $40 million pre-tax credit. Earn-outs are sized on the acquired businesses' projected earnings, so a lower estimate means some of those businesses are now expected to earn less than first projected. It raised GAAP profit this quarter.
Comparison distortion: Q2 2025 included about $13 million of interest income on deal cash raised but not yet spent. That is why investment and other income fell to $22 million from $36 million.
Capital return
The company repurchased 4.28 million shares for $250 million in Q2, at an average $58.40, after a $250 million accelerated buyback in Q1 (3.57 million shares). About $900 million of buyback authorization remained at June 30. Cash fell to $918 million from $1,079 million at year-end, which the company attributes mainly to buybacks and deferred acquisition payments.
Outlook
Neither the 10-Q nor the earnings release gives numeric guidance. CEO J. Powell Brown said in the release that the company has "great momentum as we head into the back half of the year." The numbers are mixed. Retail's Q2 organic growth of 1.5% beat its half-year rate of 1.2%, so the segment improved from Q1 to Q2. The margin trend also favors Retail: +2.3 points in the quarter. Specialty Distribution's organic decline deepened to -3.5% in Q2 from -2.7% for the half, so Q1 was better than Q2. While catastrophe-property rates keep falling, that segment will likely weigh on organic growth. Organic revenue leaves out an acquired business only for its first twelve months, so Accession starts counting as organic from August 2026. From that point the headline 30%-plus revenue growth should shrink sharply toward the organic rate, and underlying growth will be much easier to see.