On September 10, IBEX Limited (NASDAQ:IBEX) held its fourth-quarter and full fiscal year 2026 earnings call, and the numbers backed up a message management has been building toward for months. The company posted record full-year revenue, adjusted EBITDA, and free cash flow, all while pitching itself as a business that has flipped the AI narrative in its favor rather than becoming its next casualty. For a sector that has spent the last two years bracing for automation to gut it, that is a notable claim to back with actual client wins.
Where Growth Meets AI Head On
Full-year revenue hit $644.1 million, up 15.4% organically, and fourth-quarter revenue reached $164.3 million, up 11.6% from a year earlier. That marked the sixth straight quarter of double-digit growth, a streak that suggests the momentum is not a one-off. HealthTech led the charge, climbing 38.5% to $114 million for the year and blowing past the $100 million target management had set for the segment, driven largely by demand from large insurance payers. Technology grew 27.4% in the quarter, while travel and logistics added 17.8%, helped by a new AI agent partnership with Philippine Airlines.
That Philippine Airlines deal is the clearest evidence that IBEX’s Sierra AI partnership, formalized in January and announced publicly in May, is more than a slide in an investor deck. During the proof of concept, the AI agent handled interactions in English, Tagalog, and Taglish, hit resolution rates above 20%, and scored a 4.7 out of 5.0 on customer satisfaction, on par with human agents. A separate deployment for BJ’s Wholesale pushed resolution rates above 40% and matched that same satisfaction score, beating the marks the client’s prior BPO vendor had put up with human agents alone. The company added 17 new trophy logo clients across the year, and its top five clients now make up 33% of revenue, down from 36%, a sign the business is not leaning on a shrinking handful of accounts to carry it.
Costs Are Creeping Up Behind The Scenes
Not every line moved in the right direction. Fourth quarter GAAP net income slipped to $8.7 million from $9.6 million a year earlier, and diluted EPS fell to $0.59 from $0.66. Management pointed to training costs tied to all those new client wins, a temporary hit from shifting work out of nearshore centers into offshore ones, and higher fuel prices hitting utility and transportation costs, particularly offshore. Adjusted EBITDA margin for the quarter slipped to 12.3% from 13.9%, the same set of pressures showing up in the profitability line rather than just net income.
Capital expenditures also jumped to $27.8 million for the year, or 4.3% of revenue, up from $18.4 million and 3.3% a year earlier, as the company built out offshore capacity and IT infrastructure. That is the price of chasing the AI-agent buildout and new logo pipeline, but it is a real cash outlay showing up right as free cash flow set a record. The telecommunications vertical, meanwhile, kept shrinking as a share of revenue, down to 9.4% from 10.9%, as legacy carrier volumes decline, a reminder that not every part of the book is growing.
What The Market Isn’t Pricing In
Hedge fund ownership fell from 23 funds to 18 heading into this print, which points to some institutional trimming even as the underlying numbers improved. Short interest sits at just 3.46% of float, which is low and suggests there is no organized bear case building against the stock right now. At the same time, shares trade at a forward P/E of just 11.09 as of September 11, a multiple that looks light for a company guiding to double-digit EBITDA growth. That gap between a cheap valuation and thinning fund ownership is the tension worth watching here.
The Verdict Is Still Being Written
IBEX closed fiscal 2026 with record revenue, EBITDA, and free cash flow, and it did it while proving its AI agent solutions can match or beat human-agent performance at real clients rather than just in a lab. Guidance for fiscal 2027 calls for revenue of $700 million to $715 million and adjusted EBITDA of $90 million to $94 million. For the bulls, the Sierra AI partnership scaling the way Philippine Airlines and BJ’s Wholesale did would confirm this is a durable growth vector rather than a couple of flattering pilots.
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