Charles River Associates, the prominent midsize management consultancy, ended its fiscal fourth quarter with fee income of $145 million.

That amounts to a 7.6% increase from the year-ago period, a solid achievement for CRA’s leadership team given the state of the markets in which it operates.

CRA has two main lines of business. One provides legal and regulatory compliance services, while the other is a traditional management consulting practice that assists corporate clients with a broad range of business strategy tasks.

Companies’ spending on outside counsel didn’t show meaningful year-over-year growth in the fourth quarter, according to research shared by CRA with investors. But the consultancy’s legal services practice nevertheless grew its revenue during the quarter by taking market share from competitors.

CRA has carried out client engagements for no fewer than 97 of the world’s top 100 law firms in the past two years. One of the consultancy’s main specialties is assisting firms that are in the process of acquiring a competitor with navigating antitrust laws.

CRA’s second major source of fee income is management consulting. This part of the consultancy’s business fared well too during the fourth quarter and it expects the deals to keep coming in the coming months.

CRA’s argument is as follows: companies are placing more emphasis on improving their profits and will invest some of those profits in management consulting services to support their efforts. The firm’s leadership team sees that spending translating into revenue growth opportunities.

CRA’s net income was $8.7 million in the fourth quarter, or 6% of revenues. That’s down from the 6.4% profit margin the firm achieved in the year-ago period.

But earnings per share, both GAAP and adjusted, increased 4.4% year-over-year to $1.19. On a constant currency basis, non-GAAP earnings per diluted share would have been $0.12 higher during th fourth quarter.

CRA’s fourth quarter fee income pushed its 2022 revenue total to $590.9 million, which is 4.4% better than what it reported to shareholders at the end of 2021. The company’s full-year GAAP net income, meanwhile, climbed 4.7% from one year to the next and reached $43.6 million.

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