Safety certification company UL Solutions (NYSE: ULS) reported Q4 CY2025 results topping the market’s revenue expectations, with sales up 6.8% year on year to $789 million. Its GAAP profit of $0.32 per share was 13.3% below analysts’ consensus estimates.
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UL Solutions (ULS) Q4 CY2025 Highlights:
- Revenue: $789 million vs analyst estimates of $781.6 million (6.8% year-on-year growth, 0.9% beat)
- EPS (GAAP): $0.32 vs analyst expectations of $0.37 (13.3% miss)
- Adjusted EBITDA: $217 million vs analyst estimates of $187.9 million (27.5% margin, 15.5% beat)
- Operating Margin: 15%, in line with the same quarter last year
- Free Cash Flow Margin: 10.9%, up from 9.7% in the same quarter last year
- Market Capitalization: $15.21 billion
Company Overview
Founded in 1894 as a response to the growing dangers of electricity in American homes and businesses, UL Solutions (NYSE: ULS) provides testing, inspection, and certification services that help companies ensure their products meet safety, security, and sustainability standards.
Revenue Growth
Reviewing a company’s long-term sales performance reveals insights into its quality. Any business can put up a good quarter or two, but the best consistently grow over the long haul.
With $3.05 billion in revenue over the past 12 months, UL Solutions is a mid-sized business services company, which sometimes brings disadvantages compared to larger competitors benefiting from better economies of scale. On the bright side, it can still flex high growth rates because it’s working from a smaller revenue base.
As you can see below, UL Solutions’s sales grew at a decent 5.1% compounded annual growth rate over the last four years. This shows its offerings generated slightly more demand than the average business services company, a useful starting point for our analysis.
We at StockStory place the most emphasis on long-term growth, but within business services, a stretched historical view may miss recent innovations or disruptive industry trends. UL Solutions’s annualized revenue growth of 6.8% over the last two years is above its four-year trend, suggesting some bright spots. 
This quarter, UL Solutions reported year-on-year revenue growth of 6.8%, and its $789 million of revenue exceeded Wall Street’s estimates by 0.9%.
Looking ahead, sell-side analysts expect revenue to grow 5.3% over the next 12 months, similar to its two-year rate. Still, this projection is above average for the sector and implies the market sees some success for its newer products and services.
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Operating Margin
UL Solutions has been an efficient company over the last five years. It was one of the more profitable businesses in the business services sector, boasting an average operating margin of 15.5%.
Analyzing the trend in its profitability, UL Solutions’s operating margin rose by 3.4 percentage points over the last five years, as its sales growth gave it operating leverage.
In Q4, UL Solutions generated an operating margin profit margin of 15%, in line with the same quarter last year. This indicates the company’s overall cost structure has been relatively stable.
Earnings Per Share
Revenue trends explain a company’s historical growth, but the long-term change in earnings per share (EPS) points to the profitability of that growth – for example, a company could inflate its sales through excessive spending on advertising and promotions.
UL Solutions’s full-year EPS grew at a weak 2.4% compounded annual growth rate over the last three years, worse than the broader business services sector.
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 UL Solutions, its two-year annual EPS growth of 10.6% was higher than its three-year trend. Accelerating earnings growth is almost always an encouraging data point.
In Q4, UL Solutions reported EPS of $0.32, down from $0.40 in the same quarter last year. This print missed analysts’ estimates. Over the next 12 months, Wall Street expects UL Solutions’s full-year EPS of $1.59 to grow 18.6%.
Key Takeaways from UL Solutions’s Q4 Results
It was good to see UL Solutions narrowly top analysts’ revenue expectations this quarter. On the other hand, its EPS missed. Overall, this was a weaker quarter. The stock traded up 1.1% to $72 immediately after reporting.
Is UL Solutions an attractive investment opportunity right now? The latest quarter does matter, but not nearly as much as longer-term fundamentals and valuation, when deciding if the stock is a buy. We cover that in our actionable full research report which you can read here (it’s free).
