The second-quarter 2026 print is the clearest demonstration yet that Arthur J. Gallagher can grow like a tuck-in acquirer at the scale of AssuredPartners, the roughly $14 billion retirement of which landed on its books in August 2025. Revenue before reimbursements rose 24% year over year to $3,955 million for the quarter ended June 30, 2026, and the adjusted earnings per share of $2.84 climbed 23% from the $2.30 of the year-ago quarter. Management attributed the headline growth to a combination of acquisitions closed in the trailing twelve months and a combined Brokerage and Risk Management organic growth rate of 6%, with organic growth defined as the year-over-year increase in revenue from existing offices and clients, excluding the first twelve months of contribution from newly acquired operations and the effect of foreign exchange.
The load-bearing story of the quarter is that the engine that drives the organic number has not lost a step even as the company absorbed its largest-ever deal. Retail and commercial insurance pricing in the United States that the Council of Insurance Agents and Brokers measured as down 1.2% in the first quarter of 2026 - a soft rate environment where rising premiums can no longer be taken for granted - still produced 4% organic growth in base commissions and fees in the Brokerage segment and 12% organic fee growth in Risk Management. We read the persistence of mid-single-digit organic growth in a flat-to-declining rate market as evidence that new business generation and client retention, not market tailwinds, are doing the heavy lifting.
The single load-bearing risk is that the accounting noise tied to AssuredPartners continues to make reported earnings look far weaker than the underlying business. Reported diluted earnings per share of $1.25 lagged the $1.40 of the year-ago quarter because the deal generated $505 million of pretax integration, workforce, lease-termination, transaction-related and intangible-amortization charges in the quarter, about $130 million of which was tax-affected. The next data point that tests the thesis is the timing of the AssuredPartners integration run-rate normalization, because until those charges subside the gap between reported and adjusted earnings keeps the market leaning on management's adjusted figures, and the organic growth printed above still treats AssuredPartners as a one-year-old acquisition. What we are watching is whether the third-quarter 2026 acquisition-integration line begins to shrink as management has guided investors to expect, because the duration of that bleed is the difference between a stock trading on normalized power and a stock trading on a bridge that has not yet landed.