How have CoreCivic and GEO Group revenues and contract volumes changed quarter‑by‑quarter since the 2025 budget enactment?
Executive summary
CoreCivic and GEO Group both posted clear quarter-over-quarter revenue gains after the 2025 budget that funneled large new resources to ICE: Geo’s total revenue rose from $604.6 million to $636.2 million between Q1 and Q2 of 2025, and CoreCivic’s rose from $488.6 million to $538.2 million over that same interval [1] [2]. Those topline gains accelerated into the third quarter of 2025, with CoreCivic reporting roughly 18% year‑over‑year growth and GEO roughly 13% year‑over‑year, even as watchdog groups and reporters flagged limits in public disclosure about precise contract counts and future volume [3] [4].
1. Revenue trajectory after the 2025 budget: Q1→Q2 spike
Earnings reported in mid‑2025 show a pronounced revenue uptick tied to new ICE business: Geo’s revenue climbed from $604.6 million in Q1 to $636.2 million in Q2, while CoreCivic’s moved from $488.6 million to $538.2 million in the same span, a near‑10% year‑over‑year increase for CoreCivic in Q2 as management highlighted reopening and ramping of facilities [1] [2] [5].
2. Q3 momentum and year‑over‑year acceleration
Public reporting and earnings summaries indicate the momentum carried into Q3 of 2025, with CoreCivic reporting an 18% revenue increase year over year for Q3 and GEO reporting a roughly 13% Q3 gain versus the prior year, signaling that the budget and related ICE contracting produced multi‑quarter revenue expansion for both firms [3] [4].
3. Contract volumes: a partial picture, but clear uptick
Contract volume data are less granular in public reporting than revenue numbers, but investigative and watchdog reporting documents nine new or expanded contracts awarded to the two companies by mid‑2025 — a combined tally implemented even before the budget’s final passage — and both firms told investors they expected to surpass 2024 total revenues based on those ICE deals [6] [5].
4. The $45 billion budget and capacity targets that undergirded growth
The fiscal architecture driving these changes is explicit in reporting: a budget framework that allocates up to $45 billion for detention‑related operations and ICE capacity increases under the administration’s priorities has been cited as the source of the windfall and of plans to expand bed capacity to roughly 37,649 by the end of 2025 in reporting that tied facility reopening plans to the new funding [6] [1].
5. Conflicting narratives and disclosure gaps
Companies emphasize “unprecedented growth opportunities” and tell shareholders they can reopen facilities and meet demand quickly, but watchdogs and journalists note opaque contract details, political donations, revolving‑door lobbying, and limited public disclosure about exact bed counts and contract durations — making a precise quarter‑by‑quarter tally of contract volumes impossible to reconstruct from available public sources alone [6] [7] [8].
6. What the quarter‑by‑quarter pattern implies going forward
The publicly reported pattern since the budget’s enactment is straightforward: revenue rose sharply from Q1 to Q2 of 2025 and continued to accelerate into Q3, driven by a set of new and expanded ICE contracts and facility reopenings; however, the data available in reporting do not provide a complete, auditable quarter‑by‑quarter ledger of every new contract or bed‑count change, and critics argue that political donations and policy alignment shaped the flow of business as much as market dynamics did [1] [5] [6] [3].