Earnings rose at AtkinsRéalis Group Montreal, Canada in the third quarter, which the engineering company attributed to “sustained project execution and overhead control”, Ian Edwards, AtkinsRéalis president and CEO, said during a Thursday earnings call.
Net earnings for the third quarter ended September 30 were (CAN) $146.7 million (US 104.6 million) or (CAN) $0.88 a share, up from (CAN) $103.7 million (US $74 million) or (CAN) $0.59 a share,
in the year-ago quarter. Quarterly revenue was (CAN) $2.8 billion (US $1.99 billion), up year-over-year from (CAN) $2.4 billion (US $1.71 billion).
Quarterly segment operating income for AtkinsRéalis’s nuclear sector was $596.5 million (US $425.7 million), up from $368.9 million (US $263.2 million) a year ago.
During AtkinsRéalis nuclear highlights section of the call, Edwards said that it had issued (CAN) $2 billion (US $1.42 billion) in purchase orders to over 548 companies in the CANDU supply chain over the past 18 months. Around 90% to Canadian suppliers, with (CAN) $1.88 billion (US $1.34 billion) directed to Ontario-based firms, Edwards added.
In August, Candu Energy, an AtkinsRéalis company, signed a renewed 10-year master services agreement with Bruce Power that is expected to be worth up to (CAN) $1 billion (US $713 million).
Edwards said AtkinsRéalis is a versatile original equipment manufacturer that can be a world leader in providing services to many sectors of the nuclear industry.
“Where we’ve built CANDU [reactors], in India, Korea, China, Romania [and] Argentina, we’ve left behind decades of relationships between Canada and those countries and decades of relationships between AtkinsRéalis and the utilities,” Edwards said during the earnings call.
“Which is world renowned…and our services business is a full services business that supports SMRs in the UK and US and here in Canada…we do the processing of waste and we’re even in fusion so all in all what I’m trying to explain here is that we have a really differentiated business here.”
When asked, company executives said the just-ended United States government shutdown was a temporary setback and it won’t hurt long-term growth opportunities in the U.S.
AtkinsRéalis is part of several contractor teams doing work across the U.S. Department of Energy nuclear weapons complex.
For example, it is the lead partner in Mission Conversion Services Alliance, a joint venture that holds the Operations and Site Mission Support contract for DOE’s Portsmouth Paducah Project Office. The contract, potentially worth more than $2.3 billion over the next decade, includes continued operation of the depleted uranium hexafluoride (DUF6) conversion plants at the Ohio and Kentucky sites.