Though it has posted a loss for the year so far overall, Fluor, Irving, Texas, ratcheted up its earnings guidance for continuing operations in 2021 after boosting the bottom line and booking a big contract extension from DOE, the company reported this week.
Also, in an earnings presentation Friday, Fluor — whose team at the Savannah River Site put a big management and operations extension on the books in the third quarter — said it now expects the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) to award the combined management and operations contract for the Pantex and Y-12 sites “in the next few months.” That deal, with options, could be worth almost $30 billion over 10 years, including five years of firm money.
Company-wide net income available to common stockholders for the 2021 third quarter was more than $30 million, or 22 cents a share, up almost 60% or 8 cents a share, from the 2020 third quarter. Quarterly revenue was about $3 billion, down some $350 million from a year ago. These figures include net losses from discontinued operations.
Excluding discontinued operations, third-quarter net income from continuing operations attributable to Fluor was nearly $47 million, or 26 cents a share: more than double the year-ago earnings figure, or 11 cents a share better, the company said.
Total new awards for the Management Services business that quarterbacks DOE business were $1.6 billion in the three months ended Sept. 30, Fluor said. That includes $789 million for a 12-month extension to the Savannah River Nuclear Solutions management and operations contract at the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site in Aiken, S.C.
Leidos, the lead team member on the Hanford Site’s support services contractor, is offering employees who don’t want to take a COVID-19 vaccination the option of moving over to the commercial side of the business, CEO Roger Krone said this week on a conference call.
Based on vaccination cards turned into the company, Krone said Leidos has a vaccination rate of more than 90%. That does not count all the employees at joint-venture companies at Department of Energy nuclear sites, which besides Hanford Mission Integration
As for the company’s third quarter earnings, Leidos posted a net income of about $208 million — up about 25% compared with $163 million a year ago — on nearly $3.5 billion in quarterly revenue, up some 7.5% from about $3.2 billion last year. On a per share basis, third-quarter earnings came in at $1.43 a share, up from $1.13 a share, the company reported.
Meanwhile at the mothership, Krone said Tuesday that it could take the company months to lay off employees who refuse to either apply for an exemption to President Joe Biden’s vaccine mandate for federal contractors. Leidos embarked on an ambitious persuasion campaign for its employees, offering those who took a vaccine a chance to win a year’s salary. Ten people who took vaccines won the prize, Krone said on the call with investors.
Exchange Monitor affiliate publication Defense Daily contributed to this report.
Fresh off a big win at the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site last week, BWX Technologies, Lynchburg, Va., reported Oct. 29 that profits dipped in the third quarter as revenue took a bit of a tumble.
BWXT Technologies (BWXT) posted net income of about $60 million, or 63 cents a share in the third quarter ended Sept. 30, down some 18% from more than $73 million, or $76 cents a share, in the year-ago quarter. Quarterly revenue fell 4% to just under $500 million from nearly $520 million a year ago. Most of the revenue that seeped out was from the commercial power business.
The company reported earnings days after DOE announced that a BWXT-led team had won a big liquid waste cleanup contract at the Savannah River Site. The Integrated Mission Completion Contract is potentially worth $21 billion over 15 years. BWXT is also in the hunt for big DOE contracts at the Hanford Site in Washington state, and at the National Nuclear Security Administration’s Pantex Plant in Texas and Y-12 National Security Complex in Tennessee.
Meanwhile, the company has also instituted a mandatory COVID-19 vaccination policy for all U.S. employees, chief executive officer Rex Geveden said Monday on an earnings call with investors.
On the earnings front, the company’s flagship nuclear operations group, which builds reactor components and fabricates uranium fuel for naval surface ships and submarines, posted third-quarter operating income of about $78 million, up about 15% year-over-year from roughly $68 million on revenue of more than $386.5 million: just about flat compared with the year-ago quarter.
At the Nuclear Services group, which quarterbacks business development at DOE defense-nuclear sites, third-quarter operating income rose about 25% to $10 million, thanks in part to higher fee income from management contracts. Segment revenue rose about 5% to just under $36 million from about $34 million the year before, the company wrote.
The jumbo Saltstone Disposal Unit at the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina has received the agency’s green light to start operations.
Amentum-led Savannah River Remediation, the liquid waste contractor at the site, has received Critical Decision-4 for Saltstone Disposal Unit (SDU 7), from the DOE Office of Environmental Management, the agency announced Thursday. That marks the final approval before SDU-7 can begin taking decontaminated salt solution that was treated at the Salt Waste Processing Facility (SWPF) and the Saltstone Production Facility (SPF). That will occur during fiscal 2022, which started Oct. 1, the agency said. Environmental Management officials have previously said operation could start in spring.
Like its twin, SDU 6 that went online in August 2017, SDU 7 has a 32-million-gallon capacity. The contractor also continues to build SDUs 8 and 9. After the SWPF removes radioactive isotopes such as cesium and strontium, the treated solution is sent to the SPF, where it is mixed with slag and fly ash to form a grout. The grout is pumped to the SDUs, where it hardens to form saltstone.
