In the nine months just ended, renationalization of the U.K. nuclear weapons complex cost Lockheed Martin’s Space segment more than three quarters of a billion dollars, the company reported Tuesday.
Bringing the British weapons program fully back into the government’s arms dropped sales in Lockheed Space by some $865 million over the past nine months, according to the company’s latest 10-Q filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
The Kingdom’s move was long expected, but the figure gives some idea of Lockheed’s share of the pain, which according to the 10-Q was more than offset by strength elsewhere in the Space segment so far in 2022.
Overall for the third quarter of 2022, Lockheed had a net income of $1.8 billion or $6.71 earnings a share, which beat financial analysts’ consensus estimate by 14 cents a share. A year ago, net income was $614 million, or $2.21 a share. Lockheed had a $1.5 billion non-recurring charge in the year-ago quarter, which was related to pension plans, the company said in the latest 10-Q.
Quarterly sales ticked up about 3% to some $16.6 billion from around $16 billion a year ago. Higher sales in Lockheed’s Space, Aeronautics, and Missile and Fire Control segments more than offset a decline at the Rotary and Mission Systems segment, where volumes were lower on the UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter and C6ISR programs. Mission and Fire Control is where Lockheed book keeps its work on Trident missiles, the carrier vehicle for both U.S. and U.K. nuclear-tipped ballistic-missile warheads.
The U.K. did away with the Jacobs-led contractor that managed the Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE) in June 2021. The British government gave the contractor a year’s notice that the decades-long privatization of the AWE would end.
Jacobs Engineering, Dallas, led AWE Ltd., which also included Britain’s Serco Group. The U.K. government made its Atomic Weapons Establishment into an arms-length body controlled by the country’s Ministry of Defence through the new AWE PLC. Former oil and gas executive Sir John Manzoni is the new entity’s first board chair. Alison Atkinson is the CEO and managing director.
Weapons Complex Morning Briefing affiliate publication Defense Daily contributed to this report.
