Jacobs, the Dallas-based leader and member of various Department of Energy nuclear contractors, had a good fiscal 2022, with revenue and profit each rising for the year, the company reported Monday.
In a call with investors shortly after the earnings report, Jacobs executives said they planned to ride a surge of interest in nuclear power, including in small modular reactors (SMR).
The engineering giant had net earnings of more than $715 million, or $4.98 a share, up from about $430 million, or $320 a share, according to the company’s latest 10-K filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Jacobs’ fiscal year ended Sept. 30. Annual revenue rose to just under $15 billion from about $14 billion in the prior fiscal year.
Jacobs is the lead partner in DOE Office of Environmental Management joint ventures cleaning up the Idaho National Laboratory, the Paducah Site in Kentucky and the West Valley Demonstration Project in New York state. The company is also a junior partner on the National Nuclear Security Administration’s prime contractor for the Nevada National Security Site, Mission Support and Test Services.
Annual operating profit at Critical Mission Solutions segment, which quarterbacks business development with the Department of Energy, fell about 5% to roughly $424.4 million even as segment operating revenue rose almost 3% year-over-year to just over $5.2 billion.
Segment revenue was “$5.23 billion, up $146.6 million, or 2.9%, from $5.09 billion for the prior year,” the company wrote in its 10-K. “Our increase in revenue was primarily attributable to recent acquisitions in addition to recent contract awards including the Department of Energy Nuclear remediation program, offset in part by several large U.S. Cyber and Intelligence contracts winding down in the U.S.”
The last of the restructuring charges related to the 2020 acquisition of the U.K.’s John Wood Group nuclear business tallied just over $5.5 million for Jacobs in 2022 fiscal year. Those charges peaked after the acquisition in fiscal 2020 at fewer than $25 million.
In Monday’s quarterly earnings call with investor analysts, Jacobs CEO Steve Demetriou said the Mission Critical Solutions segment should benefit from “surging” interest in nuclear energy as “a clean energy transition solution.”
This is especially when it comes to the evolving market for small modular reactors as an alternative to fossil fuels-generated electricity, said Demetriou and current president and chief operating officer Bob Pragada.
Pragada, who will succeed his boss as CEO on Jan. 24, hailed SMRs as emissions-free sources of electricity that is “always on,” unlike wind and solar power.
“In the U.K. [United Kingdom] we are delivering engineering and technical services to the Rolls Royce SMR program,” Pragada said. Jacobs is part of a Rolls Royce-led advanced SMR consortium that includes Atkins.
In addition to its nuclear government sector work in the United States, Jacobs also works with Tokyo Electric Power in Japan to help it with long-term decommissioning strategy planning, fuel debris retrieval and related work for the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant.
