After the Energy Department picked a rival contractor for the major cleanup contract at the Hanford Site in Washington state, Jacobs is anxiously awaiting a decision on a 10-year award for management of the facility’s radioactive tank waste.
Jacobs subsidiary CH2M is the incumbent on the Hanford Central Plateau remediation project, but a Jacobs-led team failed to win the follow-on deal that could be worth $10 billion over a decade. The Energy Department in December instead selected a venture headed by AECOM’s government contracting unit – which as of this week is a separate company called Amentum.
Jacobs hopes to rebound by winning the potential 10-year contract for up to $15 billion for tank management and closure at Hanford. The business is currently held by joint venture led by the former AECOM Management Services group.
“We teamed up with a great partner in pursuing tanks,” Jacobs Chairman and CEO Steven Demetriou said during the company’s quarterly earnings call Tuesday with Wall Street analysts. Demetriou did not identify the partner.
The tank-waste award was thought to be imminent until a few weeks ago. The Jacobs CEO said selection has probably been delayed by protests against both the recently awarded Central Plateau and Hanford site support services contracts.
The latter went to a Leidos-led team. Jacobs was a partner in incumbent services prime Mission Support Alliance, but sold its stake to avoid conflict of interest ahead of its 2017 acquisition of CH2M and its Hanford business.
Sources said recently that having the two contracts protested to the Government Accountability Office is likely to make DOE particularly cautious before issuing the next award.
During the quarter ended Dec. 27, the first in Jacobs’ fiscal 2020, the company reaped revenue of $3.4 billion, up from $3.1 billion a year earlier.
Earnings per diluted share was $1.33 for the quarter, compared to $0.45 for the same period of fiscal 2019. That figure benefited from the $3.2 billion sale of Jacobs’ energy and chemicals unit to WorleyParsons in April 2019.
The Critical Mission Solutions division, formerly known as the Aerospace, Technology, and Nuclear, brought in $1.18 billion in revenue, up from $1.04 billion in the quarter ended Dec. 28, 2018. Operating profit for the division rose to $90 million in the latest quarter, from $72 million a year ago.
Jacobs expects by the end of March to close on its $304 million purchase of the nuclear energy services unit of the Scotland-based John Wood Group.
