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.
Fluor has a 60% stake in a company called Nuclear Production One LLC, which was registered in Delaware around the time the NNSA released the final solicitation for the next NNSA Production Office contract to manage Pantex and Y-12. BWX Technologies, Lynchburg, Va., is also leading a bid for the work, as is Bechtel National, Reston, Va., lead partner on incumbent Consolidated Nuclear Security.
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.
In its earnings press release Friday morning, Fluor said it was raising its adjusted earnings guidance to a range of 85 cents a share to $1.00 a share, up from the prior range of 60 cents a share to 80 cents a share.
The adjusted guidance excludes, among other things: currency losses; expenses related to the company’s majority stake in the NuScale small modular reactor business and the cost of complying with a Securities and Exchange Commission investigation into some of the company’s financial filings from 2019.
