Earnings fell at BWX Technologies, Lynchburg, Va., in the fourth quarter and 2022 as a whole, which the nuclear services company in a Thursday press release and conference call attributed partly to a tight labor market.
The company also rattled off a list of big Department of Energy contracts it is pursuing.
Net earnings for the fourth quarter were $43.0 million, or $ $0.47 a share, down from $117 million, or 1.26 a share, in the year-ago quarter. For the year net earnings were $238.6 million, or $2.60 per share down from $306.3 million or $3.24 a share in 2021.
Quarterly revenue was $624.2 million up year-over-year from $592 million. Annual revenue was $2.23 billion, up from $2.12 billion in 2021.
Quarterly segment operating income for the BWXT Government sector was roughly $103 million, up from about $91 million a year ago. Commercial operations operating income was $3.7 million for the quarter, compared to a loss of $14.6 million in the year-ago quarter.
Government operations operating income for the year was about $337 million, up from roughly $330 million in 2021. Commercial operating income for 2022 was $27 million, down from $35 million.
“We continue to face labor pressures and expect that to detract from our full potential in 2023 because our growth will likely be muted by attrition and the availability of qualified workers,” said BWXT CEO Rex Geveden said in the press release.
The company had hoped to have a net gain of 500 new employees in 2022, mostly in its government branch, Geveden said during the call. Instead the net worker gain was only 300 in a 5,000-person government workforce, he added. The 2023 goal is a net gain of 700 to keep up with government growth.
“Despite these macroeconomic headwinds, I am energized about the expected future trajectory of BWXT because we see increasing demand in every market in which we participate,” Geveden said in the release.
“We see near-term opportunity in space-based microreactors, [Department of Energy] services, commercial small modular reactors, nuclear medicine, and potential new demand related to the AUKUS [Australia, United Kingdom and United States] trilateral security agreement,” Geveden said.
AUKUS refers to an initiative to transfer nuclear submarine propulsion technology to Australia. The participants had given themselves until March to work out the particulars of the agreement.
During the slide presentation that accompanied Thursday evenings conference call, BWXT officials said in addition to starting the BWXT-led Savannah River Integrated Mission contract at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina last year, the company is part of contractor teams vying for multiple DOE weapons complex awards.
The targets include the Integrated Tank Disposition contract at the Hanford Site in Washington state, the environmental cleanup contract at the Portsmouth Site in Ohio, management and operations of the Pantex Plant in Texas and Operations and Site Missions Support of the Paducah Site in Kentucky and the Portsmouth Site in Ohio.
Capital expenditures on sectors such as Navy submarines and medical isotopes, after peaking at $311 million in 2021, dipped to $198 million in 2022.
Company officials said BWXT continues to work on Project Pele, the Department of Defense contract for a full-scale transportable microreactor prototype, expected to be delivered to DOE’s Idaho National Laboratory in 2024.
