Northrop Grumman is scheduled to discuss its second-quarter 2017 earnings during a webcast Wednesday, just weeks after dropping a protest over the recent contract award for management of the Energy Department’s Nevada National Security Site.
The defense contractor in April reported $640 million in first-quarter net income and earnings per share of $3.63, up year over year from $556 million and $3.03. Management attributed the boost to factors including a lower tax rate and increased operating income.
Northrop Grumman is one of the partners in National Security Technologies LLC, which somewhat unexpectedly for now remains the management and operations contractor at the Nevada facility. The Energy Department’s semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration in August awarded the contract to another team, only to quickly rescind the award upon learning that company had been transferred from Lockheed Martin Corp. to Leidos. In May, the nuclear agency again awarded the contract – worth up to $5 billion over a decade — this time to a partnership of Honeywell, Jacobs, and Stoller Newport News Nuclear.
That award quickly drew protests with the Government Accountability Office by two other bidders – one of which was Nuclear Security & Technology LLC, a slightly reworked version of the current site manager featuring Northrop Grumman, AECOM and CH2M. However, both protests were withdrawn by mid-July – for reasons not made public – and the transition to the new contractor is due to resume on Aug. 1.
Northrop fared better elsewhere in the DOE complex during the second quarter as a support contractor for National Technology and Engineering Solutions of Sandia, a wholly owned Honeywell subsidiary that on May 1 assumed management of the Sandia National Laboratories. The M&O contract is worth $2.6 billion annually for up to 10 years.
