Profits at Denver-based engineering services company CH2M, formerly CH2M Hill, rose slightly in the quarter ended March 25, due in part to the strength of a joint-venture nuclear consulting project in Canada, the company announced Monday.
The company earned roughly $24.6 million in the first quarter of 2016, up from $23.5 million a year ago, according to an earnings press release. Quarterly revenue rose to $1.34 billion from $1.26 billion in 2015.
Within the company’s Nuclear and Environment segment, quarterly profit was about $18.2 million, up from some $17.3 million in 2015. Segment revenue shot up 40 percent in the quarter to roughly $144.4 million, the company said.
CH2M’s nuclear cleanup work for the Energy Department — highlighted by a 10-year, $7.1 billion Hanford Site Central Plateau Remediation contract awarded in 2008 — merited a peripheral mention in the company’s latest 10-Q filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
The company said Nuclear and Environment profits in the first quarter benefited from a $1.6 million boost from “a domestic nuclear-remediation consulting project,” which the company did not identify. Also, during a Tuesday earning conference call, CEO Jacqueline Hinman said the company had been selected as a preferred subcontractor under the $1.4 billion Idaho Cleanup Project Core Contract, which the Energy Department awarded to CH2M rival Fluor in February. Ch2M had been pursuing that contract itself, but pulled out of the bidding in late 2014.
CH2M remains a major partner at DOE legacy nuclear-waste cleanup projects, through its contracts on nearly all of these are set to expire in the near future. The company’s mega-pact with DOE’s Richland Operations Office for Hanford Central Plateau cleanup runs out in 2018, and a remediation contract at the Oak Ridge Reservation in Tennessee expires in July, unless DOE triggers a four-year option. On the other hand, a cleanup deal for the smaller West Valley Demonstration Project in West Valley, N.Y., a former commercial fuel reprocessing site, continues into 2020.
