via Investors.com
Lockheed Martin (LMT) nearly halved its forecast on the sequester's impact to full-year revenue and reported third-quarter results above analysts' estimates despite continued unease in Washington over the budget.Read the whole story here.
Earnings rose 16.3% in Q3 to $2.57 per share. Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters were expecting $2.26 per share. Revenue dipped 4.4% to $11.34 billion, but still came in above estimates for $11.15 billion.
Something simple is catching my eye with this story.
The US Marine Corps has cancelled the Marine Personnel Carrier, the Commandant looks like a liar and a fool with his vacillation on the Amphibious Combat Vehicle (besides saying that he'll die in a ditch for an airplane!...not his wife, not another Marine...but a fucking airplane) and the US Army is under such budgetary pressure that they're going to kill or delay the Ground Combat Vehicle.
I won't even get into the personnel reductions that are coming up. A Marine Corps of 150,000 ---down from 202,000. An Army that is a shriveled up image of its former self.
And yet .
Despite all the pain that all the services are having to absorb...Lockheed Martin is seeing double digit earnings and they're beating Analysts estimates for price per share.
Tell me again that the F-35 isn't an albatross around the neck of the Marine Corps in particular and the entire DoD in general.
remember that Lockheed isn't just the F-35. It's Missiles systems and radars always do quite well in earnings reports
ReplyDeleteThey are not enjoying “double-digit” earnings. What they did was beat the quarterly estimate by 16%. In other words, they were estimated to have $2.26 per share and they ended up with $2.57 per share.
ReplyDeleteFurther reading of the article reveals that in fact, the aeronautics division did worse than last year.
“Aeronautics unit sales fell 2% to $3.62 billion on fewer aircraft deliveries of its F-16 and F-22 jets. But F-35 sales are growing as Pentagon orders ramp up, and Lockheed expects sales to climb 15% in 2014.”
It was the Missile and Fire Control division that brought in the bacon this quarter.
“Revenue from its information systems unit fell 10%. But sales in its missiles and fire control unit jumped 18%, helped by demand for missile defense systems.”
Yet there is money to fly Congress to Florida.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.washingtontimes.com/blog/inside-politics/2013/oct/22/congress-close-florida-funeral-rep-cw-bill-young/
I read an article recently which included an interview with USMC Colonel (ret.) Art Tomassetti who might correctly be called the father of the F-35B.
ReplyDelete“Turbo” Tomassetti began his career with the F-35 in 1998 when he joined the Joint Strike Fighter Test Force, where he became the lead government test pilot for the X-35, the Lockheed Martin demonstrator for the Concept Development phase of the program. After Lockheed Martin won the downselect and the X-35 became the F-35, Tomassetti followed the program to Fort Worth, Texas, where he represented the US Marines during the System Development and Demonstration phase of the program.
Turbo's the go-to guy on the B, so I was interested in his answer to the question: "What impact will the F-35 have on US Marine Corps operations?"
I thought I'd read about how great the B will be in its CAS role, vital to the Corps. But this was Turbo's quizzical response.
"The F-35 will have a significant impact on the Marine Air-Ground Task Force in bringing fifth generation capabilities and flexibility. It will be an important node in a networked battlespace by gathering and disseminating information, which can increase the overall situational awareness for Marines on the ground as well as for Marines and other friendly forces in the air."
A balloon could do that.
http://www.codeonemagazine.com/article.html?item_id=122
When the U.S. is dead and buried, at least the corporations will still be standing.
ReplyDelete