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Dive brief:
- Jacobs reported earnings of $171.61 million in the first quarter of 2024, which ended Dec. 29, which was a 26.5% increase from its earnings of $135.65 million a year ago a year, according to the company earnings report.
- First-quarter revenue rose to $4.2 billion from $3.8 billion a year earlier, up 9.5 percent, due to water infrastructure and advanced manufacturing projects, Bob said. Pragada, CEO of Jacobs.
- The Dallas-based company reported that its backlog reached $29.6 billion, up about 4.7% from last year. That increase came from growth across all of Jacobs’ business divisions, according to the earnings report.
Diving knowledge:
Jacobs continues to rack up notable wins in its water infrastructure and advanced facilities projects, two areas the company identified as key areas of focus, Pragada said on the call.
For example, giant chipmaker TSMC recently selected Jacobs for the first phase of the project’s design and delivery industrial plant of regenerated water on the campus for its $40 billion semiconductor facility in Phoenix. Jacobs also won a $191 million project in St. Johns, Florida, for the design and delivery of a water reclamation facility project, according to the company.
The Dallas-based company also has projects underway in transportation, including the design of a high-speed rail link in Las Vegas to Southern California, Pragada said on the call.
“We started 2024 with a strong performance, supported by strong organic revenue growth in our people and places solutions business, reflecting the widespread strength we see in global investment in infrastructure and sustainability,” Pragada said. “Aligned with our position as a global leader in science-based digital solutions, our portfolio remains resilient.”
Contributions of earnings
Jacobs is still on track with his plans to split its Critical Mission Solutions and Cyber & Intelligence government services business and is merging them with Amentum, a global engineering and technology company.
That should bode well for the company, as its energy, chemicals and resources business tends to be more cyclical and less profitable, according to a research note from Matt Arnold, an industrial analyst at the services firm financiers Edward Jones.
“The rest of the company will have strong positions in infrastructure consulting and advanced facility design. The intent of the spin-off is to focus Jacobs on its fastest growing and most profitable infrastructure business,” Arnold wrote. “Also, we see the remaining business as a likely beneficiary of the infrastructure stimulus that was signed into law.”
The deal will create a new publicly traded company focused on the government services sector, providing consulting services to government agencies aligned with space, homeland security, nuclear remediation, 5G technology and cybersecurity.
Jacobs shareholders will receive shares in the new company in a tax-free transaction sometime in the second half of fiscal 2024, according to Arnold.
