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Lockheed Martin Wins $499M Contract from U.S. Air Force

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Lockheed Martin Corporation (LMT - Free Report) announced that it is one of the six companies to receive the Aerospace Systems Air Platform Technology Research program contract from the U.S. Air Force. The contract has a ceiling value of $499 million. It is the third company to receive this award from Pentagon.

Details of the Contract

Per the terms of the contract, the company will be responsible for providing quality research for affordable, revolutionary capabilities for the warfighter. The company expects to complete the task by 2025. The work will be carried out at the company’s Fort Worth, TX facility. The company will be obligated with $100,000 from the fiscal 2017 research and development funds at the time of the award.

Lockheed Martin’s Aeronautics Segment

As the largest defense contractor in the world, Lockheed Martin invests in the research and development of new and existing products. The aeronautics segment of the company is engaged in designing, research and development, systems integration, production and support of advanced military aircraft and related technologies. This segment is busy with major programs comprising F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter, C-130 Hercules, F-16 Fighting Falcon, F-22 Raptor and C-5M Super Galaxy.  It generated revenues of $5.2 billion in the second quarter, reflecting 40.9% of the total revenue.

Our View

The proposed budget hike for fiscal 2018 by President Trump reflected a 10% increase over the current base budget level of the current year, hinting at the U.S. government to spend more on defense primes like Lockheed Martin, The Boeing Co. (BA - Free Report) , Northrop Grumman Corp. (NOC - Free Report) , Raytheon Company and others. More recently, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the 2018 defense policy bill, reflecting an expenditure level of $696 billion. This easily surpassed the nation’s current spending caps, which, enacted in 2011, limited annual military spending to $549 billion. It even exceeded President Trump’s defense budget request proposed this March. If enacted, all these budgetary updates will immensely boost this defense prime’s business growth.

Additionally, regular contracts from the different verticals of the U.S. Defense, has enabled Lockheed Martin to become a strong cash generator. This has aided the company to take important cash deployment decisions. For the second quarter of 2017, the company generated cash from operations worth $1.54 billion, up 4.8% year over year.

Price Movement

Shares of Lockheed Martin have returned 13.6% in the last six months, underperforming the industry’s growth of 16.7% in the same time frame.

Too much dependence on F-35 program and intense competition might hurt the company’s growth trajectory.

Zacks Ranks

Lockheed Martin currently carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

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