via Peter Kaminski, from the Washington Post
Halliburton, the company formerly headed by Vice President Cheney, has won contracts worth more than $1.7 billion under Operation Iraqi Freedom and stands to make hundreds of millions more dollars under a no-bid contract awarded by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, according to newly available documents.
The size and scope of the government contracts awarded to Halliburton in connection with the war in Iraq are significantly greater than was previously disclosed and demonstrate the U.S. military's increasing reliance on for-profit corporations to run its logistical operations.
I'm sure Halliburton made ample use of its high-level contacts in winning these contracts, but I believe the author of that article is going out on a very thin limb with his profiteering theme song. Among the would-be gotchas, e.g., he says (at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A56429-2003Aug27.html):
"The company reported a net profit of $26 million in the second quarter of this year, in contrast to a $498 million loss in the same period last year."
Without any context, one might think HAL booked a cool $524 mil for the quarter thanks to war profiteering. However, the $498 mil loss last year was due in large part to a $483 million charge taken in relation to asbestos liabilities. Meanwhile, operating income ex-items was $161 million. Here's the PR from last year: http://ir.thomsonfn.com/InvestorRelations/PubNewsStory.aspx?partner=5282&storyId=82760
Contrast that with Q2 this year, when, despite all the profiteering, operating income was down to $71 million from $161 mil the year before. And the $26 million net noted by the author included a forex gain (thanks to the tanking dollar) of $19 million. Back that out and HAL made $7 million for the quarter. Not much to write home about on $3.7 billion in Q2 revenues.
Thus it is hard to see that profiteering accounted for a massive change in the bottom line. The main reason for the change was the restructuring of the asbestos liability--the big up-front charge last year, with the stub (a cool $602 million) to be amortized over the next 15 years.
The author’s failure to explain the above context, when comparing HAL’s year-over-year quarterly results, leads me to think he is disingenuous, lazy, or perhaps financially illiterate. In any case, he does his readers a disservice. I’m surprised to see this in a paper owned by Warren Buffett.
The author also writes:
"Brown and Root's revenue from Operation Iraqi Freedom is already rivaling its earnings from its contracts in the Balkans, and is a major factor in increasing the value of Halliburton shares by 50 percent over the past year, according to industry analysts."
HAL had achieved the bulk of its 1yr price gain by December of last year, when Saddam was still “at large”. Almost all of this gain was achieved before the latest news about the contracts being larger than previously stated. Obviously this was not due to war profiteering. The more likely factor, it seems to me, is that investor concern over a possible asbestos-related bankruptcy or severe reduction in shareholder equity subsided and allowed the beaten-down shares to rise rapidly.
In the bigger scheme of things, HAL the stock is still trading where it was when Jimmy Carter was in office. http://bigcharts.marketwatch.com/quickchart/quickchart.asp?symb=hal&sid=0&o_symb=hal&freq=2&time=20&x=32&y=12
Friends in high places haven’t made up for the downtrend in energy prices over the past two decades. And going forward, the (imho) coming bull market in energy is likely to be more important than Cheney’s Rolodex in terms of HAL’s future results and stock price.