Fluor Corp

Nature of business: Engineering, construction, mining and technical services worldwide. Total employees: 38,532 In Orange County: 3,000 Stock listing in The Times: On NYSE "Fluor" Ticker symbol: "FLR" Friday's stock close: $40.88 One-week change: Down $4.87 Analyst review: "Fluor is an industry leader with a clear vision. The company has successfully diversified its interests away from being based solely on hydrocarbon activity, though that segment is still very important to the company.

The Orange County Performing Arts Center sued star architect Cesar Pelli and construction giant Fluor Corp., blaming them and subcontractors for more than $30 million in cost overruns and irremediable design flaws in the new Renee and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall in Costa Mesa. The hall, which opened 11 months ago, has been celebrated as a landmark performance space that brings new intimacy and sonic fidelity to the concert experience in Orange County.

Fluor Corp. said its Fluor Daniel construction services subsidiary has received two significant refinery project contracts: one continuing a nearly 30-year relationship with a Venezuelan petroleum company, the other opening communications with a Polish energy consortium. For the Polish project, Fluor Daniel has been retained to prepare a feasibility study for a refinery and petrochemical processing complex in southern Poland. Financial details were not announced.

Irvine-based Fluor Corp., Dyncorp International Inc. and KBR Inc., a former unit of Halliburton Co., were awarded parts of a U.S. Army contract with a combined potential value of as much as $150 billion to provide services to the military in the Middle East. The contract, the Logistics Civil Augmentation Program (LOGCAP) IV, would be worth as much as $5 billion a year in business for each of the companies, with the potential duration of 10 years.

Fluor Daniel, the engineering and construction arm of Fluor Corp., Wednesday landed what appears to be the largest contract in Fluor's 78-year history--estimated by sources to be worth $6 billion--to oversee expansion of petroleum facilities for Saudi Arabia. Fluor Chief Executive Les McCraw called the pact "prospectively, the most significant project we've had in over a decade."

A Fluor Corp. unit has won a $325-million contract to expand a copper and gold mining and milling operation that sprawls 75 miles through an Indonesian jungle. The engineering and construction giant's Fluor Daniel unit already has a 3-year-old contract with a unit of Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold Co. to do a smaller expansion at the mines in Irian Jaya. That expansion will be completed next year; construction on the next phase then will begin.

Fluor Corp.'s Fluor Daniel unit said Tuesday that it has received a contract to provide engineering, procurement and construction services for Kaiser Aluminum & Chemical Corp.'s first commercial micromill, which will produce beverage can sheet. Engineering is underway for the $45-million micromill, which will be in Storey County, Nev., and construction is scheduled to begin next month. Upon completion in late 1996, the micromill will produce about 45,000 metric tons of can sheet a year.

Fluor Corp. said fiscal second-quarter earnings rose 15%, slightly below analysts' estimates because of high costs of marketing and preparing contract proposals. The engineering and construction company said net income for the quarter ended April 30 rose to $63.7 million, or 75 cents a share, from $55.3 million, or 66 cents a share, for the same period a year ago. The earnings were a penny below the average 76-cent estimate of eight analysts surveyed by Zacks Investment Research.

Fluor Corp. said Thursday its fiscal third-quarter earnings rose 25% as its construction business remained active and its coal operations increased production. Fluor said profit rose 10% at Fluor Daniel, the company's core engineering and construction business, because of a greater volume of work. Profits at A.T. Massey, the company's low-sulfur coal unit, rose 28%. Fluor's net income for the third quarter ended July 31 rose to $60.2 million, or 72 cents a share, from $48.

Fluor Corp. posted quarterly earnings Tuesday that exceeded Wall Street's expectations, and said it expects modest earnings growth for the full year, despite weak coal markets. The Aliso Viejo-based engineering and construction giant said its net earnings for the second quarter totaled $51 million, or 66 cents a share, compared with a net loss of $72.9 million, or 97 cents a share, a year ago. Excluding nonrecurring items, net earnings from operations rose 12% to $52.

Engineering and construction company Fluor Corp. reported higher profit in the fourth quarter, helped by a favorable tax audit settlement. The Aliso Viejo company said net income was $65.1 million, or 74 cents a share, compared with $47.9 million, or 57 cents, a year earlier. Revenue rose 45% to $4 billion, reflecting strong growth in all of Fluor's business sectors, the company said.

Engineering and construction group Fluor Corp. of Aliso Viejo expects new orders during 2005 to be in line with figures for 2004, its top executive said Wednesday. "We see a very strong new order trend. 2004 was our best year ever. 2005 ... could be the same range as in 2004," Chief Executive Alan Boeckmann said at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

Construction firm Fluor Corp. said its third-quarter earnings surged past Wall Street estimates because of high revenue and a gain from an overturned judgment against the company. Aliso Viejo-based Fluor, whose projects include refineries, power plants and factories, earned $131.2 million, or $1.51 a share, more than double the year-earlier net income of $47.3 million, or 57 cents. Revenue totaled $3.42 billion, up 45% from last year's $2.36 billion.

Fluor Corp. has agreed to pay the federal government $12.5 million to resolve a whistle-blower suit that the Aliso Viejo-based construction and engineering company padded bills for government work in the mid-1990s. The settlement ends a five-year legal battle initiated by Cosby Coleman, a former senior finance manager, who alleged that Fluor improperly billed the federal government for company overhead expenses that were not directly related to government contracts.

Fluor Corp., the biggest publicly traded U.S. construction and engineering company, won a $1-billion contract to expand gas processing facilities in the Persian Gulf, benefiting from a regional construction boom. The work is for the Habshan Gas Complex in the United Arab Emirates and will be finished in the middle of 2008, said Abu Dhabi Gas Industries Ltd., or Gasco, as it's also known. The company, majority owned by the Abu Dhabi government, didn't give any more details.

Engineering and construction firm Fluor Corp. said that it had settled all outstanding disputes with an owners' group on its Hamaca oil project in Venezuela and that arbitration proceedings had been dismissed. The settlement will take deferred project costs off Fluor's balance sheet, and the Aliso Viejo-based company will recognize a gain of $30 million in pretax earnings, Fluor said in a regulatory filing.

Fluor Corp. posted third-quarter earnings Wednesday that exceeded Wall Street's expectations, due in part to sizable engineering contracts and a stock repurchase plan. The Irvine-based engineering construction company reported net income of $62.4 million, or 81 cents a share, compared with $66.2 million, or 79 cents, a year ago. The First Call analysts' consensus was 70 cents per share for the latest quarter. Revenues were $3.5 billion, compared with $3.7 billion a year ago.

Engineering and construction company Fluor Corp. on Monday reported a net loss in the second quarter because of a charge from a project lawsuit. Fluor said the net loss was $16.4 million, or 19 cents a share, contrasted with a profit of $44.8 million, or 54 cents, a year earlier. The loss resulted from a charge of $65 million, or 77 cents a share, after Fluor lost a lawsuit against the developer of a resort hotel in the Cayman Islands in the Caribbean.

Fluor Corp., the biggest publicly traded U.S. construction and engineering company, said it would take a $60-million charge after losing a lawsuit. A jury in federal court in New York awarded $28.8 million in damages to the developer of a luxury resort hotel in the Cayman Islands that had been sued by Fluor Daniel Caribbean, a Fluor Corp. subsidiary, in a contract dispute. Aliso Viejo-based Fluor plans to take the charge to its second-quarter earnings. It also said it would appeal the verdict.