Pentagon Insider: Guess Who Just Won a $1.56 Billion Defense Contract?

The Pentagon closed out the workweek Friday with 14 new defense contract awards, worth $700 million in total. Raytheon (NYSE:RTN) was the day’s biggest winner by far, walking away with two of the 14 contracts — and nearly 38% of the funds awarded.

Specifically, Raytheon won contracts worth:

– $180 million, to supply 200 AGM-154C-1 Unitary Joint Stand-Off Weapon missiles to the U.S. Navy, and a further 355 JSOWs to the government of Saudi Arabia. The JSOW is the U.S. military’s next-generation medium range precision guided weapon — a “smart” glide bomb capable of striking targets as far as 78 miles distant when launched from high altitude.

– and $85 million, to perform unspecified work on the AN/AAS-53 “Common Sensor Payload System” for the U.S. Army. The AN/AAS-53 is a multi-spectral surveillance and targeting system used to “light up” targets for Hellfire missiles and other laser-guided munitions. Work on this latter contract will continue through at least mid-2025.

Aside from Raytheon, other publicly-traded companies winning contracts Friday included:

– Boeing (NYSE:BA), whose Insitu drone-building subsidiary won a $78 million contract to supply the Navy with six RQ-21A Blackjack unmanned aircraft systems.

– and SAIC (NYSE:SAIC), awarded $45.2 million on a foreign military sales contract to support for “systems and computer resources” support for the governments of Afghanistan, Australia, Bahrain, the Central African Republic, Chad, Djibouti, the Dominican Republic, Egypt, France, Georgia, and Germany.

Insider trading notes
In recent days past, we’ve generally been able to find at least one or two (or three) prospects in the Pentagon’s lists of contract-awardees, exhibiting encouraging trends in insider buying. But there was no joy in Mudville Friday.

At Raytheon and at Boeing, insider sales transactions have outnumbered insider purchases of stock over the past three months. At SAIC, although insiders have reported more insider purchase transactions than insider sales during this period, the absolute number of shares traded weighs in the sellers’ favor. In total, shares sold outnumber shares bought by 14,072 over the past three months.

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