Raytheon Company (NYSE:RTN) has landed itself yet another big defense contract, one which could be worth up to $1 billion. The five-year pact between Raytheon and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) will see it manage the computer security of more than 100 federal civilian government agencies. Parts of the deal could be extended to as long as seven years. The contract is a big win for the company as well as for the elite investors tracked by Insider Monkey, which are increasingly putting their faith in Raytheon.
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The contract is just the latest in a series of big defense contracts awarded to Raytheon. In late July it landed two contracts from the Pentagon worth $265 million, one of which is to deliver 550 AGM-154C-1 Unitary Joint Stand-Off Weapon missiles, 200 of which are to be delivered to the U.S Navy, while the remaining 350 are earmarked for the kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Just a week earlier it was awarded $87 million in funding so as to buy the “long-lead materials” it would need to construct 17 SM-3 Block IIA surface-to-air interceptor missiles on behalf of the U.S. Missile Defense Agency.
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The awarding of several contracts recently comes despite embarrassing delays and cost overruns on another defense contract, a five-year gig awarded five years ago for the construction of a worldwide network of GPS III satellite ground stations, which is deemed to still be years from completion and to have already exceeded its budget by over $1.1 billion. In a report released early in September, the Government Accountability Office was scathing in its assessment of Raytheon Company (NYSE:RTN)’s performance, saying the company didn’t grasp the full extent of the project until years after it had begun and that it continually failed to meet progress targets. To his credit, Raytheon Vice President Matt Gilligan told Bloomberg that the report did a good job reviewing the complex contract and that both his company and the Air Force could have performed better on it, adding that real progress had been made and that improved performance was expected going forward.
One of the most popular aerospace and defense stocks among the elite investment firms that we follow, Raytheon was in the portfolios of 37 hedge funds on June 30, who owned 3.10% of its outstanding shares as of that date, worth $906 million. While the overall ownership was still relatively low, those figures were a big step up from the 25 firms holding $669 million in shares on March 31, so top money managers were starting to like what they saw from Raytheon. Among them were several extremely bullish firms, including Cliff Asness’ AQR Capital Management, Israel Englander’s Millennium Management, and Jim Simons’ Renaissance Technologies.
In addition to hedge funds, analysts are also increasingly singing the praises of Raytheon Company (NYSE:RTN). UBS upgraded Raytheon to ‘Buy’ from ‘Hold’ this morning, raising its price target to $118 from $111, representing upside of greater than 10%. A week earlier, Bernstein upgraded it to ‘Outperform’ from ‘Market Perform’, with an even more bullish price target of $132. Raytheon is up by 0.81% in trading this morning and down by just over 1% year-to-date.
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