Ending the week with a "bang," to coin a phrase, the U.S. Department of Defense announced nine contract awards Friday -- worth at least $1.2 billion in total value (and potentially, even more than that).
One single company won more than three-quarters of the funds on offer, however, when privately held Hoist Liftruck Manufacturing of Bedford Park, Ill. was awarded $925 million to supply "commercial-type material handling equipment" to the U.S. Defense Logistics Agency (DLA). As for the other winners, there were only two of real interest to stock investors:
The Bell-Boeing Joint Project Office -- a joint venture between Textron (TXT -0.32%) and Boeing (BA -0.74%) that is primarily focused on manufacturing V-22 Osprey tiltrotor aircraft -- was awarded a $43 million firm-fixed-price, sole-source contract to supply prop rotor gearboxes to the DLA.
Meanwhile, McKesson Corporation (MCK 0.55%) won a $29.9 million option-exercise on an existing contract, hiring McKesson to do work on a digital imaging network-picture archive communication system -- also for the DLA. The option being exercised retains McKesson's services for two years beyond the underlying contract's (now completed) two-year base term. A second option, only one year in length, may or may not be exercised after this current two-year option runs out on Aug. 22, 2015.
