After making separate posts on more than 30 large Sectors, I finally found one whose earnings have declined from 2009 to 2011! This is so unusual because many of these more than 30 Sectors had their total earnings more than double in the most recent two years.
However, the Total Pretax Earnings of these 14 US Engineering and Construction Services Corps declined from $4.6 bil in 2009 to $4.1 bil in 2011.
So just what is going on here with this industry?
Well, it's not the industry's fault. It's the US Congress.
Despite many efforts by the Obama Administration and by Democrats in both the US Senate and the US House, the Republicans in the US Congress have stopped every initiative for desperately-needed, wisely-designed US infrastructure investments.
The 2011 American Jobs Act had a substantial job-creating US infrastructure investment initiative. Unfortunately, the Republicans in the US Congress saw to it that this really good legislation bit the dust.
And then finally the US Senate did just recently pass by an overwhelming majority some very fine US infrastructure investment legislation, which was authored on a bipartisan basis. But believe it or not, the Republicans in the US House saw to it that this legislation also promptly bit the dust. Instead, they left town for the Easter break. I'm not kidding.
This is one of the many reasons the US Congress has such a low approval rating, which is headed much lower.
In deriving Pretax Income, I start with Pretax Income or Pretax Loss under Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP), and then exclude several clearly unusual very large items relative to Pretax Income, such as Asset Impairment Charges.
Below here is the Pretax Income and Pretax Losses of these 14 US Engineering and Construction Services Corps for each of the most recent three years.
| US Congress | |||||
| Negative | |||||
| Bump | |||||
| PTI | PTI | ||||
| 1 Year | 2 Year | ||||
| PTI(L) | PTI(L) | PTI(L) | % | % | |
| 2011 | 2010 | 2009 | Change | Change | |
| mils $s | mils $s | mils $s | |||
| Engineering and Construction Services | |||||
| Fluor | 1,002 | 560 | 1,137 | 79% | -12% |
| URS | 580 | 514 | 454 | 13% | 28% |
| Jacobs Engineering | 517 | 392 | 624 | 32% | -17% |
| Aecom Technology | 384 | 341 | 278 | 13% | 38% |
| Chicago Bridge & Iron | 352 | 292 | 295 | 21% | 19% |
| Foster Wheeler | 235 | 263 | 455 | -11% | -48% |
| Quanta Services | 216 | 246 | 234 | -12% | -8% |
| Emcor Group | 201 | 218 | 247 | -8% | -19% |
| CH2M Hill | 181 | 172 | 111 | 5% | 63% |
| Mastec | 145 | 154 | 79 | -6% | 84% |
| Tetra Tech | 140 | 123 | 119 | 14% | 18% |
| Tutor Perini | 137 | 159 | 205 | -14% | -33% |
| Granite Construction | 89 | (106) | 139 | 184% | -36% |
| Shaw Group | (94) | 263 | 227 | -136% | -141% |
| Total all 14 | 4,085 | 3,591 | 4,604 | 14% | -11% |
