Aerospace and defense giant Raytheon Technologies Corp. (RTX, Financial) ended yesterday’s trading session at $90.72, up 1.1% over Monday’s close – a daily gain that was bigger than S&P 500's at just 0.92%.
That may seem inconsequential, but before yesterday, its shares had risen 6.4% over the last month, out-classing the aerospace sector's 4.05% rise as well as the S&P 500's 0.85% decline.
With the company’s next earnings report to come on Jan. 25, Wall Street analysts are looking for Raytheon Technologies to post earnings of $1.01 a share. If it meets or beats analysts' predictions, it would mean the company has enjoyed year-over-year earnings growth of a stunning 36.49%. At the same time, the Zacks consensus estimate for revenue expects to see net sales rise 4.85% year over year to $17.22 billion.
Recent news of increased military activity in many countries has helped to rally the investment community behind defense companies like Raytheon. Others have said they were encouraged by the way the company held strong during the downturn, and expect more Defense Department contracts ahead.
Just yesterday, executives of the multinational aerospace and defense conglomerate announced that together with the U.S. Navy, it is about to start backfitting the fleet’s Flight IIA Arleigh Burke-class destroyers with SPY-6 V(4) radars. The step represents an important upgrade for a class of vessels considered to be the Navy’s workhorse, a company official told breakingdefense.com.
Raytheon was handed the $237 million contract about a month ago for integration and production support, “a deal that effectively covers services such as hardware deliveries to the shipyards, integration with combat systems onboard the vessels and continuous development of the radar’s software,” Scott Spence, who leads Raytheon’s naval radar directorate, said in an interview on Monday before the Surface Navy Association’s annual symposium. “All the capabilities that are going to be on [the newer] Flight III ships — the ability to do integrated air and missile defense, the ability to track multiple incoming targets both ballistic missile as well as air-breathing targets, many more than the current generation radars can handle — all that capability will be in that Flight IIA.”
Also on Monday, Raytheon Intelligence & Space, a subsidiary business, said it recently supported the fifth OFFensive Swarm-Enabled Tactics (OFFSET) DARPA program field exercise.
“Using integrated swarm technology developed by a Raytheon BBN-led team, a single operator successfully controlled a swarm — composed of 130 physical drone platforms and 30 simulated drone platforms — both indoors and outdoors in an urban setting,” reported GPSWorld.com. “Raytheon BBN provides advanced technology research and development with a focus on national security priorities.”
The demonstration was part of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency project to build a large swarm of aerial and ground-based unmanned platforms controlled by a small group of people, reported The Defense Post.
“Large-scale teams could mean hundreds of robots in concert, but I don’t want 100-250 Soldiers or Marines running around with joysticks in their hands, heads down,” said OFFSET program manager Timothy Chung. “We would rather be able to orchestrate how these swarms of robots go out with a single operator working alongside a swarm commander.”
