Dive Brief:
- Tutor Perini racked up $2 billion in new awards and contract adjustments in the third quarter and its existing jobs remain on track despite President Donald Trump’s threats to pull funding from major infrastructure builds, the company said on an earnings call Wednesday.
- The firm’s backlog swelled to $21.6 billion, an increase of 54% from the same period in 2024 and a company record. CEO and President Gary Smalley said existing and upcoming work wasn’t threatened by the macroeconomic or policy environment.
- “We still do not anticipate that tariffs will have a significant impact on our business,” Smalley said. “We also do not currently foresee the risk of any of our major projects and backlog being canceled, delayed, defunded or otherwise materially impacted by the administration's targeted funding cuts or by the recent federal government shutdown.”
Dive Insight:
Smalley said that included its work on the first phase of the California High-Speed Rail job and its projects in New York. In October, the contractor confirmed that its work on the Manhattan Tunnel as part of Amtrak’s $16 billion Gateway Program was still active and moving forward, despite President Donald Trump’s claims that the project had been terminated.
Smalley reiterated that work status on the Nov. 5 call.
“We've had discussions with our customers, and they have confirmed that our projects are funded and authorized, and they are not expected to be adversely impacted,” Smalley said. “For us, it continues to be business as usual at this time on all of our major projects.”
Third quarter revenue came in at $1.42 billion, a 31% increase from $1.08 billion during the same period in 2024. It notched profits of $3.63 million, up from a $100.86 million loss during last year’s Q3.
Combined with its surging backlog, those results led the firm to increase its guidance for the third time in as many quarters. While it declined to specify GAAP numbers due to its rising share price making stock-based compensation awards a moving target, it raised its 2025 earnings per share target to a range of $4.00 to $4.20 on an adjusted basis. That was up from its previous goal of $3.65 to $3.95.
With its backlog now sitting at a record high, Smalley said there was still room for more. The firm sees “well over $25 billion of upcoming bidding opportunities over the next 12 to 18 months.”
The largest of those include the $12 billion Sepulveda Transit Corridor in Los Angeles; the $5 billion Penn Station Transformation project in New York City; the $3.8 billion Southeast Gateway Line, also in Los Angeles; and a $2 billion replacement hospital in California.
Smalley said Tutor Perini’s improvement in recent quarters — it has turned the corner from losses due to dispute settlements on legacy projects in prior years — was due to a surging macroeconomic environment in infrastructure spending, a trend he expects to continue.
“We believe that these tailwinds will persist due to the tremendous amount of federal, state, and local-level funding that are now in place,” Smalley said, “and because our country has for decades and until recent years neglected to adequately fund and prioritize the types of substantial infrastructure investments being made today.”
At the same time, he tried to temper Wall Street’s expectations — the firm’s stock is up more than 160% year to date — for ever-increasing backlog numbers. Asked by analysts if fourth quarter backlog would be higher, Smalley projected more level results.
“It’s probably a little bit more flattish in the fourth quarter,” he said. “Lately, every quarter seems, you know, increased new record, new record, new record. We’re not going to see that going forward in the short-term. We may have new records, but it won’t be consistently quarter after quarter.”
