Tutor Perini Plans New Bids on Projects With First-Round Cost Issues

ENR reports on the financial performance of leading engineering and construction companies.

Tutor Perini Corp. intends to submit prices on three projects being rebid after initial competitions for which the firm's winning low bids were declined, CEO Ronald N. Tutor told investment analysts April 24.

Tutor Perini (TPC-NYSE) shared the information during the company's Q1 2024 earnings conference call, at which company officials said that they had completed a refinancing that positions it for a financial rebound after running up substantial losses in 2023.

The company got off to a good start, posting a profitable first quarter. It recorded net income of $15.7 million on revenue of $1.05 billion, compared to a net loss of $49.1 million on revenue of $776.3 million for the same quarter in 2023.

Backlog rose to $10 billion, with tens of millions of more cash possible if disputes from prior projects are resolved, said Tutor Perini, which said it expects to return to profitability this year.

Some of the company's hoped for 2024 earnings may come from postponed projects on which the government agency had budget constraints or lacked funding, it said.

Two of the three were bid during periods of high inflation or supply chain problems.

One is New Jersey Transit's Raritan River Replacement Bridge. In July 2022, Tutor Perini announced it had submitted the apparent low bid of about $519 million. New bids are due on July 17.

Another project on which Tutor said Tutor-Perini had submitted the lowest bid, the Newark Airport Airtrain replacement, was paused by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey in September 2022. The agency described the bids as "higher than anticipated," according to Northjersey.com, and said it would work to reduce the cost.

The next segment of the Honolulu Rail Transit project is the third project noted. At an earnings conference call in 2020, Tutor announced that his firm was part of a team that bid more than $2 billion for the assignment, although it’s unclear whether that figure included operations and maintenance. The Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transit has not subsequently revealed the submitted bids or formally awarded the contract for the four-mile, eight-station segment.

Deputy Editor Richard Korman helps run ENR's business and legal news and investigations, selects ENR's commentary and oversees editorial content on ENR.com. In 2023 the American Society of Business Publication Editors awarded Richard the Stephen Barr Award, the highest honor for a single feature story or investigation, for his story on the aftermath of a terrible auto crash in Kentucky in 2019, and in 2015 the American Business Media awarded him the Timothy White Award for investigations of surety fraud and workplace bullying. A member of Investigative Reporters and Editors, Richard has been a fellow on drone safety with the McGraw Center for Business Journalism at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY. Richard's freelance writing has appeared in the Seattle Times, the New York Times, Business Week and the websites of The Atlantic and Salon.com. He admires construction projects that finish on time and budget, compensate all team members fairly and record zero fatalities or serious injuries.

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