Northrop Grumman Q2 FY12/24 Earnings Review
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No Fuss, No Drama, Just Gets On With The Job
by Alex King
Kathy Warden is the rockstar CEO nobody outside of the Beltway has heard of. She runs Northrop Grumman ($NOC), a defense contractor with two mission-critical contracts underway right now - the $90bn US nuclear missile arsenal renewal program, and the B-21 Raider strategic bomber program. Ward is a silent assassin. Having led the integration of the $10bn-acquired Orbital-ATK business and delivered this ahead of time with better than expected costs savings (M&A spoiler alert - this never happens), she was moved into the big chair. Whereupon she tossed all the old guard under the bus (“restructured” the management team), sold the poor quality IT solutions business (“rationalized the product portfolio”) for a big number to financial buyers when leverage was cheap-o and said buyers bully-o’-bulled-up (“maximized the value for our stakeholders”) and since then has proceeded to run an exceptionally high quality business. NOC in my view is underappreciated vs. better known players like Lockheed Martin; perhaps that rights itself one day, I don’t know. For now, another solid quarter and the stock looks like it might break to the upside.
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