
Leidos raises full-year profit forecast on robust demand for weapons
Shares of the company were up 4% in premarket in trading.
Rising tensions around the world in the wake of a protracted Russia-Ukraine war and tensions in the Middle East have boosted the market for arms, benefiting defense contractors.
The company has followed peer Northrop Grumman (NOC.N), opens new tab in lifting its 2025 profit forecast. Leidos now expects its annual adjusted profit at between $11.15 and $11.45 per share, compared with its prior forecast of $10.35 to $10.75.
However, the Reston, Virginia-based company trimmed its full-year revenue forecast range and now expects it to be between $17 billion and $17.25 billion, from $16.9 billion and $17.3 billion previously.
Leidos provides technology services to government agencies as well as commercial clients and is also a maker of drones and aerial defense systems. It also provides services in the areas of health, environmental sciences and transportation.
It posted a second-quarter adjusted profit of $3.21 per share.
Analysts on average had anticipated a quarterly profit of $2.66 per share, according to data compiled by LSEG.
Its revenue rose about 3% to $4.25 billion, edging past estimates of $4.24 billion.
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles


The Independent
13 minutes ago
- The Independent
Trump's planned 100% computer chip tariff sparks confusion among businesses and trading partners
President Donald Trump 's plans for 100% tariffs on computer chips that aren't made in the U.S. are stoking confusion among businesses and trading partners — boosting stocks for leading semiconductor companies while leaving smaller producers scrambling to understand the implications. The U.S. imports a relatively small number of chips because most of the foreign-made chips in a device — from an iPhone to a car — were already assembled into a product, or part of a product, before it landed in the country. "The real question everybody in the industry is asking is whether there will be a component tariff, where the chips in a device would require some sort of separate tariff calculation,' said Martin Chorzempa, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. Trump said Wednesday that companies that "made a commitment to build" in the U.S. would be spared the import tax, even if they are not yet producing those chips in American factories. 'We'll be putting a tariff of approximately 100% on chips and semiconductors,' Trump said in the Oval Office while meeting with Apple CEO Tim Cook. 'But if you're building in the United States of America, there's no charge.' Wall Street investors interpreted that as good news not just for U.S. companies like AMD, Intel and Nvidia, but also for the biggest Asian chipmakers like Samsung and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company that have been working to build U.S. factories. But it left greater uncertainty for smaller chipmakers in Europe and Asia that have little exposure to the AI boom but still make semiconductors inserted into essential products like cars or washing machines. These producers "probably aren't large enough to get on the map for an exemption and quite probably wouldn't have the kind of excess capital and margins to be able to add investment at a large scale into the United States,' Chorzempa said. The announcement came more than three months after Trump temporarily exempted most electronics from his administration's most onerous tariffs. During the COVID-19 pandemic, a shortage of computer chips increased the price of autos and contributed to higher inflation. Chorzempa said chip tariffs could again raise prices by hundreds of dollars per vehicle if the semiconductors inside a car are not exempt. 'There's a chip that allows you to open and close the window," Chorzempa said. "There's a chip that is running the entertainment system. There is a chip that's kind of running all the electronics. There are chips, especially in EVs, that are doing power management, all that kind of stuff.' Much of the investment into building U.S. chip factories began with the bipartisan CHIPS and Science Act that President Joe Biden signed into law in 2022, providing more than $50 billion to support new computer chip plants, fund research and train workers for the industry. Trump has vocally opposed those financial incentives and taken a different approach, betting that the threat of dramatically higher chip costs would force most companies to open factories domestically, despite the risk that tariffs could squeeze corporate profits and push up prices for electronics.


Reuters
14 minutes ago
- Reuters
US jobless claims edge up, but 'no-hire, no-fire' trend remains intact
Aug 7 (Reuters) - The number of Americans filing new applications for unemployment benefits ticked up to the highest level in a month last week, suggesting the labor market was largely stable even though job creation is weakening and it is taking laid-off workers longer to find new employment. Initial claims for state unemployment benefits for the week ended August 2 rose 7,000 to a seasonally adjusted 226,000, the highest level since the week ending July 5, the Labor Department said on Thursday. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast 221,000 claims for the latest week. The labor market has slowed, with government data last week showing far fewer jobs were created in July than economists had expected as uncertainty over President Donald Trump's tariffs left businesses wary of adding workers. Moreover, employment gains in the previous two months were revised lower by nearly 260,000, a stunning reversal that prompted Trump to fire the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics - a move that rattled investors and economists already anxious about the eroding quality of official U.S. economic data. The latest data on new claims indicates employers are not yet turning to large-scale layoffs as the economy loses steam but are managing through attrition. That has helped keep the unemployment rate, at 4.2% in July, relatively low even while job growth has slowed. Declining labor supply amid the White House's immigration crackdown is also helping to stave off a jump in the jobless rate. Employers' hesitancy to increase hiring means there are fewer jobs for those being laid off. The number of people receiving benefits after an initial week of aid, a proxy for hiring, rose to a seasonally adjusted 1.974 million during the week ending July 26, the claims report showed. That was the highest level of so-called continued claims since November 2021, and the increase of 38,000 from the previous week was the largest since late May. Despite the rise in both new and ongoing claims last week, economists note the two continue to remain largely range-bound and have not exhibited the kind of breakout upswing that in the past has signaled a deteriorating job market. Indeed, the weekly net change in new claims has remained below 10,000 - in either direction - for 10 straight weeks, the longest such streak in about three years. "The sideways drift in initial and continuing claims in recent months suggests that layoff activity is muted," Thomas Simons, chief U.S. economist at Jefferies, wrote in a note. "The 'no hire/no fire' theme in the labor market remains firmly intact." That said, continued claims had been averaging less than 1.9 million until early May and in the three months since have averaged about 40,000 higher at about 1.94 million. That reset now makes more sense to some economists in light of the historic downward revision to the job creation figures for May and June that were revealed by BLS last week. "The level of continued claims is still signaling that unemployed workers are finding it tough to find a job in a labor market where hiring is slow," Nancy Vanden Houten, lead U.S. economist at Oxford Economics, wrote. "Moreover, the steep rise in claims since April makes more sense following the sharp downward revisions to job growth in May and June and the sluggish pace of hiring in July." Meanwhile, the Labor Department also said worker productivity rebounded more than expected in the second quarter, easing a surge in labor costs at the start of the year. Nonfarm business sector productivity increased 2.4% in the April-June period after declining by 1.8% in the first three months of the year, BLS reported. Economists polled by Reuters had expected productivity to rise by 2.0%. Worker output increased by 3.7%, the largest improvement since the third quarter of 2023, while unit labor cost growth moderated to 1.6% from an upwardly revised 6.9% in the first quarter. The data may be indicative of ongoing investments by businesses in labor-saving technologies like artificial intelligence, economists said. "Productivity growth is settling back into its historical trend after bouncing around because of the pandemic," said Oren Klachkin, financial market economist at Nationwide. "Looking ahead, businesses will likely invest in labor-saving technologies to cap their wage bills, which should exert downward pressure on inflation. Companies facing the greatest labor constraints will likely be the most incentivized to invest."


Reuters
14 minutes ago
- Reuters
Manulife shares fall after earnings miss due to US weakness
TORONTO, Aug 7 (Reuters) - Canadian insurer Manulife Financial ( opens new tab shares fell by more than 3% on Thursday after it reported quarterly earnings below analysts' estimates, largely due to elevated credit and mortality losses in the United States. "This quarter, we did see variability, and it was negative variability," CFO Colin Simpson said in an interview after earnings were reported after the market close on Wednesday. "We operate in the affluent and high net worth space and it's relatively by face amount, so that does potentially bring about variability in claims." The U.S. business experienced an elevated number of claims on large policies under its life insurance segment, Simpson said, adding that it was normal claim volatility rather than an unfavorable mortality trend. Core earnings at its U.S. segment fell 53%. The company earned core earnings of 95 Canadian cents for the second quarter ended June 30, two Canadian cents lower than analysts' estimates, according to data compiled by LSEG. Manulife's Asia business performed better, boosted by new business. Its core earnings climbed 13% to $520 million in the quarter compared with the year-ago period. Manulife's annual premium equivalent, a commonly used metric in the insurance industry to measure the total value of new business written in a given period, jumped 15% during the quarter, powered by a jump in its Asia unit. Shares of Manulife have lost about 5% this year. They were down 3.5% on Thursday. "That (the U.S. results) overshadowed what was otherwise a good result across the lifeco's other business lines, each of which reported core earnings that were slightly ahead of our estimates," Scotiabank analyst Mike Rizvanovic said in a note. Manulife, which has freed up billions of dollars in capital including through de-risking deals last year, said it would acquire 75% of private credit manager Comvest Credit Partners in a more than $1 billion deal to create a $18.4 billion private credit unit. Paul Lorentz, global wealth and asset management head at Manulife, said in an interview there was an opportunity to use Manulife's scale in Asia to expand its platform in the region. Peer Sun Life Financial ( opens new tab is set to report later on Thursday. Its shares have fallen about 1% so far this year.