Dive Brief:

• Tutor Perini announced its first-quarter 2021 earnings results this week and reported a slight reduction in gross revenue compared to the first quarter of 2020, $1.21 billion down from $1.25 billion, although the company's income from construction operations increased by 5%, from $47.2 million to $49.7 million for the same period.
• The general contractor's civil construction division made the biggest contribution to gross revenue in the quarter, $583.1 million, followed by its building division with $457.2 million. The company said its high-margin civil projects allowed it to post the 5% increase in income from operations.
• Tutor Perini's backlog at the end of the first quarter was $8.1 billion, almost identical to the backlog of $8.3 billion it reported at the end of 2020. The company said it expected its backlog to increase in the second half of 2021 as it will be bidding on several large projects this year.

Dive Insight:

During the earnings call for analysts, Ron Tutor, president and CEO of the Los Angeles-based company, said the coronavirus pandemic has had a limited effect on its operations, although the company is being impacted by pandemic-related costs, most of which it will seek to recover from clients. Some bidding has been delayed due to COVID-19, but the company has seen more projects come back online and uncertainty has decreased overall.

Some of the civil projects that contributed to its solid civil segment performance, Tutor said, were projects like the California bullet train, San Francisco's Central Subway extension (shown above), the Los Angeles Metro's Purple Line, the Southwest light-rail project in Minneapolis and an Andersen Air Force Base housing project in Guam.

Tutor said there is "just a tremendous amount of infrastructure" opportunity.

The company's building division also scored a win this quarter through its subsidiary Rudolph and Sletten. The company was awarded a design-build contract, in partnership with CannonDesign, for a $269 million skilled nursing and memory care facility in Yountville, California. The 240-bed, 300,000-square-foot facility, which will be built to LEED-Gold standards, will replace and consolidate some existing building space and include kitchens, dining rooms, exam rooms, nurses’ stations, a pharmacy, laundry facilities, outdoor space for residents, parking and site improvements. That project is scheduled to start before summer and wrap up by the end of 2023.

Tutor said that the company is also working on a proposal for the $1.5 billion Purple Line light-rail project in Maryland. That bid is due in July, he said, and a decision is expected in the late fall of this year. Disputes around extra costs, lawsuits and rights of way acquisition have delayed the project and saw Fluor, one of the rail's major partners, exit the project.

Also in the running for the Purple Line award are Halmar International and Maryland Transit Solutions, which includes Dragados USA and OHL USA.