It’s a surprisingly simple concept. Why ship walls, concrete, or even concrete barriers, when you can ship collapsible forms that can quickly be filled with sand or dirt by any untrained person? Why use sandbags with their inherent gaps and manual fills, when the collapsible forms provide full cover, and can be filled in a fraction of the time using engineering vehicles?
Uses abound, from gabions and flood control, to stopping bullets and even rockets. When you’re done, just empty the forms, fold them flat again, and ship them out. Systems of this type have been used by the military since the 1991 war in Kuwait. Someone in the US military obviously understood their extreme usefulness to current “seize and hold” operations, because the last few years have seen a series of rather large contracts…
Private investment firm Cerberus Capital Management, LP has reached a $1.5 billion deal to buy the support and security contractor DynCorp International, including the assumption of debt. The purchase price would be $17.55 per share – a 49% premium to the April 9/10 close of $11.75, and 12.4x the FY 2010 consensus forecast of $1.41 earnings per share. A “go shop” provision gives DynCorp 28 days to find a higher and better offer, if it can.
Affiliates of Veritas Capital Fund Management, L.L.C. have already executed a Voting Agreement in favor, swinging an aggregate of 34.9% of the outstanding shares. That level of support will make the deal very difficult to stop.
Note that 12.4x is still a low multiple, when compared to a number of more diversified public competitors like KBR and SAIC. Unfortunately, it’s difficult to compare DynCorp with privately-held security contractor peers like the similarly-controversial Xe (formerly Blackwater), IAP Worldwide Services, Triple Canopy, etc. The result is somewhat predictable…
Refinery Associates of Texas, a small business qualifier in New Braunfels, TX, received a maximum $253.8 million fixed-price with economic price adjustment contract for naval distillate fuel.
The fuel normally used in naval diesel engines is naval distillate fuel (NATO symbol F-76), but other fuels such as JP-5 (NATO symbol F-44) and naval distillate lower pour point (NATO symbol F-75) are also used.
The Naval Sea Systems Command’s (NAVSEA) Naval Surface Warfare Center in Indian Head, MD awarded 2 performance-based, indefinite-delivery/ indefinite-quantity, multiple-award, cost-plus-fixed-fee contracts worth up to $87.6 million to provide engineering and demilitarization of munitions.
Under the contracts, the winning bidders will provide analytical engineering and technical support services, analysis of requirements, assessments, data analysis/management, technical support, and program management support for the US Navy and other Department of Defense (DoD) and non-DoD customers.
