Philip K. Asherman, chief executive of CB&I, says he believes prime contractor Toshiba Corp. will finish two delayed and over budget nuclear power-plant projects in Georgia and South Carolina. Losses on the projects have led Toshiba’s chairman to resign, inflicted a $6.3-billion write-off on the firm and plunged its Westinghouse unit, which bought out partner CB&I’s contracts on the two projects in 2015, into a lawsuit with CB&I.
So, on a Feb. 28 conference call for securities analysts, Asherman’s praise for Westinghouse’s parent company was one of the memorable moments in the discussion of the setbacks that CB&I has endured. The company recorded a $313 million loss on net income, after special charges, for the year, compared to a $505 million loss in 2015. Much of the recent 2016 charges came late in the year, and CB&I’s fourth quarter “was very ugly from a financial performance standpoint compared to what analysts were expecting,” wrote investment adviser Daniel Jones.