Lockheed Martin

Ending its first quarter as a combined company and promising an "aggressive" cost-cutting program, Lockheed Martin Corp. yesterday reported a slight gain in first-quarter earnings.The Bethesda-based defense contractor said net income was $137 million, or 62 cents a share, in the first quarter.Excluding various one-time charges, operating earnings rose 3 percent to $247 million, or $1.23 a share, compared with $239 million, or $1.01 a share, assuming the companies were combined a year ago.The former Martin Marietta Corp.

CHICAGO -- Maryland became home to the world's largest defense contractor yesterday as shareholders of Martin Marietta Corp. and Lockheed Corp. voted overwhelmingly to merge the two industry giants.The new company -- Lockheed Martin Corp. -- will be based in Bethesda, generate $23.5 billion in annual sales and employ about 175,000 workers, including 4,400 in Maryland.In simultaneous meetings in downtown Chicago, the $10 billion deal was approved by 87 percent of Martin Marietta shareholders who voted and 95 percent of Lockheed investors.

Lockheed Martin Corp. has been awarded a $244 million contract to take over the data processing, information management and telecommunication operations of retailing giant Melville Corp.The contract represents Bethesda-based Lockheed Martin's first major foray into the commercial market for providing such services.As part of the agreement, Lockheed Martin will acquire some of the assets of Melville's data processing centers. The purchase price is included in the value of the contract award and was not disclosed.

Looking to close a big sale of fighter planes to the United Arab Emirates, Bethesda's Lockheed Martin Corp. got some help last month from its best customer, the U.S. government.At the time, the company was battling the Clinton administration over the proposed acquisition of Northrop Grumman Corp., but Vice President Al Gore still went to a Lockheed Martin plant in Texas to celebrate the Emirates' decision to buy F-16s.The Defense Department "even helped us in the process of the international competition, so we feel good about that," Lockheed Martin Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Vance D. Coffman said after the defense giant abandoned the fight Thursday.

WASHINGTON -- Workers at Lockheed Martin's thrust reverser plant in Middle River have wondered why the company would tout them as a success story, and then sell them to General Electric Co.Yesterday, corporate President and Chief Operating Officer Peter B. Teets gave an answer: The aeronautics side of the company didn't want to sell Middle River, but corporate leaders insisted in the name of shareholder value."

What does a monstrous conglomerate have to do for a little respect on Wall Street, anyway?Lockheed Martin Corp. of Bethesda, the biggest defense contractor in the free world, unfurled respectable year-end earnings yesterday. And analysts were left wondering why the stock market didn't at least salute.Shares continued a recent slide to close down $1.25, at $88.75, as Lockheed Martin announced fourth-quarter operating profits 4 percent greater than during the same period in 1995."The accomplishments during the past 12 months of the 190,000 men and women who are Lockheed Martin will fuel continued success for many years to come," said Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Norman R. Augustine.

The University of Maryland Baltimore County has reached an agreement to purchase a Lockheed Martin Corp. office and laboratory complex in Catonsville that the defense giant plans to abandon at the end of the year.The estimated $11 million purchase, contingent upon approval from the state legislature, will ease overcrowding at UMBC's main campus nearby and provide needed incubator space for start-up businesses, said Mark Behm, UMBC's vice president of administrative affairs.As part of an effort to become more of a research and technology-oriented institution, the school in 1989 established a Technology Enterprise Center, but tenants in the 10,000-square-foot facility need more space.

By 2000, America's largest weapons manufacturer, Lockheed Martin, may be as familiar to social service bureaucrats as it is to the Pentagon's top brass. If the company's strategy succeeds, Lockheed Martin will not only be a major aerospace manufacturer but also a leading dispenser of public assistance to America's neediest citizens.The company's split personality is already evident in Maryland, where a division of the company, Lockheed Martin IMS, operates the nation's largest privatized child support office in Baltimore (and another in Queen Anne's County)

You could pick your reason for inspiration at last Tuesday's launch of the Lunar Prospector space mission.There was NASA sending its first craft to the moon in a generation, and the chest- filling beauty of the nighttime launch.Or, for a certain type of onlooker, there was the knowledge that the whole affair could be summed up in one phrase: "Brought to you by Lockheed Martin."The Bethesda-based aerospace megalith built both the probe and the Athena II rocket that lofted it. This is no surprise, because Lockheed Martin far surpasses Raytheon, TRW and Orbital Sciences as the single biggest commercial name in unmanned scientific space probes.

WASHINGTON -- The Air Force got a half-price deal yesterday when it picked Lockheed Martin Corp. of Bethesda for a $500 million program to build bomb guidance systems.Pentagon officials had put a price tag of about $1 billion on the Wind Corrected Munitions Dispenser program. The bid by Lockheed Martin turned out to be "a remarkably affordable price," said Arthur L. Money, assistant secretary of the Air Force for acquisition.Lockheed Martin beat Alliant Techsystems Inc. of Hopkins, Minn., for the contract.