Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions) Your first question comes from David Starkey with Smith Barney.
David Starkey - Smith Barney
I wanted to ask you how the first quarter is going. You’re almost through with that now. Do you expect to begin to show some more positive earnings per share comparisons over the course of this year?
Lawrence W. Sinnott
We don’t really give out earnings projections. It sometimes is difficult because September is such an important month for us and we probably won’t have as complete an idea for a couple of weeks.
David Starkey - Smith Barney
Is the government year end this month? Is that one of the reasons?
Theodore M. Prociv, Ph.D.
Yes, generally the government does a good portion of its spending by September 30 and we have been just totally saturated with proposal efforts. So we can make a sort of a thumbnail projection that says it’s going to be great, but I hate to count those chickens.
David Starkey - Smith Barney
Can you give us an idea, I know you’ve said this in the past, but to reassure your investors I guess, that when the Iraq war winds down over time that you guys will continue to be a big presence there because you’re more doing a lot of commercial work right over there.
Theodore M. Prociv, Ph.D.
Well, we’re doing a lot of reconstruction work, which is still government. As I mentioned in one of the earlier conference calls, there’s two parts to that business there. There’s the military and the reconstruction part. We are seeing a sort of a drop off in the military part and we are watching at the same time an increase in the reconstruction part. We are particularly seeing a growth in reconstruction in Afghanistan.
So I expect that we will be continuing on in the military side for quite some time. But again, it depends on who is going to manage the reconstruction. That may change in the next administration. The money will be there it’s just who manages it will be different.
The commercial side of it is an attempt for us to grow into a very lucrative market which for one reason or another is very good for American companies in Abu Dhabi. And that’s just emerging. We’ve made our investments, we have the office, we have the business licenses, we have all the necessary business connections that we need to have, and we are starting to begin the work there. That will take a little while to grow but that was one of our hedges against the potential demise of the Iraq business. But as it’s going right now our bets are that both businesses will flourish.
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