INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
advised everyone from Jeff Bezos in the alleged Saudi phone hack case that United Nations experts got involved with last month, to George W
Street projections in the last two years
The Washington, DC-based company is expecting 2019 results, to be released on February 25, to show a second straight year in which profit
In years past, it relied in part on numerous mergers and acquisitions
Group.
Under chief executive officer Steven Gunby, who started in 2014, FTI has focused more on organic growth, expanding into areas such as
cybersecurity and lobbying
But wary investors now want to see another couple of years of growth, said Tobey Sommer, a longtime FTI analyst for SunTrust Robinson
The shares fell 2.6 per cent on Thursday, the most since November, closing at $125.89.
Even so, the stock should climb to $155 in a year, he
The bullishness was echoed by Joe Kunkle, head of research at Relativity Capital Advisors, which has owned FTI shares
FTI shares trade at about 22 times earnings, roughly the same as the S-P 500 Index.
FTI declined to comment
It expects to post annual profit, excluding some items, of as much as $6 a share on an annual revenue of $2.25 billion to $2.3 billion, both
records.
Founded in a warehouse in Annapolis, Maryland, in 1982, Forensic Technologies International initially assisted lawyers in finding
expert witnesses and then went on to help bring computer modeling and animation to courtrooms
In 1996, the company went public at $8.50 a share.
Over the next decade the company changed its name and bought rivals to expand into
restructuring, bankruptcy, accounting, risk advisory and public relations
It helped Bush with trial graphics in the Florida presidential voter case
It worked on the bankruptcy cases of Enron and WorldCom, and snapped up operations of the Big Four accounting firms when they were forced to
adjacent services, according to Sommer
He has hired more employees, increasing so-called billable headcount during his tenure by 34 per cent to 4,334 as of September.
One of those
relatively new cybersecurity unit could lead to even more business, Sommer said