Environmental firms steadily ease into the next stage of their development

HERE IT COMES
The it Group continues to evolve through acquisition. Formerly known as International Technology Corp., the Monroeville, Pa.-based firm ranked 15th on the 1996 list, with $362 million in revenue. Buying ohm Corp. moved the firm up to seventh in 1997, with $874 million in revenue. Recent acquisitions helped push the firm into the upper echelon for 1998, with $1.3 billion in revenue.

The purchases include GTI from Fluor Daniel and ICF Kaiser International’s environmental engineering division. President-CEO Anthony DeLuca believes in improving “the bottom line by adding to the top line.” The GTI acquisition will help it provide integrated services to major clients such as PPG, a long-time industrial customer. “We’ve worked with them for years. GTI had been doing [water-wastewater] work for them. We’re able to integrate and expand our service, realizing economies of scale. It’s good for them and good for us,” he says.

Investors have rewarded it, moving the stock from just above $5 per share last fall to just under $17 per share the last week in June. “We’ve beaten analysts’ projections for 11 straight quarters. If anything, our stock is undervalued,” says DeLuca. Although he professes to be pleased in general with integration of the purchased components, DeLuca says, “We haven’t yet seen the market synergies: one plus one equals three. We’ll see that in the year 2000.”

URS Corp. also bought its way into the billionaires’ club, taking on nearly $700 million in debt to buy the Dames and Moore Group. URS, which had previously bought Greiner and Woodward Clyde, ranked 17th in 1997, with $290 million in revenue. Dames & Moore was next on the list, with $282 million. The consolidated companies recorded $1.1 billion in revenue in 1998, but URS officials declined to comment on market prospects. The quarterly earnings report cautions investors that integrating Dames and Moore could be difficult. So far, investors have approved the move: The stock moved from a 52-week low near $13 last October to $28 last week, high for the year.