Lockheed Martin Corporation (LMT – Analyst Report) is the largest U.S. defense contractor with a platform-centric focus that guarantees a steady inflow of follow-on orders from a leveraged presence in the Army, Air Force, Navy and IT programs.

However, a large percentage of Lockheed Martin’s business comes from the U.S. government. Hence, any cutback in the domestic defense budget is a potential risk for its future performance.

Estimate Trend & Surprise History

Investors should note that the fourth quarter Zacks Consensus Estimate for earnings of $2.93 per share has increased 0.7% over the last 7 days.

Coming to the earnings surprise, Lockheed Martin Corporation has surpassed the Zacks Consensus Estimate in the last four quarters, resulting in a positive average surprise of 7.58%.

Zacks Rank:

Currently, Lockheed Martin has a Zacks Rank#3 (Hold) but that could change following its fourth quarter 2015 earnings report which has just released. We have highlighted some of the key details from the just-released announcement below:

Earnings : 

Lockheed Martin beat on earnings. Earnings per share came in at $3.01, beating the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $2.93 by nearly 2.7%.

Revenue:

Revenues of $12.9 billion surpassed the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $12.1 billion by 6.7%.

Key Stats to Note : 

At the end of 2015, Lockheed Martin achieved record backlog of $99.6 billion, up from $80.5 billion at end 2014.

Stock Price : 

The stock price moved down by 0.72% during the pre-market trading to $211.01 at the time of writing this report. It would be interesting to see how the market reacts to the earnings beat during the trading session today.