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Despite an upcoming leadership change, Fluor remains focused on capturing key opportunities identified in late 2024, according to the company’s Feb. 18 full-year earnings report.
The Irving, Texas-based contractor announced Jim Breuer will become CEO on May 1, succeeding David Constable, who will transition to executive chairman. The shift, however, won’t change Fluor’s priorities, executives said.
Data centers will remain a key growth driver, according to the company. Fluor recently signed a master agreement with a major technology provider and has begun initial work under the deal, said Breuer.
“We’re in conversations or have agreements with the top four data center developers,” said Breuer. “We continue to see this market as a significant contributor to the grow and execute phase of our strategy.”
That growth is fueling demand for power solutions, an area where Fluor has seen an opportunity for the firm’s energy business, according to Constable. The company is already engaged in front-end design for the expansion of a nuclear power plant in Romania, and sees a broader role for nuclear power in meeting the power needs of hyperscale data centers in the U.S.
“Our expertise in power generation, both thermal and nuclear, is going to play a key role in supporting our client needs,” said Constable during the call. “We’re already currently ramping up our capabilities further on the power side.”
Fluor is also navigating the commercialization of NuScale, the small modular reactor firm in which it holds a significant stake. The company remains in negotiations to monetize its position while advancing NuScale’s push toward deployment.
“The timeline to monetization has been slower than desired,” said Constable. “However, anything in the nuclear space that is in startup, pre-commercialization mode does take patience, and we want to get this right for decades to come, not just the next few years.”
As data center projects continue to scale up, several data center developers are increasingly turning to nuclear power to meet energy demands. Constable said Fluor is positioning itself to be at the center of this transition.
“The numbers are just astronomical for power demand for data centers,” said Constable. “We’ve got 26,000 megawatts installed in the U.S. right now. They say 92,000 megawatts is required by the end of the decade. So, a big focus here on data centers, combined with power generation.”