Linde Names Buechele as CEO to Succeed Reitzle in 2014

Linde AG (LIN) said Wolfgang Buechele will become chief executive of the German industrial-gas supplier, taking the former private equity executive to a company where he was once one of its most important clients.

Buechele, 54, will start at Linde on May 1, replacing retiring Wolfgang Reitzle, the Munich-based company said. In the two years since leaving Linde customer Borsodchem Zrt of Hungary, the German national has built his reputation at Helsinki-based water-treatment chemical makerKemira Oyj.

Buechele, who held executive roles at Permira, Blackstone and BASF SE (BAS), is joining Linde as it battles Air Liquide SA (AI) for the top spot in the industry supplying gases such as oxygen to welders and hospitals. Reitzle, 64, turned Linde from an equipment company to a specialist in the field, trebling its share price in the decade he held the job.

“It is very hard to follow Reitzle,” said Stuttgart-based Landesbank Baden-Wuerttemberg analyst Ulle Worner, who recommends buying Linde shares. “He’s made them into a focused gas company, taken them away from being a diversified industrial player. They’re now a world leader.” Reitzle sold under-performing assets and acquired larger industrial gas company BOC Group Plc in 2006. Germany’s benchmark DAX index has less than doubled during his tenure. Read more: United Technologies Corp. (UTX)

United Technologies Sees Profit Growth Below Estimates

United Technologies Corp. (UTX) said profit and revenue next year will probably fall below analysts’ estimates as sluggish U.S. government sales and tax-law changes temper earnings growth. The shares fell.

Earnings per share will be $6.55 to $6.85, the company said yesterday at a meeting in New York. That compares with analysts’ estimates of $6.85. United Technologies said sales will climb 1.6 percent to about $64 billion. Analysts had projected $66.2 billion.

United Technologies’ initial forecast for 2014 showed the drag from waning demand for U.S. military jets and helicopters along with a slow European economic expansion. The company supplies the aerospace industry with Pratt & Whitney jet engines and makes products such as Otis elevators and Carrier air conditioners that are sensitive to the construction market.

“It’s clear to me we’ve had a softer recovery than what we expected this time last year,” Chief Executive Officer Louis Chenevert said at the meeting.

The guidance prompted Nick Heymann, a William Blair & Co. analyst in New York, to cut his rating on the stock to market perform and reduce his 12-month price target by 8.7 percent to $116, citing its outlook for sales growth of 3 percent to 4 percent next year excluding the effect of acquisitions.

“The most critical issue behind our decision to lower our rating was the notable reduction in expectations for organic revenue growth in 2014,” Heymann wrote in a note to clients today. Read More : United Technologies Corp. (UTX)

Pentagon Awards $2.61 Billion in Contracts Tuesday

The Department of Defense announced $2.61 billion worth of contracts on Tuesday in 52 separate awards, setting yet another record for the year. Many of the day's biggest contracts went not to traditional "defense contractors" but rather to non-profit medical providers such as Johns Hopkins Medical Services and Saint Vincent's Catholic Medical Centers. But for-profit publicly traded companies got their fair share of the Pentagon's dollars as well.

• Communications specialist Harris Corp (NYSE: HRS) did especially well, winning a $140.7 million firm-fixed-price, non-option-eligible, non-multiyear contract for the production of Mid-Tier Networking Vehicular (MNVR) radios for the U.S. Army. Other contractors did not win contracts quite so lucrative.
• Britain's BAE Systems (NASDAQOTH: BAESY ) won an $8.6 million option exercise requiring it to provide a "full range" of ordnance handling and management services to the U.S. Navy in both "peacetime and wartime" through Sept. 30, 2014.
• Government contractor Booz Allen Hamilton (NYSE: BAH) won a $6.8 million cost-plus-fixed-fee contract to provide the Air Force, the Department of Defense, and the intelligence community with software required for the "study, analysis, engineering, design, development, modeling, simulation, integration, testing, demonstration and transition of cyber and multi-level capabilities." This contract runs through Sept. 23, 2016.
• Chicago Bridge & Iron (NYSE: CBI) subsidiary Shaw Environmental & Infrastructure was awarded a $6.7 million contract modification, increasing the maximum dollar value on a previously awarded task order to inspect and repair pipelines at the Defense Fuel Supply Point, Naval Base in Guam. This task should be completed by September 2014.
• Hamilton Sundstrand -- now the United Technologies (NYSE: UTX ) subsidiary known as UTC Aerospace Systems  -- was awarded a $6.6 million firm-fixed-price, non-option-eligible, non-multiyear contract to supply flight control computers for U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopters. Read More : United Technologies (NYSE: UTX  )

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