SEC Charges KBR for Inflating Key Performance Metric and Accounting Controls Deficiencies

The Securities and Exchange Commission today charged global engineering and construction company KBR Inc. with inflating a key, non-financial statement performance metric known as work in backlog. KBR agreed to pay a $2.5 million penalty to settle the SEC’s charges. According to the SEC’s order, KBR’s public disclosures of its work in “backlog” were important to investors because the metric was supposed to represent the amount of revenue that KBR expected to receive in the future from “firm orders” under previously awarded contracts. However, the SEC’s order found that in the second quarter of 2012, KBR improperly included $459 million in its publicly disclosed backlog for a pipe fabrication and modular assembly contract in Canada, even though KBR had not actually received -- and the counterparty was not obligated to provide -- any orders under the contract.