A couple of weeks back, a CEO of a publicly traded construction firm made a statement in regards to continued quarterly losses. He said something along the lines of the bad projects and losses are all nearly behind them and that future projects will be fully analyzed in regards to risk so that they will take the jobs with the best risk to profit ratio. This statement is all but saying we are only going to take on projects that WE KNOW will be profitable. This is likely hogwash as the old projects were probably pursued because someone thought the risk to profit ratio was right and that the could be built profitably. As all reputable construction companies evaluate risk to profit ratios for all projects, all the time, should the more appropriate shareholder discussion be what variables and metrics will be used to accurately identify profitable future projects? Maybe something along the lines of identifying what issues caused the current losses and building these variables into future risk assessments would be a good plan. A vague statement, with few specifics, just makes me think they don't truly know what happened to cause losses and/or what they are going to do to get the company back to making profits in the future.
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