(RTTNews) - Wednesday, defense technology company SAIC, Inc. (SAI: News ) reported a rise in profit for the second quarter, driven mainly by revenue growth as well as improvements in cost efficiency and program performance. Both earnings and revenues for the quarter came in ahead of Street estimates. The company also maintained its earnings and revenue growth target rates for the full fiscal year 2010.

The San Diego, California-based company posted a second quarter net income of $123 million or $0.31 per share, compared to $109 million or $0.27 per share last year.

On average, 12 analysts polled by Thomson Reuters expected the company to report earnings of $0.30 per share for the quarter. Analysts' estimates typically exclude special items.

The increase in per share earnings was mainly driven by the increase in income from continuing operations and lower share count compared to the prior year.

In the preceding first quarter, SAIC reported net income of $116 million or $0.28 per share, compared to $103 million or $0.24 per share a year back.

Revenues for the second quarter rose 8% to $2.75 billion from $2.55 billion in the second quarter last year. Eleven Wall Street analysts expected revenues of $2.71 billion.

Organic growth represented 7 percentage points of the consolidated growth for the quarter. Key drivers of internal growth included recent wins in defense logistics, information technology, and cyber-security as well as increased tasking on existing defense programs, the company said .
Operating income for the quarter increased 17% to $221 million from $189 million in the second quarter of previous year. Operating income margin improved to 8% from 7.4% driven by continued improvements in cost efficiency and program performance.

In the first quarter, the company posted revenues of $2.65 billion, a 12% increase from the earlier year period.

The company's backlog at the end of the second quarter was $16.3 billion with $5.6 billion of funded backlog. This represents a backlog increase of 2% and funded backlog increase of 4% from the same period last year.

For the first six months of the year, the company reported net income of $239 million or $0.59 per share, compared to $212 million or $0.51 per share in the prior year. Revenues for the six month period increased to $5.40 billion from $4.92 billion a year ago.

Looking forward to the fiscal year 2010, the company still expects to grow revenues internally in the 6% to 9% range and earnings per share in the 11% to 18% range.

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