Methodology: how we measure federal exposure

This page explains where every number on Federal Exposure comes from, how we calculate the figures we derive, and what our data cannot tell you. We currently cover 40 companies.

What we measure

We track two independent measures of each company's dependence on federal money.

1. What the company reports. The share of revenue that a company says came from the U.S. government, taken from its annual report on Form 10-K.
2. What the contract record shows. Federal contract obligations to the company and its subsidiaries, taken from USAspending.gov and matched to the company by our pipeline.

The first is the number investors usually cite. The second is built from federal records, not from the company's own reporting. Comparing the two checks each one and adds detail, such as which agencies the money comes from.

Definitions

Reported share. The percentage of total revenue that the company attributes to the U.S. government in its 10-K, in the company's own words and on its own definition.

U.S. government revenue. The dollar amount behind the reported share. Where the company discloses the dollars, we use them. Where it gives only a percentage, we calculate dollars as reported share × total revenue and label the result "calculated". Total revenue comes from the company's XBRL financial data.

Adjusted share (ex-FMS). The reported share with foreign military sales (FMS) removed. Under FMS, the Department of Defense buys defense goods and services from U.S. companies on behalf of foreign governments. Some companies count these sales as U.S. government revenue and some do not. We compute an adjusted share only where a company discloses its FMS dollars. Otherwise the adjusted share equals the reported share and is marked "not adjusted".

Contract obligations. The total amount federal agencies legally committed to pay a company on prime contracts in one federal fiscal year, net of reductions. The federal fiscal year runs from October 1 to September 30.

Obligation ratio. Contract obligations ÷ reported U.S. government revenue. A ratio near 1 means the contract record and the company's disclosure roughly agree. It is a check on both measures, not a performance score.

Share change. This year's reported share minus last year's, in percentage points ("pts").

When a company does not disclose a U.S. government share, we show "not disclosed" and explain why. We never estimate a share and present it as reported.

Sources

• SEC EDGAR. Companies' 10-K filings for the U.S. government share and how it is defined, and the SEC's XBRL company facts data for total revenue. We send a contact address with every request and follow the SEC's rate limits.
• USAspending.gov. The USAspending API, run by the Treasury's Bureau of the Fiscal Service under the Digital Accountability and Transparency Act (DATA Act). We use prime contract awards only: award types A through D, which are blanket purchase agreement calls, purchase orders, delivery orders and definitive contracts.

Every figure on the site carries a source link and an "as of" date. SEC data on this build is as of 2026-10-16. USAspending data is as of 2026-10-16.

How we read the 10-K

Companies state their U.S. government share in prose or in a customer table, and the wording varies widely. A program, the candidate finder, searches each 10-K for sentences and table rows that mention the U.S. government, the federal government, the Department of Defense or the Department of War near a percentage or a dollar amount.

A person then reviews the candidates, picks the right one, and records the exact sentence, the filing link and the review date. The finder never publishes a share on its own. Only reviewed rows reach the site.

For each company we also record:

• whether the figure includes foreign military sales, excludes them, or does not say;
• whether it includes work done as a subcontractor to another contractor;
• the company's fiscal year end, since fiscal years end in different months.

How we match contracts to companies

USAspending lists recipients by legal entity, and a large company may receive awards under dozens of subsidiary names. We assign each recipient to a company in this order:

1. Manual overrides. A reviewed list of Unique Entity Identifiers (UEIs) mapped to companies. Overrides always win. We use them for renamed entities, false matches and joint ventures.
2. Parent rollup. If USAspending lists a recipient's parent and that parent is already matched, the recipient is matched to the same company.
3. Name aliases. Patterns for each company's known names, checked against the recipient name.
4. Unmatched. Large recipients that match nothing go on a list we review at every refresh.

Rules that apply throughout:

• Joint ventures, such as United Launch Alliance or Bell Boeing, are not split between their owners and are not added to either parent's total. We show them separately on each parent's page.
• Acquisitions count toward the buyer only from the date the deal closed.
• Fiscal years. We pair each company fiscal year with the federal fiscal year that ends inside it. A company whose year ends December 31 is paired with the federal year that ended the previous September 30.
• Review trigger. An obligation ratio below 0.4 or above 2.0 sends the company to manual review before its contract figures are published.

Each company page lists every recipient name and UEI we matched, with its obligations, so readers can audit the match.

Why obligations and revenue differ

Contract obligations and reported revenue measure different things, so they rarely match exactly.

• Multi-year obligations. An agency can obligate money for work that runs over several years. The company recognizes the revenue as it does the work.
• Modifications and de-obligations. Later changes can add to or reduce an award. Reductions appear as negative obligations, sometimes years after the original award.
• Subcontracts. Revenue a company earns as a subcontractor is part of another company's prime award, so it does not appear in the subcontractor's prime obligations.
• Foreign military sales. FMS contracts appear as Defense Department awards, but some companies report that revenue as international.
• Timing. Federal and company fiscal years differ. Department of Defense contract data is published on USAspending with a 90-day delay, so the most recent months are incomplete.

Our explainer on obligations, outlays and revenue covers these differences in more depth.

Known limitations

• Definitions vary. Reported shares use each company's own definition. Even with our FMS adjustment, two shares may not be fully comparable.
• Not every company discloses a share. Some report no company-wide U.S. government figure. They appear as "not disclosed".
• Matching is imperfect. A subsidiary under an unfamiliar name can be missed, and a similar name can be matched wrongly. The unmatched list and the review trigger reduce these errors but cannot remove them.
• Contracts only. We count prime contracts, not grants, loans or other federal assistance.
• Classified work. Classified contract actions are generally not in the public record, so obligations can understate exposure for companies that do classified work.
• Revisions. Companies restate figures and agencies revise awards. Our numbers reflect the sources as of the dates shown.
• Human review. Reported shares are read and recorded by a person. We check our work, but errors are possible. Please report them.

Recurring data posts

Some posts, such as weekly roundups of contract actions and watches for new filings, are generated from the data pipeline using fixed templates. Every number in them comes from the processed data, with its source. A person reviews each post before it is published.

Validation

Before any build, an automated check runs on the data. The build stops if any of these is true:

• a published number has no source link or no "as of" date;
• a share is below 0% or above 100%, or a company's total revenue is zero or negative;
• a calculated dollar figure (share × revenue) differs by more than 3% from the dollars a company disclosed;
• a company's share moved more than 20 points from the prior year without a written note explaining why;
• an obligation ratio falls outside 0.4 to 2.0 without a review note;
• a covered company has neither data nor a "not disclosed" record.

The check writes a report that a person reads at each refresh.

Change log

Corrections, data refreshes and method changes, newest first.

• October 16, 2026. Coverage expanded from 23 to 40 companies, including large technology companies that report contract obligations but no U.S. government share. Added reviewed prior-year shares (FY2021 onward) for 16 companies.
• October 16, 2026. Removed contract recipients that USAspending still lists under a covered company but that the company no longer owns (for example, Sandia's operator under Lockheed Martin and Peraton under L3Harris), and moved several Department of Energy joint ventures out of Amentum's totals. Lockheed Martin, L3Harris and Amentum obligation figures fell as a result.
• October 16, 2026. Corrected how we describe SAIC's figure: its 10-K counts both prime contracts and subcontracts.
• October 16, 2026. Corrected Textron's treatment of foreign military sales: its 10-K says the U.S. government share (about 27%) includes the FMS program. Source switched from the annual-report PDF to the SEC 10-K.
• October 16, 2026. Verified Huntington Ingalls' 99.9% against the customer-type table in its SEC 10-K (Federal $12,470 million of $12,484 million).
• October 16, 2026. Added federal contract obligations from USAspending.gov, matched to company subsidiaries, for every covered company.
• October 15, 2026. Initial data set: U.S. government revenue share for 23 companies from their latest annual reports.