Fluor Basks in Bigger Profit, Better Prospects : Annual meeting: ’91 earnings were best in company’s history despite worldwide turmoil, chairman tells shareholders.

Few corporate chairmen have the luxury of presiding over an annual meeting on the heels of a good year these days.

But Les McCraw, chairman of Fluor Corp., enjoyed that enviable position Tuesday when about 300 of his company’s more than 16,000 shareholders congregated at the Le Meridien Hotel in Newport Beach.

For fiscal 1991, the Irvine-based engineering-construction giant reported a 9% rise in profit, to $160.8 million. And for the fiscal 1992 first quarter ended Jan. 31, earnings increased 12% to $28.8 million from the corresponding period a year earlier.

“1991 was a year of unprecedented political, economic and societal upheaval around the world,” McCraw said in a speech. “Yet despite this turmoil, 1991 was the best, most profitable year in Fluor’s history.”

The meeting was relatively uneventful, with stockholders reelecting the five directors--including McCraw--whose three-year terms would otherwise expire this year.

McCraw addressed the troubles plaguing the company’s weak link, Doe Run Co., a St. Louis-based lead producer that lost $3.7 million last year. “The rising supply of lead around the world has temporarily driven prices to low levels,” he said, adding that swings in lead prices are cyclical.

Overall, however, Fluor has fared well during the recession, thanks largely to its core engineering and construction company, Fluor Daniel.

Fluor’s star subsidiary “is a direct result of . . . our strategy of diversification” away from dependence on oil and gas projects, implemented in 1986, McCraw said. “Today, we have 52 offices and we’re working on over 2,000 projects in more than 80 countries.”

Fluor Daniel announced six more contracts at Tuesday’s meeting. These include a $73-million airport expansion project in Savannah, Ga.; construction management of a $60-million facility for Merck Sharp & Dohme Research Laboratories in Rahway, N.J.; construction management of the expansion of Xerox Corp.’s Canadian toner manufacturing facility in Oakville, Ontario; construction of a $30-million manufacturing facility for SmithKline Beecham Animal Health in Lincoln, Neb., and construction of a cellulose acetate plant in Kingsport, Tenn., for a joint venture of Eastman Chemical Co. and Rhone-Poulenc Basic Chemicals Co.

Additionally, a joint venture between Duke Power in Charlotte, N.C., and Fluor Daniel was awarded a $15-million, five-year contract with Mecklenburg Cogeneration Limited Partnership to provide operation and maintenance services for a coal-fired cogeneration plant under construction near Clarksville, Va.

Spokeswoman Deborah Land said the six contracts had a combined value of $300 million to Fluor Daniel.

A question-and-answer session followed McCraw’s speech. The query that won the biggest audience response came from an elderly man who said he worked 21 years for Fluor before retiring.

“I want to know why the Fluor Daniel logo has replaced the famous old Fluor Corp. logo,” he complained to laughter and applause. “Fluor Corp. is still the umbrella organization, after all.”

At last year’s annual stockholders meeting, company officials spoke optimistically about its efforts to win contracts to rebuild war-torn Kuwait. But those plans have yet to solidify, McCraw said in a brief press conference following Tuesday’s meeting.

“We couldn’t agree on a contract that provided a profit level we were comfortable with,” he said. “But we are still pursuing work (in Kuwait).”