OSI Systems Inc., one of the U.S. Transportation Security Administration’s primary contractors for airport security equipment, fell as much as 10.2 percent after losing a $60 million order for screening machines.
OSI, based in Hawthorne, California, had hundreds of its passenger-imaging machines — derisively called naked scanners by some privacy advocates — removed from U.S. airports earlier this year after the TSA concluded the company couldn’t meet a congressional deadline to make revealing images more generic.
“The failure sounds rather pedestrian but in the context of the recent dispute with the TSA raises serious questions about the day-to-day management of OSI’s most important segment,” Oppenheimer & Co. Inc. analysts Yair Reiner and William Lee said in a research note.
The shares fell to $65.78, down 8.3 percent, at 10:10 a.m. on Nasdaq.
TSA terminated the contract, signed Sept. 26, for the latest machines with OSI subsidiary Rapiscan Systems Inc. for default, the company said in a statement. TSA will issue a revised solicitation for the systems in the future, OSI said.
–Editors: Bernard Kohn, Elizabeth Wasserman
To contact the reporter on this story: Jeff Plungis in Washington at jplungis@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Bernard Kohn at bkohn2@bloomberg.net
