Government contracts and awards (AWARDS)
AWARDS collects published government contracts from the US, Europe, the UK and elsewhere, matches recipients to listed companies, and shows each award with its value and evidence.
- 4 min
- 3 questions
- Lesson 3 of 8
Why you would care
Which companies are winning public money, and how much? For defense contractors, IT service firms, construction and health companies, government contracts are a large share of revenue. A big new award can move the stock; a lost contract can hurt for years. The records are public but scattered across many portals; this pane gathers them.
The idea from scratch
A government award (contract, grant, task order) is a legal commitment of public money to a company or organization. Key numbers:
- Face value / ceiling
- The maximum the contract can be worth, over its whole life
- Obligated amount
- Money actually committed so far (often much less than the ceiling)
- Modification
- A change to an existing contract (more money, more time)
- Subaward
- Part of a contract passed to another company
- Agency
- The government body paying (a defense department, a health agency...)
The ceiling of a big multi-year contract is often a headline number; the obligated amount is closer to real money.
Matching to companies is a real problem: awards name legal entities ("Example Systems LLC"), not tickers. Gloom matches them to listed parents through legal entity identifiers and evidence, and leaves unmatched awards without a ticker.
See it in Gloom
open ittype AWARDS for the feed or AWARDS LMT for one company. Tabs: Feed, Company, Agencies, Sectors, Events. Filters: Ticker, Country, Currency, Scope (which publication system).
2026-10-31 Civica UK Limited -- GBP 89.74K: a UK award; no ticker because the recipient is not matched to a listed company.CCY: amounts stay in their source currency; nothing is converted or mixed.VALUEandOBLIGATED: face value and money committed (--when the source does not publish it).- The blurred rows: the Pro part of the dataset.
Companytab (Pro): a company's awards by month and its share of revenue;Agencies: who pays;Events: modifications and notices.
Enter opens the evidence: the legal-entity match, the revenue denominator, revisions, subawards and modifications; o the primary record.
Practice and recap
Try it3 tasks
- A contract has a 500-million ceiling and 40 million obligated. Which number is closer to this year's revenue impact? (The 40 million obligated.)
- Why might an award have no ticker? (The recipient is private or not matched to a listed parent.)
- Why keep currencies separate? (Adding pounds and dollars without conversion would be meaningless; converting would add assumptions.)
Common mistakes4 mistakes
- Quoting ceilings as revenue.
- Double counting modifications as new contracts.
- Assuming every subsidiary is matched to its parent.
- Comparing award shares across countries with different publication systems.
Check yourself3 questions
- What is the obligated amount?
- What is a modification?
- Why is matching awards to companies hard?
Answers
- The money actually committed so far under an award.
- A change to an existing contract, such as more money or time.
- Awards name legal entities, often subsidiaries, not tickers.
Words in this lesson6 words
- government award
- A contract or grant of public money.
- ceiling (face value)
- The maximum a contract can be worth.
- obligated amount
- Money committed so far.
- modification
- A change to an existing contract.
- subaward
- Part of a contract passed to another firm.
- legal entity
- The registered company named on a contract.
Educational material about reading market data, not investment advice.