TacticScaleWhat Leidos Does & How It Makes Money (LDOS)
Updated October 2026 · reflects Leidos's latest reported financials
U.S. government IT, defense, and security technology contractor. It earns revenue mainly through contracts with government agencies for IT, mission support, and engineering services.
How Leidos makes money
It earns revenue mainly through contracts with government agencies for IT, mission support, and engineering services. It also sells security screening hardware and defense systems, and provides energy consulting and engineering to commercial customers.
What Leidos does
Leidos Holdings, founded in 1969 and headquartered in Reston, Virginia, is a technology and services contractor that mainly serves government customers. It has four segments. National Security & Digital provides defense and intelligence software, AI-enabled coordination across sea, ground, air, and space, cyber operations, intelligence analysis, logistics, and digital modernization. Health & Civil covers air traffic control systems, health mission software, managed health services, infrastructure operations, and life science R&D support. Commercial & International provides power grid engineering and utility consulting, plus security screening products such as CT carry-on and checked baggage scanners, people scanners, explosive trace detectors, and mobile port and border inspection systems. Defense Systems develops air and missile defense, maritime, aerospace, and cyber systems, flies airborne intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, and training missions, and builds space-based infrared, hyperspectral, electronic warfare, signals intelligence, and communications payloads.
Products & services
- National security software and cyber operations
- Digital modernization services
- Air traffic control systems
- Managed health services and health mission software
- Airport security scanners (CT baggage, people scanners, explosive trace detectors)
- Air and missile defense and space-based sensor payloads
What is Leidos worth?
On an owner-earnings DCF, Leidos's most-likely value is about $309 versus a recent price near $122 (154% below fair value). But TacticScale only calls a stock undervalued when the price sits below its conservative no-growth floor (~$163) with a margin of safety — so the honest verdict here is “Deeply discounted.” Fair value earns its keep only at the extremes, not in the wide middle.
On the financials alone, $122 is below even the no-growth floor ($163); the market's discount — expectations and sentiment beyond the numbers — is pricing in ≈ -3.1%/yr. A bargain only if that pessimism is overdone.
Analysis, not advice. Fair value is a margin-of-safety estimate from a deterministic owner-earnings DCF, not a price target or recommendation. See the full breakdown →
Related companies
L3Harris Technologies (LHX) · Teledyne Technologies (TDY) · Lockheed Martin (LMT) · Science Applications International (SAIC) · CACI International (CACI)