Questions / Contracts and lobbying
How to find the federal contracts a public company holds on USAspending
By OQRO. Published . 4 min read. Last reviewed .
The short answer
Federal contracts are published on USAspending.gov under the name of the recipient registered in SAM.gov, identified by a Unique Entity Identifier (UEI), not by stock ticker. To total a public company's contracts you must match its subsidiaries through the ultimate parent, separate prime awards from subawards, and count obligations, not the potential ceiling. OQRO, a tracker of SEC and congressional disclosures, does this matching and states when ownership is uncertain.
Where the data is
USAspending.gov is the federal government's public site for spending data. It also has an API with documentation, and the API documentation states that its endpoints do not currently require any authorization. Its glossary is available as data too, and the definitions in this article come from it, read on 9 October 2026.
The problem: names, not tickers
A contract record names a recipient. Per the glossary, the recipient name is the same as what is registered in the System for Award Management (SAM.gov). The identifier is the Unique Entity Identifier, an alphanumeric code created in SAM.gov to identify commercial, nonprofit and other entities registered to do business with the federal government. There is no ticker in the record.
A listed company often holds contracts through subsidiaries with different names. The record carries fields for the ultimate parent, such as the Ultimate Parent Legal Entity Name, which helps when a subsidiary, not the listed company, holds the contract.
Prime awards and subawards
A prime recipient receives funding directly from the government through a prime award. A sub-recipient receives funding from a prime recipient. The glossary's example is a bridge: the agency awards the construction contract to Company A, which awards a subcontract for steel to Company B. Only Company A is the prime recipient, so a total of prime awards does not include what a company earns as a subcontractor.
Reading the award type
| Term | What the glossary says |
|---|---|
| Definitive contract | A binding agreement obligating the seller to provide supplies or services and the buyer to pay |
| Purchase order | A type of contract |
| Indefinite delivery vehicle (IDV) | A vehicle for delivering orders over time, including blanket purchase agreements, GWACs, multi-agency contracts and federal supply schedules |
| Indefinite delivery / indefinite quantity | The government sets a range, not an exact quantity |
| Delivery order contract, task order contract | Names for an indefinite quantity contract for supplies (delivery orders) or for services (task orders) |
Each contract has a Procurement Instrument Identifier (PIID), a unique identifier used to track the contract and its modifications, and each change carries a modification number. A new modification is not a new contract. A company total built by adding every line can count the same award more than once.
Three amounts that are not the same
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Obligation | A binding promise by the government to spend money, made when it signs a contract or places an order |
| Outlay | Federal money actually paid out, not only promised |
| Potential award amount | The total that could be obligated, including the base and all options |
The glossary's example is a base of $10 million with three option years at $1 million each: the potential amount is $13 million, but only what the government has obligated is committed. Our article on contract ceiling versus obligated amount goes through the difference and why revenue cannot be read from a ceiling.
What the codes tell you
The NAICS code is a six-digit code for the industry the work falls into. The Product or Service Code (PSC) has four characters and identifies what was purchased, with R&D codes beginning with A, services with B to Z, and products with two digits. NAICS says the industry; PSC says what was bought.
How OQRO matches contracts to companies
OQRO's methodology states that it ingests prime contract awards, leaves out grants and loans, resolves recipients to a public parent by UEI first and then by verified aliases, and shows the recipient without a ticker if ownership is uncertain. It shows obligations to date as real dollars and never shows the ceiling as revenue. The coverage page lists the source and its refresh rate.
A short checklist
- Start from the company's legal name and its subsidiaries, and find their UEIs.
- Use the ultimate parent field to catch other subsidiaries.
- Keep prime awards and subawards apart.
- Sum obligations, not potential amounts, and follow modifications rather than counting them as new awards.
- Compare the total with the company's own reporting before reading it as a share of sales, since obligations are often earned over several years.
Sources
- USAspending API documentation (opened October 9, 2026)
- USAspending glossary (API reference data) (opened October 9, 2026)
- OQRO methodology (opened October 9, 2026)
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