Astronics - Q1 2024

Transcript

Operator (participant)

Good day, and welcome to the Astronics Corporation First Quarter 2024 financial results call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star, then one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, please press star, then two. Please note, this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Debbie Pawlowski, Investor Relations for Astronics Corporation. Please go ahead.

Debbie Pawlowski (Head of Investor Relations)

Thank you, Megan, and good afternoon, everyone. We certainly appreciate your time today and your interest in Astronics. Joining me on the call here today are Pete Gundermann, our Chairman, President, CEO, and Dave Burney, our Chief Financial Officer. You should have a copy of our first quarter 2024 financial results, which crossed the wires after the market closed today. If you do not have the release, you can find it on our website at astronics.com. As you are aware, we may make some forward-looking statements during the formal discussion and the Q&A session of this conference call. These statements apply to future events that are subject to risks and uncertainties, as well as other factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from what is stated here today.

These risks and uncertainties and other factors are provided in the earnings release, as well as with other documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. You can find these documents on our website or at sec.gov. During today's call, we'll also discuss some non-GAAP measures. We believe these will be useful in evaluating our performance. You should not consider the presentation of this additional information in isolation or as a substitute for results prepared in accordance with GAAP. We have provided reconciliations of non-GAAP measures with comparable GAAP measures in the tables that accompany today's release. So with that, let me turn it over to Pete to begin. Peter?

Peter Gundermann (Chairman, President, and CEO)

Thanks, Debbie, and good afternoon, everybody. Thanks for tuning in to the call. We feel our first quarter was a reasonably solid start to 2024, and we think it sets us up pretty well for what's going to be a positive and exciting year. Sales of $185 million exceeded both our guidance and our internal forecast, frankly. Up 18% year-over-year, down slightly from the fourth quarter, when we recorded sales of $195 million, but the two together represent a near return to pre-pandemic revenue levels, which we're pretty excited about. The sales level has been enabled by positive trends that continue to propel us forward. We've talked about these before, and they're widespread throughout industry, so I'm not gonna spend a whole lot of time on them, but supply chain for us continues to improve.

That was a major handicap over really the last year and a half, two years, but it's coming into line nicely now. It continues to get better. Also, our workforce churn, which was a big deal in 2021 and 2022, has moderated and efficiency of our team of employees has improved and continues to improve. Inflation has moderated despite recent travails with the Fed, and price increases are taking hold and becoming more of a positive influence on our results. None of these things are done yet. They're all in work, but they're all continuing to improve and, in that sense, create significant tailwinds, whereas they were headwinds not that long ago. The sales level approaching pre-pandemic levels certainly helps our bottom line.

Dave will talk through the puts and takes in a little bit, but from my perspective, adjusted EBITDA has improved and is improving in the first quarter, up to 10.3%, compared to 3.9% one year ago. That is improvement, and we expect more of it as we go through the year, as our sales continue to climb, and we continue to get those tailwind benefits that I just talked about with respect to supply chain, workforce efficiency, and pricing in particular. Also, now that we're back at pre-pandemic levels or pretty close to it, we have had an opportunity to review and reassert our promise that our business generally works with a 40% marginal contribution model. So as we continue to ramp over the next few quarters, that'll be a useful measure to try to anticipate our performance.

The segment analysis in the press release shows that our Aerospace segment had a pretty nice quarter, but our test segment was pretty weak. Aerospace had 21% growth over a year ago and reported $12 million of operating profit, whereas test was up 2% and had an operating loss of $3.1 million. The evidence is that our Aerospace segment is on a very good track, and we think has a really bright path ahead of it, but our test business needs to improve. To help bring that about, we executed a restructuring just a couple of weeks ago, in late April that we think is going to save in the order of $4 million annually, beginning in the third quarter.

We also announced the closure of one of the smaller facilities in our test segment and a planned consolidation over the next couple of months into our Orlando headquarters for our test business. The other thing that we continue to do in our test business, which I know people are going to be curious about, is working on our radio test contract that we are trying to get in place with the US Army. We're not there yet, but we're making really good progress. For those who don't know, we expect this to be a $200 million to $300 million program over the next few years. It's an IDIQ program, so the absolute timing is unknown, but there is good momentum at the moment.

Some of the pre-award things that need to happen are happening: facility audits, financial audits, fact-finding regarding pricing, so on and so forth. We are, at this point, expecting that to happen in the coming months, perhaps late in the second quarter or early in the third quarter. Finally, with respect to the quarter, demand continues to be very strong. We had Q1 bookings of $205 million. That's a book-to-bill of 1.11. It was pretty strong in aero and lighter in test. And it's really driven by what I would refer to as a groundswell of demand. There was no one big thing or even a few big things that really drove that booking performance. It's rather a rising tide lifts all ships.

We're getting good demand across the business, across our product lines, and it's encouraging and sets us up, I think, for a really good remainder of 2024. We ended the quarter with a record backlog, again, of $612 million. And interestingly, 12 months of bookings, rolling 12 months, ended with the first quarter, was totaled $772 million, which is very supportive of our 2024 guide, which remains at $760 million to $795 million. Digging into the guide a little bit, it's early, just one quarter into the year, and there are many moving parts. I want to talk through some of the moving parts which we're sensitive to and some of the watch items, which will help dictate how our year is going to play out.

One of the trends is just the overall strength of the business. That groundswell of demand is encouraging, and the evidence is it's going to continue. The record backlog and strong bookings suggest upward opportunity for the year, enabled by continuous improvements in the supply chain, workforce, and pricing, as I mentioned earlier. A watch item is the radio test program with the Army. We have it slated for somewhere in the neighborhood of $8 million to $10 million of impact on our 2024 revenue at this point. That assumes a mid-year award. That contract will obviously be much bigger in 2025 and 2026, but we need to get it going in the middle of 2024 in order for that to happen.

Even just for 2024, an $8 million to $10 million impact on our business plan is substantial. And then, of course, there's the elephant in the room, and that's production rates at Boeing, our biggest customer, and specifically with the MAX. I'm going to be a little transparent here with some of our thinking and some of our numbers. The MAX production rate is down in the first quarter, pretty well documented by all accounts, and Boeing has expressed that they want to increase it as quickly as possible. They have not been clear with the world or certainly with us as to what that ramp is going to look like. So lacking any other information, we are currently planning on about 35 ships a month for the MAX. Will they slow down suppliers? They might. It's unclear.

We have not heard anything at this point, but for information's sake, line fit, we put about $95,000 of product on each 737 that goes down the production line that gets delivered. That line fit content, if they were to reschedule us, could be affected. What would they reschedule us to? I mean, it's a kind of a wild guess at this point. Nobody really knows, and we certainly, again, have no indication of anything. But a conservative number that I've seen in a number of places is 20 ship sets a month. That would be a reduction of what we have loaded of about 15.

So if you take 15 ships times $95,000 a ship times eight months for the rest of the year, you're talking about a potential downward reduction in our volume of about $11.5 million of revenue. We put another amount of content on each airplane, which is generally BFE, Buyer-Furnished Equipment. At this point, our general feeling is that that's unlikely to be adjusted in a substantial way. So it's really the linefit equipment that could, could come into play here. So how would this affect our range? Our internal forecast right now is really at the high end of our, of our revenue guidance range, so right around that $795 million level. So from my perspective, we've got upward potential with the general groundswell of demand.

If you take a pessimistic perspective on the Army radio contract, you'd be down $10 million. If you took Boeing, you'd be down. If the rate went down to 20 MAXs a month for the rest of the year, that would be another $10 to 11 million. So that would take our internal forecast down right to the middle of our range. So we think our range is reasonable and adequate at this point. As we get through the next couple months, we'll know what the radio test contract looks like and what the timing is. We'll know what the production rate for MAX is likely to be for the rest of the year, and we'll know if that groundswell of demand, the strong bookings and the record backlogs continue.

From my perspective, there's very little downside risk to our forecast beyond the published range, and there is upside potential, depending on how the MAX shakes out and how the Army contract goes. We will undoubtedly clarify this and update it next time we talk, or maybe even before, depending on how things go. I'd like to turn it over to Dave now to talk about some of the fine points.

Dave Burney (CFO)

Thanks, Pete. As Pete mentioned, we had a strong start to 2024 with 18% sales growth. This was driven by 21% growth in our aerospace segment. Test system sales were up modestly, but up against a tough comp that I'll talk about in a second here. The growth in aerospace and the higher volume through our facilities translated into margin expansion year-over-year. However, this was muted by the results of our test segment. Consolidated operating income increased $4 million to $1.7 million. I should point out that the 2023 first quarter benefited from a $5.8 million liability reversal of a deferred revenue liability that increased sales and margins in the test segment and consolidation.

Adjusting for this, the leverage achieved on the incremental sales was about 37% on a consolidated basis, a little lower than our expected 40% incremental margin, but this was due primarily to the resumption of bonus plans in 2024. The increase in SG&A year-over-year to $32.5 million is nonetheless at a rate similar to the fourth quarter of last year. There are not any unusual items in the mix, but a couple of things to point out. For year-over-year comparison, we've reinstated a couple of bonus programs which had been suspended. For the first quarter of 2024, our bonus expense amounted to about $3.6 million, which is likely to continue, versus no bonus expense in the first quarter of last year.

For sequential comparison, I should point out that the corporate expenses of $7.7 million includes roughly $1 million of annual equity compensation granted in the quarter, primarily to the directors, which won't repeat in the remaining quarters of this year as it vested in the first quarter. We incurred $3.7 million in litigation expenses in the quarter, which we expect are likely to continue through the year, and this was for the most part in the Aerospace segment this quarter. Aerospace sales were up 21% compared with the first quarter last year. This increase was primarily in the commercial transport market, which increased $27 million or about 29%, demonstrating the continued strong recovery in the market.

Sales to the military aerospace market were up $3 million or 21%, and sales to the general aviation market were relatively flat at about $20 million. I should point out that the decline in the other category in Aerospace was related to the efforts to walk away from non-core contract manufacture. We're filling our facilities with more profitable aerospace business as that business in that facility rebounds. Aerospace operating margin improved to 7.4%, a 440 basis point expansion over last year that's driven by higher sales, some improved pricing and productivity gains. We expect our Aerospace segment operating income to improve as we move through the year. Higher volume will help, as will continued improvements in productivity. Also, as new contracts roll on with improved pricing, we expect that to contribute to margin expansion as well.

As I noted last quarter, the test segment continues to be challenged by underutilization and program mix. The test business had prepared itself to meet the requirements of the very large US Army radio test program that Pete mentioned. While it's progressing, the program has not yet started. In April, we restructured that business. Restructuring costs will be approximately $1 million, which is expected to translate into $4 million in annualized savings. Those savings will be split approximately 75% between cost of goods sold and 25% in SG&A.

Total liquidity at the end of the quarter was $23 million, and when we file our quarter-end paperwork next week with the lenders, we will free up an additional $5 million in liquidity. Inventory turns are stepping up with a 2024 goal of getting our inventory turns up to the mid-three times per year, and a 2025 goal of over four times per year, which would get us back to where we were prior to the pandemic. The rate of growth of our inventory has slowed measurably, even as we plan for increasing levels of shipments in the latter half of the year. Despite a slight increase to our inventory in Q1, that was primarily related to a specific new program, we are forecasting our inventory levels to drop over the course of the year.

We generated $2 million in cash from operations, and CapEx was just $1.6 million in the quarter. We are planning CapEx for the full year to be in the range of $17 million to $22 million, and we expect to pace that with improvements in cash generation. We paid down $5.9 million in debt during the quarter. We also executed a minor amendment to the credit agreement that established a $5 million accordion that had expired in January. Also, we updated covenants that had been established in January 2023, to reflect the actual results for the relevant trailing 12-month period as we move through the year. While we have approximately $8 million remaining on the ATM program, we do not plan on using it, since our liquidity is improving as planned.

As we're in a much better financial position now than in early 2023, we are reviewing our debt structure options with the objective to lower our interest rate and improve cash flow and reduce required debt amortization payments. We expect to have this completed mid-year. This concludes my remarks, and Pete, back to you.

Peter Gundermann (Chairman, President, and CEO)

Just want to talk a little bit about the second quarter, specifically the current quarter that we're in. We are issuing guidance for this quarter of $185 to 195 million. That would be at the midpoint, a marginal step up from the first quarter. If you add the first quarter and the midpoint of the second quarter and subtract from the midpoint of the year range, you'd see that in the second half, we are planning for a step up of revenue to or above slightly $200 million a quarter.

That would represent a complete return to pre-pandemic levels. We expect our income statement to strengthen considerably as we get into that neighborhood, and that is what we are very much looking forward to these days. So I think that ends our prepared remarks. Megan, maybe we open it up for questions at this point.

Operator (participant)

We will now begin the question-and-answer session. To ask a question, you may press star, then one on your telephone keypad. If you are using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. If at any time your question has been addressed and you would like to withdraw your question, please press star then two. At this time, we will pause momentarily to assemble our roster. The first question comes from Michael Ciarmoli with SunTrust. Please go ahead.

Michael Ciarmoli (Managing Director of Aerospace & Defense Equity Research)

Hey, good evening, guys. Thanks for taking the questions here. Good, good start to the year. Hey, Pete, just can you walk me through, I mean, obviously, the MAX is a total, you know, moving equation here. I don't, I don't expect anybody to understand what's really happening. But how is your BFE content not impacted there? I mean, I typically think of that as, you know, some of the airline customers, you know, outfitting the interiors and the finishing stalls. You know, just maybe can you just give us an assessment there? I mean, it sounds like, you know, could be 120 planes or so coming out, but no BFE impact. How's that? How does that work?

Peter Gundermann (Chairman, President, and CEO)

Well, it's a good question, and, you know, if the rates stay lower for longer, then eventually BFE would be affected. But what we find with our BFE is that, you know, for narrow body airplanes, we're basically primarily selling to the airlines, and the airlines often are going through retrofits, so they have the opportunity to reallocate from line fit to retrofit for a while. They also are pretty reluctant to jeopardize their BFE obligations. They want to be ready when the airplane's ready, so they're usually a little, quite a bit more conservative, I should say, or slow to react when rates adjust.

On the wide-body side, it's kind of the same story. We primarily sell to IFE integrators, in-flight entertainment integrators, and they service customers around the world, including the active retrofit efforts that are underway. So for some period of time, you know, that hardware can be reallocated from Line Fit to retrofit. And that's why we don't think over the course of 2024, that we're likely to see too much rescheduling of BFE.

Michael Ciarmoli (Managing Director of Aerospace & Defense Equity Research)

Okay, got it. No, that makes sense. What about any shift or change that you're seeing on the 787? I mean, the wide body seemingly still, I think, a good story. Airbus talking about raising rates, and it sounds like, you know, a couple suppliers, you know, may be responsible for Boeing having to slow the 787 here. But any major swing to your P&L one way or the other for the year on that?

Peter Gundermann (Chairman, President, and CEO)

I don't think so. I mean, they, you know, they've been at a lower rate for quite a while, as you know, and we don't think that's a major driver. There is pretty substantial upside potential there for us if they ever get to, you know, where they wanna go. We've got primarily BFE content up to the tune of $250,000 of an airplane, so that's an important program for us. Similar with A350.

Michael Ciarmoli (Managing Director of Aerospace & Defense Equity Research)

Yep, got it. Got it. Last one on you, you kind of hinted at and alluded to, you know, back half of the year is gonna be above $200 million. I mean, if we look kind of pre-COVID, those levels, you know, you guys were solidly in the double-digit op margin. You kind of talked about the contribution margin. Anything kind of preventing you from getting back there? I know, you know, it sounds like labor's getting a little bit more efficient, pricing, you know, I don't know, do you have to add any more employees to achieve those revenues? Or just how do we think about some of the moving parts and the margins?

Peter Gundermann (Chairman, President, and CEO)

No, I think we're well positioned for it. There are no major changes to our cost structure. Obviously, direct labor would have to ramp up a little bit, and we're working on that every day. But one of the things that I think we have going in our favor that we haven't really talked a whole lot about, because we've been talking about more dire consequences or dire topics over the last few years, but we have done a number of things to make the business more efficient. One of them I referred to when I was talking about the test business, where we are now seeing a consolidation and closing of a facility.

I may talk about this more in the future on other calls, but over the last few years during the pandemic, we've done that, like, 5 or 6 times. On a company our size, that's a significant simplification. So I think there's good potential for us to get not only get back to where we were, but to do better in terms of margins and efficiency, with the way everything's developing. I think we feel pretty good about it.

Michael Ciarmoli (Managing Director of Aerospace & Defense Equity Research)

Okay. Okay, good. Perfect. I'll, I'll jump back in the queue here. Thanks, guys.

Peter Gundermann (Chairman, President, and CEO)

Sure.

Operator (participant)

Our next question comes from Jon Tanwanteng with CJS Securities. Please go ahead.

Jon Tanwanteng (Managing Director)

Hi, thanks for taking my questions, and congrats on the strong quarter. I was wondering if you could talk about the opportunities for refinancing and how you're initially expecting that to shape up. You know, what kind of recapitalization are you thinking about? And, you know, just thinking about the last time around, there was a lot of delays, you know, related to lenders, and I was wondering if that might be something you're trying to avoid this time.

Peter Gundermann (Chairman, President, and CEO)

Well, Jon, it's a different day, and it's a better day. How's that? We have been playing a little bit of a game where, you know, the longer we wait, the better our financials and the better our results and the better our prospects. I think we're at the same time sensitive to execution risk as we get closer to an election and, you know, some of the things that are gonna be happening at year-end. So I think we're polling the market, and we're getting pretty good interest and pretty good results, and, you know, we're kind of waiting to see what kind of final terms we can come up with. We could act sooner, we could act later, but I think it's a 2024 event.

Dave, I don't know if you wanna expand on that at all.

Dave Burney (CFO)

No, it's, that's exactly what I would've said.

Jon Tanwanteng (Managing Director)

Okay, great. And then, Dave, just a quick clarification. You expect that run rate of stock comp and bonuses to continue through the rest of the year, that, you know, minus the director bonus, at, you know, roughly $6 million to $7 million?

Dave Burney (CFO)

Yeah, the stock comp, if you back out $1 million from that, then the remainder should be the run rate roughly for the next three quarters.

Jon Tanwanteng (Managing Director)

Got it. And, Pete Gundermann, is there any update on the litigation and what you think outcomes might be?

Peter Gundermann (Chairman, President, and CEO)

No, it's been pretty quiet, actually. I think we're still of the opinion that we're beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel with respect to the LHT, the Lufthansa saga. We're thinking that that could and should wrap up sometime next year, 2025. Assuming that an appeal that's going on right now in France is not successful. We're doing well in France, and they are appealing it, and we're waiting for their equivalent of a high court to get involved with it. But we're reasonably confident there, so then it's just a matter of cleaning up issues in the UK and in Germany, and we're thinking that should be able to happen in 2025.

Jon Tanwanteng (Managing Director)

Okay. And then, finally, just any update on the, on the FLRAA program? I know last quarter or, or maybe intraquarter, the Army made a decision to cancel FARA and, and maybe put more money into FLRAA. I was just wondering if there's any change there.

Peter Gundermann (Chairman, President, and CEO)

... Well, we're certainly working on FLRAA hot and heavy. We're also still working to get a kind of an official contract in place with Bell. We are working on, you know, what they would call kind of a temporary contract to get going. But we remain very excited about the program. I think for us, the FARA cancellation probably was a blessing in a way because we're busy enough with FLRAA and EVTOL and some of the other things that we're doing for flight-critical power. And we would've been a team member. We were a team member with Bell on that program also, so we would have had additional duties there. And given that we have our hands full with FLRAA, we're happy the way things are working out. We're okay with that.

Jon Tanwanteng (Managing Director)

Okay, great. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Again, if you have a question, please press star then one. Our next question comes from Tony Bancroft with Gabelli Funds. Please go ahead.

Tony Bancroft (Portfolio Manager and Research Analyst)

Hey, thanks for taking my question. Gents, you know, great job managing through all the moving parts that have been going on in the last couple years. I mean, could you just lay out for us and remind us again, sort of the longer-term opportunities? I know you just talked about FLRAA there. Maybe just on the IFE, you know, the IFE side, power. I know that there's been discussions with airline penalties for, you know, in-flight entertainment, you know, Wi-Fi not working. Could that positively impact you in the longer run, having more sort of higher fidelity Wi-Fi to, you know, to customers?

Peter Gundermann (Chairman, President, and CEO)

Absolutely. I think it's an interesting observation, Tony. I've long been of the opinion that one of the unique things about our business is that the reality that, you know, consumer electronic products and technology life cycles turn really quickly compared to aerospace life cycles. And we are one of these companies where we kind of live in that junction, that space between consumer electronics and aerospace.

Tony Bancroft (Portfolio Manager and Research Analyst)

Yeah.

Peter Gundermann (Chairman, President, and CEO)

So on the one hand, we've got the real quick-turning things with cell phones and tablets and computers and communication and off, you know, satellite connectivity. And, and on the other hand, we live in this world where the aerospace industry likes to be pretty conservative sometimes. And, and the reality is that people want to be able to do in airplanes the same kind of things they do in their living room, and it's hard to keep up for aerospace. Which means that we always have an opportunity to kinda replace ourselves or upgrade ourselves, and that happens fairly regularly. I mean, power, people think of power as being, you know, a commodity like technology, but it's one of those things that's not easy to do a really good job at.

You think of how a 110-volt system has turned into USB Type-A and now USB Type-C. Power is dynamic, it turns out, in consumer electronics. Same thing with wireless access points. There are increasing requirements and upgrades for security and for performance, so many of the WAPs that are out there in service right now need to be replaced, and we're on the forefront of that also. You know, they work fine. There's no problem with them, except they don't meet the current evolving requirements. So it's an interesting business as it grows. You know, we've always looked at new markets and new customers and new penetration, but it also is one of those where we're increasingly gonna have the opportunity to replace ourselves or obsolete ourselves, and that's a good place to be.

Tony Bancroft (Portfolio Manager and Research Analyst)

Yeah. Great, great answer. I think that's a pretty interesting place to be. Thanks so much, and great job.

Peter Gundermann (Chairman, President, and CEO)

Thanks. Thanks, Tony.

Operator (participant)

The conference is now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.