CACI International - Earnings Call - Q4 2025

Executive Summary

• Q4 FY2025 revenue was $2.304B (+13.0% YoY), GAAP diluted EPS $7.14 (+19.4% YoY), and adjusted diluted EPS $8.40 (+27.1% YoY), supported by 5.3% organic growth and lower tax provision; EBITDA margin held at 11.5%.
• Results were above Wall Street consensus: EPS beat by ~$1.82 vs Primary EPS consensus mean $6.58*, and revenue slightly above $2.295B*; CFO noted that even excluding a $28M tax benefit tied to an IRS R&D audit resolution, they exceeded consensus.
• FY2026 guidance introduced: revenue $9.2–$9.4B, adjusted diluted EPS $27.13–$28.03, and FCF ≥$710M (includes ~$50M Section 174 tax benefit and ~$40M refund), implying ~8% revenue growth at midpoint and >60% FCF/share growth.
• Backlog steady at $31.4B (funded backlog +11% YoY to $4.2B); Q4 contract awards $2.64B (>40% new business), underpinning visibility and long-term cash generation (TTM book-to-bill ~1.1x).

Values with asterisk (*) retrieved from S&P Global.

What Went Well and What Went Wrong

• What Went Well

  • Strong Q4 topline and profitability: revenue +13.0% YoY to $2.304B; adjusted diluted EPS +27.1% YoY to $8.40; EBITDA +12.6% YoY to $264.5M, showing resilience and operating execution.
  • Pipeline and awards: $2.64B Q4 awards (>40% new business), FY2025 awards $9.64B, with weighted average duration >5 years; backlog >$31B provides ~3.5 years of revenue visibility.
  • Strategic positioning and software-defined initiatives: CEO highlighted alignment with evolving defense priorities (speed, lethality, modernization) and leadership in TLS Manpack, C-UAS, enterprise software consolidation, and NASA MCAPS (“we are extremely well aligned…we don’t need to transform”).

• What Went Wrong

  • DSO increased to 56 days (vs 46), with Azure terms/milestones acting as a ~4-day headwind; management expects terms to normalize over time.
  • Contract awards down YoY (Q4 and FY): Q4 $2.64B vs $5.42B (-51.3%), FY $9.64B vs $14.19B (-32.1%) due to lumpy award timing; management emphasizes focus on value bids rather than volume.
  • Interest expense and amortization elevated (interest +88% YoY in Q4; amortization +56% YoY), partly reflecting acquisitions and debt stack changes (including a $1.0B 6.5% senior notes issuance).

Transcript

Speaker 5

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to this CACI International Fourth Quarter Fiscal Year 2025 Earnings Conference Call. Today's call is being recorded. At this time, all lines are in a listen-only mode, and later we will announce the opportunity for questions, and instructions will be given at that time. If you need any assistance during this call, please press *0, and someone will assist you. At this time, I would like to turn the conference call over to George A. Price, Senior Vice President, Investor Relations for CACI International Inc. Please go ahead, sir.

Speaker 3

Thanks, Amy, and good morning, everyone. I'm George A. Price, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations for CACI International Inc. Thank you for joining us this morning. We are providing presentation slides, so let's move to slide two. There will be statements in this call that do not address historical facts, and as such, constitute forward-looking statements under current law. These statements reflect our views as of today and are subject to important factors that could cause our actual results to differ materially from anticipated. Those factors are listed at the bottom of last night's press release and are described in the company's SEC filings. Our Safe Harbor statement is included on this exhibit and should be incorporated as any part of any transcript of this call. I would also like to point out that our presentation will include a discussion of non-GAAP financial measures.

These should not be considered in isolation or as a substitute for performance measures prepared in accordance with GAAP. Let's turn to slide three, please. To open our discussion this morning, here's John S. Mengucci, President and Chief Executive Officer of CACI International Inc.

Speaker 4

Thanks, George, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us to discuss our Fourth Quarter and Fiscal Year 2025 results, as well as our Fiscal 2026 guidance. With me this morning is Jeffrey D. MacLauchlan, our Chief Financial Officer. Slide four, please. Before we begin, I'd like to take a moment to acknowledge the recent passing of our Chairman, Mike Daniels. Mike was an exceptional leader, mentor, and friend. His vision, experience, and dedication greatly enriched CACI International Inc and the broader technology, government, and corporate communities. Mike's unique perspective in governance was based on many valuable lessons and experiences throughout his renowned professional career, his critical government advisory roles, and his humble life stories. He contributed greatly to the growth and success of many organizations, including CACI International Inc, where he was a steadfast supporter of our strategy.

We extend our deepest condolences to Mike's family and are grateful for his invaluable contributions to our company. Slide five, please. CACI International Inc's strong Fourth Quarter performance closes out another great year and underscores the strength, differentiation, and resilience of our business. For the full year of Fiscal 2025, we delivered revenue growth of 16% on an underlying basis, EBITDA margin of 11.2%, free cash flow of $442 million, and free cash flow per share growth of over 16%. We deployed capital to acquire three strategic assets while also repurchasing $150 million of shares. We won $10 billion of contract awards, representing a book-to-bill ratio of 1.1 times. As we've discussed many times, we undertook a strategy years ago to become a more focused and differentiated company that was positioned to drive long-term growth and shareholder value in any environment.

Our exceptional results demonstrate the successful execution of that strategy. Slide six, please. The market trends you're increasingly seeing and hearing about today: speed, efficiency, lethality, software-based capabilities, modernization. These are all the result of the rapidly evolving environment around us. Government budgets and procurement actions are adapting to reflect this reality, but we anticipated these changes years ago and invested ahead of need accordingly. We are a leader in the use of software and investing ahead of customer need to develop and deliver high-value capabilities faster, more efficiently, and with greater flexibility. We are strategically positioned in enduring and well-funded areas that align with our nation's most important national security priorities. That is why CACI is so resilient, so well-positioned, and already able to deliver in accordance with buying methods the government has only recently started to more formally implement.

Among the many examples I could share, here are four. First, the electromagnetic spectrum is a critical domain for national security and modern warfare. CACI today delivers differentiated software-defined, commercially developed, and commercially sold technology to multiple customers who demand best-in-class capabilities. Our investments ahead of customer need led to the development of the TLS LAN Pack, which integrates signals intelligence and electronic warfare, collection, processing, exploitation, and effects into a single software-defined system for the dismounted soldier. It is one of the first successful rapid-fielding mid-tier acquisitions for the Army because of CACI's ability to rapidly prototype and deliver a cutting-edge solution in record time. The recent ceiling increase to $500 million supports the Army's decision to deploy our technology as the primary SIGINT EW system for all brigade combat teams.

Additionally, the Army announced plans to enhance our TLS LAN Pack to field a vehicle-mounted option, demonstrating the versatility of our technology. Second, our software-defined counter-UAS technology is addressing the increased demand for protection against drones. We were recently awarded a contract by the Canadian government to deliver counter-UAS vehicle-mounted systems, which follows a previous award from Canada for our backpackable counter-UAS systems last year. We're also seeing increasing demand for our technology in support of U.S. border protection, and it's a key component of Golden Dome. Our technology leverages decades of experience and actual mission results delivered by our sensors in operation globally. In addition, the significant reconciliation funding associated with this critical administration priority will enable procurements looking for proven, ready-now technology that can defend across the electromagnetic spectrum with no or low collateral defeats.

CACI checks every box and more to defeat all levels of potentially threatening UASs. Next, enterprise software modernization is another area where CACI is both well-aligned to the administration's priorities and where we have demonstrated clear industry leadership. Recently, the Army issued a memo highlighting the imperative for significant system consolidation across the service to enhance security, reduce costs, and improve efficiency, as well as request enterprise systems to be commercial-based with limited enhancement and integrations to other systems as required. Our initial IPS Army implementation consolidated 50 legacy systems into one modern, commercial-based enterprise system. Our performance on IPS Army put CACI in a strong position to consolidate an additional 40 systems that the Army has identified. It also positions CACI as the partner of choice for other DoD and intelligence customer community customers as they execute similar modernization and consolidation initiatives.

Finally, in Fiscal 2025, we also began executing on our NASA NCAPS program, where we are deploying a commercial, agile scale delivery model to standardize and centralize software development across NASA, enhancing efficiency, quality, and speed of delivery, a key customer and administration priority. Since November, our NCAPS team has met all key metrics related to system availability and is currently supporting nearly 900 applications and platforms. These examples of how CACI's software-based capabilities, commercial tools and processes, and investment ahead of customer need are enabling critical national security priorities to be addressed faster and more efficiently to drive reduced customer costs and propel the growth of CACI. In other words, we are extremely well-aligned to the environment we see today. We don't need to transform. We're already here. Slide seven, please.

Turning to the macro environment, we continue to see healthy customer demand and a strong pipeline of opportunities in our markets. Demand is being driven by today's global geopolitical realities, as well as the administration's priorities, including peace through strength, securing our borders, and an increasing use of software to enhance efficiency, speed, and lethality. As I've discussed, these are all areas where CACI continues to be extremely well-positioned. This positive customer demand is now supported by the reconciliation funding contained in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which provides over $150 billion for defense, of which $25 billion is to fund Golden Dome, and also provides approximately $170 billion for border security. This is a favorable development for our business, which generates 90% of its revenue from national security customers, solving the toughest challenges of the DoD, the intelligence community, and the Department of Homeland Security.

Looking forward, we are closely monitoring the government Fiscal Year 2026 budget process. Should the new year start with a CR, as most years do, we are comfortable operating in that environment and typically do not see a material impact to our business, though it can sometimes influence the quarter-to-quarter timing of shorter cycle revenue like our software-defined technology. As you know, we are focused on the long term, and we continue to see significant opportunities across our large and growing addressable market. Slide eight, please. Looking ahead, our proven strategy, differentiation, execution, and resilience set the foundation for CACI International Inc to deliver another strong year. With that in mind, in Fiscal 2026, we expect revenue growth of nearly 8% at the midpoint, EBITDA margin in the mid-11% range, and free cash flow per share growth of over 60%. Jeff will provide additional details on our guidance shortly.

Our 2026 guidance reflects our continued business momentum, our robust pipeline, and the constructive macro environment, including passage of the reconciliation funding. It is consistent with the three-year financial targets we discussed at our Investor Day last November, which we remain highly confident in achieving. It is aligned with our objectives of driving long-term growth and free cash flow per share and shareholder value. With that, I'll turn the call over to Jeff. Thank you, John. Good morning, everyone. Please turn to slide nine. As John mentioned, we're very pleased with both our Fourth Quarter and Fiscal Year 2025 performance. Not only does the continued strong performance underscore the deliberate positioning of the portfolio, it's also very much in line with what we communicated to you throughout the year. In the Fourth Quarter, we generated revenue of $2.3 billion, representing 13% year-over-year growth, with 5.3% of that being organic.

EBITDA margin was 11.5% in the quarter, slightly above our expectations and in line with last year. Fourth quarter adjusted diluted earnings per share of $8.40 were 27% higher than a year ago. Greater operating income, a lower tax provision, and a lower share count more than offset higher interest expense. Notably, the effective tax rate in the quarter reflects a $28 million tax benefit resulting from the favorable resolution of an outstanding IRS R&D tax credit audit. This results in both a current period benefit for open tax years, but also gives us confidence to reduce our estimated tax liabilities prospectively. I would also note that even without this tax benefit, we exceeded consensus estimates for the quarter. Free cash flow of $139 million for the quarter represents strong profitability and reflects day sales outstanding, or DSO, of 56 days.

As we've mentioned previously, Azure is currently a modest headwind to DSO due to the billing terms and milestones in legacy contracts and is currently impacting our DSO by about four days. We see an opportunity to lessen that impact over time as we migrate new business to our more standard terms. Slide 10, please. Turning to full-year results, we delivered significant growth in revenue, EBITDA margin, and free cash flow, driven by strong customer demand for our differentiated technology and expertise and by the exceptional execution of our team. In Fiscal Year 2025, we generated $8.6 billion of revenue, representing just under 16% total growth and 10% organic growth, both on an underlying basis. You may recall that when we provided our initial FY25 guidance last year, we discussed a number of factors that could drive results toward the upper end of the range.

Our outperformance of these factors, particularly in regard to the faster ramp-up of our awards, stronger on-contract growth, and successfully defending our recompetes, allowed us to finish the year well ahead of our initial expectations. EBITDA margin of 11.2% for the year was in line with our most recent guidance of low 11% range and represents an 80 basis point increase year over year. Fiscal 2025 adjusted diluted earnings per share were $26.48, up 26% from the prior year, despite an increase of $54 million in interest expense that was partially offset by a lower tax provision. Delivering 26% year-over-year growth despite this factor underscores our robust operating execution while positioning for future opportunities. Operating cash flow for Fiscal 2025 also reflects strong profitability and cash collections, driving free cash flow of $442 million, which represents a 16% increase in free cash flow per share.

I'll note that we did not receive the $40 million tax refund related to prior year tax method changes previously identified as a risk due to a delay associated with the extended negotiations on the IRS audit I mentioned. I would point out that adjusting for the delayed refund, we delivered free cash flow ahead of our expectations. As is likely clear to you at this point, there are several moving pieces related to our tax position in both Fiscal 2025 results and Fiscal 2026 guidance. This is a result not only of the successful conclusion of our outstanding audit, but also the passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. I'll note that we have included slide 16 in the appendix to provide greater specificity about the expense and cash flow impacts in both years to assist in your analysis. Slide 11, please.

The healthy long-term cash flow characteristics of our business are modest leverage of 2.9 times net debt to trailing 12-month EBITDA, and our demonstrated access to capital provide us with significant optionality. During the year, not only did we complete three strategic acquisitions, we also opportunistically repurchased $150 million of shares at an average price of $344. We also took an important step in refreshing and diversifying our debt stack with a high-yield bond offering we executed during the quarter. CACI International Inc closed on a $1 billion offering of 6.375% senior unsecured notes in a transaction that was substantially oversubscribed, increasing our flexibility and underscoring our ready access to capital. We remain well-positioned to continue to deploy capital in a flexible and opportunistic manner to drive long-term growth and free cash flow per share and shareholder value. Slide 12, please.

Now I'll provide some additional details on our Fiscal Year 2026 guidance. We expect revenue between $9.2 billion and $9.4 billion, which represents growth between 6.6% and 8.9%. EBITDA margin is expected to be in the mid-11% range, representing a 30 basis point increase at the midpoint. Adjusted net income is expected to be between $605 million and $625 million, which translates into adjusted diluted earnings per share of between $27.13 and $28.03. We expect free cash flow of at least $710 million, which equates to free cash flow per share of $31.84 based on our full-year diluted share count assumption of 22.3 million shares. This implies free cash flow per share growth of more than 60%.

I'd also like to point out that our free cash flow guidance, adjusted for the tax-related cash benefits I mentioned earlier, means that our expected FY26 free cash flow conversion is slightly above 100% of the adjusted net income midpoint. This implies accomplishing our goal of returning to a 100% free cash flow conversion rate by the end of our three-year targets a year early. As we routinely say, we are focused on full-year results rather than any particular quarter since a myriad of factors can skew quarterly trends. To help you with your modeling, we provided additional details on the slide, including information regarding certain timing trends we expect in FY26. Finally, I'd point out that our guidance does not contemplate any acquisitions or share repurchases that might occur during the year. Slide 13, please. Turning to our forward indicators, our prospects continue to be strong.

As John mentioned, Fiscal Year 2025 awards were $10 billion with a healthy mix of new work and recompetes. Our trailing 12 months book-to-bill ratio of 1.1 times reflects continued differentiation in the marketplace, and our backlog of more than $31 billion represents about three and a half years of annual revenue. The weighted average duration of awards that went into backlog in FY25 continues to exceed five years. Together, these metrics provide good visibility into the long-term strength and cash generation potential of our business. As we enter Fiscal Year 2026, we expect approximately 84% of our revenue to come from existing programs, 11% from recompetes, and 5% from new business. We continue to have a healthy pipeline of new opportunities.

We have $16 billion of bids under evaluation, 80% of which are for new business to CACI, and we expect to submit another $11 billion in bids over the next two quarters, with about 75% of that for new business. In summary, we delivered strong Fourth Quarter and Fiscal Year 2025 results during an uncertain environment, highlighting the resilience of our business and the effectiveness of our strategy. As we look to Fiscal 2026, we expect another year of strong performance. We are winning and executing high-value, enduring work that supports increased free cash flow per share, long-term growth, and additional shareholder value. With that, I'll turn the call back over to John.

Speaker 3

Thank you, Jeff. Let's go to slide 14, please. In closing, I want to emphasize that our strong performance is a result of intentional, purposeful actions taken over many years through the successful implementation of our strategy. It's not by accident. The strategy we put in place years ago because we anticipated what we are seeing today. Our customers need to move faster, and we're helping them do just that with software-defined technology, investing ahead of needs, and six decades of secure performance and mission insights. This is how we built CACI to be resilient. This is how we're able to deliver strong 2025 results, issue robust Fiscal 2026 guidance, express confidence in achieving our three-year financial targets, and continue to drive growth in free cash flow per share and shareholder value. As is always the case, our success is driven by our employees' talent, their innovation, and their commitment.

To everyone on the CACI team, I am proud of what you do each and every day for our company and for our nation. Thank you. To our shareholders, I want to thank you for your continued support of CACI. With that, Amy, let's open the call for questions.

Speaker 5

Thank you. The floor is now open for questions. If you have dialed in and would like to ask a question, please press * followed by the number one on your telephone keypad to raise your hand and enter the queue. If you would like to withdraw a question, again, simply press *1. We do request for today's session that you please limit to one question and one follow-up. Again, *1 to join the queue. We'll pause for just a moment to compile the Q&A roster. Your first call comes from the line of Scott Stephen Mikus with Melius Research. Your line is now open.

Morning, John and Jeff. Nice to be with you very much. Resulting in nice guidance. One of your peers this quarter mentioned they see a $70 billion pipeline over the next 12 months, with about three quarters of that being takeaway work. When I think of government services companies pursuing takeaway work, it kind of makes me nervous because to unseat the incumbent, you have to have a better solution or bid really aggressively on price. You highlighted a $16 billion pipeline of submitted bids, and that 80% is for new business. How much of that is new programs launched by your customers versus takeaways from an incumbent?

Speaker 3

Yeah, Scott, thanks. I'll start on this one. First of all, I don't look at us here at CACI International Inc as being a traditional government services company. That's why when I hear numbers of $80 billion or $90 billion, it's nothing that frightens us, and it's nothing that we aspire to. Frankly, we've got over a $250 billion addressable market. We serve seven markets. We're very, very focused, and we retool the entire company around understanding what is a value bid and what is not a value bid. The only way we deliver $1.6 billion of free cash flow over the next three years is that we're out there bidding things that matter in markets that matter, areas that we can differentiate in, where we're going to drive single-price, single-digit top-line growth and achieve mid to higher 11% margins.

As for our pipeline, the majority of that would be new work to CACI International Inc, and well over half of that is going to be new customer work as well. We are going to talk about the level of the recompetes we have. I think this year, I think Jeff shared we're around 11% of this year's revenue plan at the midpoint, and we're very confident on that. I also would say that the recompete work that we have, because the government is going through a number of personnel reductions and the contracting officer ranks continue to shrink, we're looking at achieving additional follow-on option year work where the customer will push recompetes down another one to two years. There's an awful lot there to unpack, but I would boil it back to absolute focus.

Our pipeline supports the growth rates we have in our FY26 plan and in our three-year 2025 through 2027 plan. Nothing in those comments gives us pause.

Speaker 4

I would add to that. We've talked to many of you recently about the fact that an important part of our strategy is the idea of bidding less and winning more. We are focused on areas where we can bring differentiated capabilities to a position to provide compelling value. The size of the pipeline is important in as much as it supports our growth plans, but we're not on a path to sort of bid everything that we can get.

Okay. If I could ask a quick one on ITAS. There was news the ceiling had been reduced, I think, by about $700 million, but your book-to-bill was really good. I just want to make sure there wasn't any sort of price reduction, no potential impact on margin booking rates, or no debook backlog. Just any color on that?

Speaker 3

Yeah, Scott, thanks. Look, ITAS is a 10-year program, and the ceiling was reduced from $5.7 billion to $5 billion. It doesn't change a thing for this company. Our work is going to continue on this program. We continue to execute it extremely well. You'll get any efficiencies that I have spoken about that we've already brought to this program. Customers are most likely looking to bank those savings now, and you all should hear that as a positive thing. It's a ceiling reduction from an estimated cost of a 10-year program. On a 10-year-long program, the Air Force can always program additional ceiling during any of the next eight years of execution as requirements change, which in this world they inevitably will change.

I'd also like folks to recall that when we won the ITAS job, we announced that in January of 2023, we booked $2 billion of total contract value. We didn't book $5.7 billion. The remainder of the ceiling, $5 billion, over our projection, still allows us for additional 150% growth over the 10-year period if it's fully spent. There's no backlog adjustments. There's no debooks. There's no impact to guidance. There's no reduction in revenue. There's no reduction in margin or any of our three-year targets. We have programs and task order cancellations where revenue is impacted from our current work and other moves that DOGE has driven, but that still stays at $1 million of reductions of revenue. Taking a ceiling down has nothing to do with our growth rates that we have published in our outstanding Fiscal Year 2026 plan that we're looking forward to achieving.

Speaker 4

Yeah, I mean, you've covered it. There is zero impact to anything.

Speaker 5

Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Colin Michael Canfield with Cantor. Your line is now open.

Hey, good morning. Thank you for the question.

Good morning.

The guidance outlook, it sounds like you're assuming DR in terms of the kind of midpoint of the guide. If we assume that the Senate moves quick, like they are, and we get a budget in place faster, is it fair to assume that you could hit the top end of that organic growth guidance? As we think about next year, what are the sort of milestones and timing of those milestones that you need to see to sign on for increased Investor Day growth targets? Thank you.

Speaker 4

Okay, Colin, thanks. Let me cover our 2026 guidance range. We intentionally put out low-end, high-end guidance, and as we've discussed many, many times, we have quite a robust process. Looking at how we would post this current guidance, we strive to not be conservative and not be aggressive. We contemplate a multitude of different scenarios, and we do try to account for many factors that can come up, and that's why we have this low-end, high-end. My first part of my answer to you is I did the calculations last night. We actually have 92% of Fiscal Year 2026 ahead of us. We're already talking about bursting through the high-end. If funding is slower and uneven and we have a full-year CR, that mostly stakes us more towards the lower end.

If the government Fiscal Year 2026 CR is shorter and the budget gets passed sooner and funding remains steady, then we could see us towards the higher end. A multitude of things can come up and happen, as you all know who have followed us for an extremely long time. We feel comfortable that we can support the current guidance that we have. At the end of the day, we're going to focus on what we can control, but we're very confident in executing our strategy. We're going to talk about Golden Dome and other things I would imagine. The only thing we don't have covered, frankly, is if the government shuts down for several months. Frankly, when the government shut down most recently, we had a negligible impact to our overall guide. Jeff, you want to talk about the second part of that?

I would only comment that, as John described, there's 10 or so factors that go into the upper end of the range, and a quicker budget and faster funding is certainly one of those. We have a lot of the year ahead of us.

Got it. As you think about the implied margin progression to the Investor Day targets, I think folks are probably assuming 10 to 20 bps a year of expansion onwards to that mid 11%. Obviously, the delta this year is probably more like 30-ish bps. Not to dredge up old history, as we think about kind of the pathway of this company to mid-teens margins, how do we think about kind of the long-term potential there? Where do you think about the leverage between expertise and technology to get to those types of longer-term margins?

Yeah, let's unpack that a little. There are two or three questions I heard in there. The first one is I'd refer you to the guidance slide in the deck where we talk about the progression in the year. Over time, over the last several years, several of our more impactful customers and programs have fallen into a rhythm that gives us slightly attenuated margins in the first half of the year, and then they move up through the year. You'll notice, though, that the revenue is a little bit more evenly distributed, meaning, of course, that you have lower budgets in the first half, higher in the second. We see in our current view of the year a very similar distribution to that. You see a similar distribution in cash flow as well, where it's very back-end loaded.

We have a disproportionate amount of our outflows in the early part of the year, compensation expense, prepaid expenses associated with certain programs, a number of things that just structurally give us heavier second half cash flow. I think, did I cover your whole question? Did I miss anything?

I think it was fair. You're probably going to wait till later in the year to follow up on kind of the algorithm on longer term, mid-teens potential. I appreciate the color as always, and thank you for the question.

Thanks, John. Thanks.

Speaker 5

Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Gavin Eric Parsons with UBS. Your line is now open.

Thanks, guys. Good morning.

Speaker 4

Morning.

Good morning.

John, I think you mentioned maybe fewer contracting officers. I was hoping you could just talk a bit more about the award environment and if things are generally still moving more slowly than usual.

Yeah, Gavin, thanks. Look, we've talked a lot about this the last couple of quarters. My comment was really around the fact that we've seen some modest impacts, but nothing major. We have talked about some award decisions that are taking a little bit longer. Jeff mentioned that things that used to take one to two days are taking three to four days around slower invoice payment and processing. I'd also couch that with, remember that awards are lumpy. In any environment, we're not a business that I like to say we don't live hand to mouth. We don't have to book an award by a certain day to bad slip 200 people to meet next quarter's revenue numbers. We know how to operate in this environment, and we've seen it in the past.

As I mentioned earlier, I think as the procurement bandwidth gets a little tighter, we believe that could result in a few other outcomes, one being that the current work we have gets extended. If there's folks out there with an $80 billion pipeline that are looking for our work to come up on our incomplete soon, I think the odds of that are more in us holding on to that work longer. What I talked about in my prepared remarks around systems consolidation, you can look at that as also being code for contract consolidation as well, right? If we're able to take 40 systems offline in the United States Army, one at the enterprise level, that's going to save them hundreds of millions of dollars. Two, it brings additional work in scope here, which would mean fewer contracts to keep those 40 or so systems up.

All in all, we're very much prepared for Fiscal Year 2026. Should that workforce continue to shrink, I believe that we had that covered within our current guidance.

Appreciate the color. Obviously, you know, you pointed out it's lumpy, but given you had two quarters now of a record pipeline, any thoughts on what you could do for a book-to-bill for the year?

We always strive to finish the year at something greater than one. I like what history tells us. I'll actually sort of tag back to one of the earlier questions. We are very judicious before we talk to a customer one or two or three years before they're looking to get a system online as to whether we're going to bid that job or not. Do we have a differentiated solution? Do we have the right business model, which is going to involve period point investments and then the types of margins that we would expect for doing that type of work? I honestly believe that we're in the right place. We put so much time left at the RFP coming out that we have a pretty good idea as to how this work will unfold.

I'd hate to be predictive, but my expectation of our entire team here is that we continue to grow backlog. Especially as Jeff's comments mentioned, 11% growth of funded backlog is really, really crucial for us to achieve in our 2026 plan.

Thanks.

Speaker 5

Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Peter J. Arment with Baird. Your line is now open.

Yeah, thanks. Good morning, John, Jeff, George. Nice result there. Hey, John, you've always talked to us about investing ahead of need. Can you maybe give us a little update on what's going on in space optical terminals? There's just been so much talk around Golden Dome and other areas with SCA, and you guys have been investing there a lot. Maybe if you could just give us an update there. Thanks.

Speaker 4

Yeah, thanks. Thanks, Peter. Look, we're having great success with the technology. As you mentioned, there's a lot of strong demand from across government. Our technology is the most mature. We are, through the design and the producibility items, we have had to work through supply chain and manufacturing issues that led to slower production than we would have anticipated. It's not an underlying technology issue. We know we have best-in-class terminals. We know we are U.S. designed, developed, and manufactured. We have a full U.S. bill of material. There's a lot of positive things there. We've also announced that we're on tranche zero, one, and two. We have a lot of terminals that are on tranche three. Part of our overall photonics model is to really grow beyond that as well.

You may have read that we were selected as one of the few vendors to move on to phase two for the enterprise space terminal. This is an industrial market for up to three vendors where the customer is looking to spend about $200 million, $300 million per year, which also, to your reference, does not include any of the projected increase to the U.S. Space Force and the constellations that they'll have to launch due to the Golden Dome initiative. I like what we're doing there. I like what we're doing at the LEO layer. We've got a lot of programs we're looking at beyond LEO as we continue to work with the Space Force. I like where we are today. I would clearly wish that we are producing more terminals in volume, but we are moving up that curve well.

The investments that we're making in that part of our business are on track. We are now investing less, and we are delivering more.

Appreciate that, Colin. Just as a quick follow-on, we've seen some changes with some of the government-wide IT acquisition contracts, transitioning to individual agencies from the GSA. Any impact the way to you guys? I know that you're certainly more on the higher end of things in IT, and maybe that doesn't impact you, but any color there would be helpful. Thanks.

Yeah, Peter, you know, if you look at our larger IT programs, things that are bringing network modernization and better efficiencies, what we transfer to GSA are more on the catalog pricing IT services. Major Defense Department and Intelligence Community IT programs are going to stay exactly where those are. We're already delivering great efficiencies there. There's a lot of language and there's a lot of nuanced reports. At the end of the day, our large enterprise IT programs are here to stay. We spend a lot of time looking at different variations of that across the DoD and our intel community. We are delivering at a very high tempo. We are delivering savings to customers in the United States Army, the United States Air Force, and other areas. I don't see any impact. It's small to no impact to some of that press around IT going to GSA.

Thanks, Peter.

Speaker 5

Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Seth Michael Seifman with J.P. Morgan. Your line is now open.

Hey, thanks very much, and good morning.

Morning, Seth.

Morning. First, I wanted to ask just about the cadence of revenue and growth through the year. It looks like the organic growth will start out kind of low and then move to above the midpoint in the second half of the year. Are there particular items that you're looking at that will accelerate the organic growth in the second half?

Speaker 4

No, I think you're connecting the dots, Seth, the right way. We continue to have accelerating growth on the major programs that we've been talking about, both technology and expertise. Focus Fox, Beagle, ITAS are all continuing to ramp. You'll see that in the condition that you identify as Azure and Applied Insight anniversary here in the first half of the year also.

Okay. Excellent. Maybe, John, you talked a little bit earlier about work with the Army and NG2 initiative that's underway. Do you see that as providing any specific opportunities for the companies or any risks?

Yeah. If you're talking about the next generation C2 program, we have a number of programs across the United States Army. We work on command and control. We're still looking through what type of strategy we want there. It's going to be highly competitive. I'm probably not going to share too much as to what our plans are there, but we expect it. Just like everything else across the Army, looking to do things faster, better, cheaper, and drive reuse. We are fully supportive of what the Army is doing there, and I'm sure we'll have more to share as we move forward. Thanks for the question.

Speaker 5

Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of David Egon Strauss with Barclays. Your line is now open.

Thanks. Good morning. Morning. John, the 20% or so of your business that's Fed SIV, can you just remind us your exposure there, and what you're seeing in terms of the budget outlook?

Speaker 4

Yeah, thanks. How we look at our business is we look at it from DoD, Intel, and DHS, and that's about 90%. The residual in the federal civilian area is 6%, with a full 1% coming from our NASA and ITAS program. You all heard during my prepared remarks, our team's doing an outstanding job. We're off to a very strong start. That leaves about 5% of our overall revenue within the federal civilian space, and that is very specific and very tied to the flagpole work. There are background investigations. There's work we do with the Department of Justice and the like. It really doesn't leave us a lot to have to watch in the entire federal civilian space. That was an intentional strategic change that we embarked on in 2019 to really get our portfolio more driven towards defense and intel and slightly away from federal civilian.

There's nothing wrong with the federal civilian work, but when we sat down and looked over the last 30 to 40 years of budgets, the Defense Department and folks who are engaged in national security, their budgets are unblemished by bipartisan support. I can't say the same in the federal civilian area. I think you've seen a lot of the cost efficiency DoD GSA actions really hitting the federal civilian area hard. As the CEO of a publicly traded company who moved away from that market a number of years back, it really doesn't have any impact. It doesn't really keep us up at night, the kind of changes that are happening in that part of our business.

Okay. That's great, Colin. Thanks for that. In terms of the cash flow outlook, when does the tax benefit that you're calling out, the $40 million, when do you expect that to hit in the year? The Section 174 benefit, does that stay with you beyond Fiscal 2026? Thanks.

It does. Let me start first with the $40 million tax benefit refund. You ought to think about that in the second half of the year, I think probably our third quarter, but it could be the fourth, but certainly the second half. Administratively, at this point, all the issues are resolved. This is just now sort of working its way through the bureaucracy. That takes a little bit of time, and there are a couple of wickets for a refund of that size, as you would imagine. For the second part of your question related to Section 174, there is a continuing benefit. We identified $50 million this year. It's a similar amount next year, and then it starts to drop off a little bit. It's about $200 million, a little over $200 million in total.

Many of you will be aware of the fact that there are a couple of options on ways to treat this. For us, relative to the effect it has on the deductibility of other expenses, in particular interest, this was the more advantageous way for us to treat it. It's very much an artifact of each company's sort of personal tax situation. Others might very reasonably reach a conclusion that it makes sense to take it all at once. For us, looking across the whole tax strategy, it made sense to do it the way we're doing it. You ought to think about $50 million this year, which we put in the guide, and it's essentially the same amount next year. Then it starts to step down a little bit over the next ensuing three or so years.

Speaker 5

Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Jonathan Siegmann with Stifel. Your line is now open.

Good morning, John, Jeff, and George. Thanks for taking my question.

Yeah, good morning, John.

Speaker 4

You're welcome. You bet. Good morning.

It's been a few months since the DoD's directive on software acquisition, which you highlighted really as a positive development during your last call. Now the Army consolidation demonstrates a specific action at one military branch, which you're clear today on as an opportunity for the company. Just wondering, is this potentially benefiting this year? The question we get a lot is just how meaningful are these changes that are occurring at the government and how and the timing of these things? Do you anticipate similar types of consolidation at other military branches? Thank you.

Yeah, John, thanks. Look, every time I hear the word software, it puts a smile on my face, frankly. You know, threats are changing continuously, and there's a lot of things that platform hardware can absolutely do. We've been focused for a number of years, almost a decade now, on what software can do. Whether it's enterprise systems or it's mission systems, software has been very, very crucial to the growth model of this company. I'm very much supportive of anything that the Army and other services do around software, software modernization, and the like. Even our network business is all software-defined. How do you bring devices on and off of networks? How do you collapse networks so they can handle unclassified and, you know, TS and secret and top secret data? That's all going to be driven by software. We don't put new fiber in the ground.

We actually find more creative ways to push, you know, to push protective bits and bytes over those strands of fiber or over space. I think the drive will be to consolidate software in a more rapid manner. I'd also tell you the other side, because there have been some announcements out there around consolidating contracts to be able to get enterprise-level agreements and the like. I think there was some of that ink out in the press earlier this week. The purpose of those types of agreements is really to consolidate contracts to get volume discounts, you know, so licensed products. We're not so much on the license side, John. We actually believe that we should be developing software to support the mission, not have the mission conform to the software that I'm actually trying to deliver.

Anywhere where the government's looking to do more with less on the enterprise side, on the mission side, I think the government should continue to look for more software solutions. They are faster, they are better, they are cheaper, and they're also able to be modified and changed much more quickly and lethally as the threats change.

Thank you. Good luck with the new year.

Thanks, John.

Thank you.

Speaker 5

Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Tobey O'Brien Sommer with Truist. Your line is now open.

Thanks. I wanted to get your perspective on your pipeline and backlog through a prism in which maybe you could characterize how much of it is new work to the market as opposed to new work to CACI only, and also the extent to which your initiative to kind of move towards outcome-based pricing where you're sort of spearheading something is represented within both of those buckets. Thank you.

Speaker 4

Yeah, Tobey, thanks. I'll try to provide some color at a macro level, and I hate to guess on an open line call, but I'll at least give you some level of guidance. New work or somebody else's work, right? You know, that's come up a couple of times here. If CACI is bidding it, it is work that maybe someone else has that we believe we can do faster, better, and cheaper. We've worked with that customer ahead of time while somebody else is supporting that customer to make sure that we're setting the table in a much more cost-effective manner, and we're delivering much better solutions to that customer than they may be being delivered to them today.

Look, as we look at things as Continuous AF building out, we look at the Golden Dome, we look at other things, that percentage of new, new work is going to continue to climb. Do we track that internally? No. To us, we're either bringing new, new solutions to a customer, or we're bringing new solutions to our customer that's better than what they're currently struggling through today. There are plenty of examples in the agile software development area where as customers take work they're doing with others and they want to modernize that and they want to move to an agile software development model, that's going to be work taken from others, but it's a brand new experience for a customer. Those are both getting equal funding.

We're all about taking software and actually moving our customers forward, whether it's contractually brand new work that the customer thought of, or it's concepts that we've worked them through by investing in a customer need. Every time we see a customer who's buying quote-unquote "the old way," we get to walk in there and show them the art of the possible. The fact that comes out as new work to us, it's the same. Having said that, today it's probably, Tobey, 60/40, 70/30 around new, new work, and then the 30/40% is on the quote-unquote "the old style takeaway work." I think those terms, the fact that we're not a traditional government services company, we don't talk about direct labor and takeaways from others, this market has completely changed.

If the market hasn't, we sure as hell have because we're out there looking at ways that we're closer to the mission side. Jeff? That actually dovetails nicely into the second part of your question about outcome-based, because generally in the opportunities that John's referring to, we have an opportunity to work with a customer to design a successor program that fills a particular need in a different way, which lets us work through increasing the amount of outcome-based content and focusing less on the traditional contracts as John described them. Those things actually kind of go together pretty nicely in our view.

Speaker 5

Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Michael Louie D DiPalma with William Blair. Your line is now open.

John, Jeff, and George, good morning.

Speaker 4

Morning, Louis.

Morning, Louis.

John, you discussed how the Army plans to deploy a mounted variant of TLS LAN Pack as opposed to the current dismounted version that's being fielded to the brigades. Is the mounted development and rollout included in the recent $400 million contract modification that you announced? Should we be on the lookout for another upsizing beyond the current $500 million contract? Related to this, how many vehicles is LAN Pack applicable for?

Okay. Let me unpack that. Easy answer first. It is not part of the $500 million TLS LAN Pack program today. Just as the Canadians took delivery of a handheld solution last year as it pertains to counter-UAS, and now they're looking at a mobile variant, the Army is doing that same as you look across the EW SIGINT space. This is based on a lot of the CACI commercial companies that we have and that we've purchased over the past number of years. It's software-defined capabilities that needed to be there to grow as the U.S. military requirements evolve. It's a $500 million program. It actually started from a $1 million OTA, and I'll relate back to Tobey's question. If you really want to talk about quick reaction, performance-based, that OTA was a $1 million OTA within the inside of a year.

We put the prototype in place, took it out to the field, worked with the users, made all the software modifications, and then began delivering that. The TLS LAN Pack program is a standalone program. It is there purely to deliver LAN Pack solutions. The fact that we talk about that we're software-based, this is a perfect real-life example of why solutions that are software-based can be moved to other areas. There are current providers today looking at how do they provide SIGINT and EW at the platform level. Think tanks, think Apaches, think every other mobile asset that any customer has.

We've been doing ride-along invest ahead of customer need to show if I can put this software on a smaller form factor, I could probably put it in a rack-mounted version or a single chassis version and have that sit inside of an Apache, sit inside of a tank, sit inside of any other moving vehicle there. I have to tell you, the minute that our early deliveries make it out to the field, everybody gets to the dismounted position by riding on something which is mounted. It's a pretty simple step and repeat to where we're going. That would be brand and brand new work. Yes, we'll all be on the lookout for something that may come along in 2026, maybe it's in the next budget cycle, but that is definitely a drive to the United States Army today.

I would be remiss if I didn't say that other services are looking at the same type of stuff in their feet.

Speaker 5

Thank you.

I think we have time for one more question.

All right, great. Your final question comes from Mariana Perez Mora with Bank of America. Your line is now open.

Morning, Mariana.

Hello, thanks for squishing me in. Good morning. My question is going to be about, and I know it's probably too early, your Fiscal 2027 outlook that you gave for like nine months ago. If I look at EBITDA margin, you are at the mid 11% a year earlier. You do have some tax benefits both from like Section 174, but also from this new ongoing benefit that you're going to have from the taxes. The revenue growth is quite in line or even exceeding your expectations. If I do that math, free cash flow should be like the cumulative free cash flow for the three years should be more like $1.8 billion versus the $1.6 billion break level that you gave us not so long ago. How are you thinking about that?

Speaker 4

I'll start. John may want to put a finishing flourish on this. First of all, I'd point out that we gave three-year targets. We didn't give FY2027 specifically. It was a three-year number. You correctly note that there are several positive developments that we were unaware of when we developed the three-year targets. We are specifically not undertaking to update them. We're happy to talk about it. You mentioned several points that are positive developments since we developed them. You would reasonably expect them to improve for things like the Section 174. We said that we're increasingly confident in our ability to deliver on the three-year targets. You're seeing some of that performance now. I would encourage you to not infer from that that there's some slowing in 2027. We feel increasingly good about the targets and expect to deliver them.

Hey, look, I'll also add, I think it's absolutely refreshing that on this call in 2025, we're talking about generating over a three-year period $1.6 billion of free cash flow, if not greater, with high single-digit top-line growth and driving our margins to where they are today, if not higher. That has been the absolute focus of the leadership team in this company for a number of years, is to make certain we're getting involved in markets that matter not only to our nation, but to our shareholders. I could not be happier that we're sort of talking this $1.6 or the $1.8 or is it $2 or is it $2.2.

I put those three-year targets out there as a marker to make absolutely certain that as we continue to explain the fact that the government services company that CACI International Inc was for the first 50 years is not the kind of services company we are for the next 50 years. In fact, we talk about us, we can use mission tech, we can talk about defense tech, whatever you want to go with that. All of that drives better solutions for this nation. At the same time, because we invest ahead of customer need and the contracting vehicles are changing, OTAs, CSOs, FFBs, we believe and we are well positioned to do much more bottom-line generating work that gives us just outstanding free cash flow.

The optionality that comes with delivering more free cash flow as we return capital to our shareholders, and we also return it to our customers.

Speaker 5

on the best ahead of customer need. Really appreciate that question.

Speaker 3

Thank you. One final question coming from the line of Sheila Karin Kahyaoglu with Jefferies. Your line is now open.

Speaker 4

We are one of the top three offensive cyber providers.

Yeah, operator, I think we're ready to end the call. I don't hear anyone. I think we're ready to end the call.

Speaker 3

Yes, that's the final question. Yes, I would like to turn the call back over to Mr. Mengucci. Please go ahead.

Thanks, Amy, and thank you for your help on today's call. We'd like to thank everyone who dialed in or listened to the webcast for their participation. We know that many of you will have follow-up questions. Jeffrey D. MacLauchlan, George A. Price, and Jim Sullivan are available after today's call. Stay healthy and all my best to you and your families. This concludes our call. Thank you and have a great day.

Thank you. That does conclude today's conference call. You may now disconnect.