Park Aerospace - Q3 2023

Transcript

Operator (participant)

Good morning. My name is Doug, I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Park Aerospace Corp third quarter fiscal year 23 earnings release conference call and investor presentation. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you'd like to ask a question during this time, simply press star one on your telephone keypad. If you'd like to withdraw your question, press star two. At this time, I would like to turn today's call over to Mr. Brian Shore, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer. Mr. Shore, you may begin your conference.

Brian Shore (Chairman and CEO)

Thank you, operator. This is Brian. Welcome everybody to our third quarter conference call. Happy New Year. I have with me, as usual, as always, Matt Farabaugh, our CFO. We announced our earnings this morning. In the earnings announcement, there also are instructions as to how to access the presentation either via a webcast or through our website. You wanna have that up in front of you to make this the call more meaningful, of course. Just one note. I don't want you to freak out too much about the length of the presentation. I think it's like 55 slides. What we did is we incorporated a number of slides from the prior presentation, Q2 and even Q1, for context and perspective. The third quarter presentation stands on its own.

You don't have to go back and start checking the second quarter or first quarter presentation to, you know, get the full picture. Those items that we just that we carried over pretty much intact, we'll probably skip over or at least skim over. It's a lot of slides, but I think we'll be able to move through it relatively quickly. When I say that, it's probably 45 minutes, but it's not gonna and we're not gonna go through every slide and just cover that. And of course, when we're done going through the presentation, Matt and I will be happy to answer your questions. I think that's it. Why don't we get started? Here we go.

Let's move on to slide two, our forward-looking disclaimer language. If you have any questions about that language, please let us know. Slide 3 is our table of contents, the presentation that we're about to go through, and then the supplementary financial information. That's appendix one. We're not gonna go through that either during the presentation, but if you have questions about it, please let us know, of course. Slide four. We're gonna slow down a little bit for slide four. This is the earnings results, at least high level. If you look to the right-hand column, this is quarterly results, of course. Highlight yellow, we have 23 sales, $13,867,000. Gross profit, easy number to remember, $4,444.

Gross margin 32%, which we like to be higher, as we always say, we get real unhappy when it gets going below 30%. You look at Q2, it actually did go below 30%. We have a couple quarters where it's gone below 30. Now, you go back to the fiscal year 2021, that was the beginning of the pandemic. We a number of quarters where the margins were lower. Adjusted EBITDA, $3,321,000. EBITDA percentage 30, 29.3%. What did we say about Q2 during our? What did we say about Q3, the current quarter, during our Q2 investor call? What did we say about it?

We said our sales estimate was $13.25 million-$13.75 million. We came in just a little tad above the top of the range there. Our adjusted EBITDA estimate, $3 million-$3.5 million. The adjusted EBITDA, as I said, is $3,321,000. Kind of in the middle of the range for EBITDA. I'll just remind you briefly about our forecast philosophy. We tend to, you know, kind of remind you almost every quarter. Our forecast philosophy, when we give you a forecast, we're saying to you, "This is what we think will happen." We don't play what we consider to be a game of beating a low number that we can beat and then be heroes. That's not what we're doing.

Our employees, they have the same targets they hit, you know, these are real objectives for us, they're not easy objectives. Again, we're telling you what we think will happen, assuming that we do what we normally do, which is work very hard to make the numbers. I just wanna mention that to you. When we make our numbers, it's not that we gave you a number that was in our forecast the prior quarter that was low, it was an easy beat, they call it, I guess, on Wall Street. That's not something. We think it's just kind of a waste of your time and our time to play that game.

The other thing is that we have, when people do that, I know most people do, to us, it's they're not really being honest with you. They tell you, "This is what they think is gonna happen." They don't really believe it, you know? That's not for us. We're not judging others. We're just telling you, reminding you of our philosophy. Let's go on to slide five. Outstanding job by Park's people to exceed by just a little bit our Q3 sales estimate and to make our Q3 EBITDA estimate, especially considering significant challenges with supply chain disruptions, freight disruptions, unreliability, staffing shortages. It was not easy to make those numbers. Total missed shipments in Q3, approximately $650,000. We're still struggling with these things.

Those 3 checked items are the reason for the missed shipments in Q3 that hopefully will carry over to Q4. Factors which affected our margins in Q3, we're gonna go into the next page, is a bunch of factors, a number of factors we'll be talking about. So far, we're talking about top line in terms of how much we $650,000, we missed top line. Now let's talk about bottom line. Let's go on to slide six. Significant inflation. It's not gone away or abated yet, not for us anyway. Raw material costs, shipping supplies, other supplies, utilities, freight in, freight out, people costs, you name it, probably more expensive.

Some of the increased costs were passed through to our customers in Q3 in the form of selling price increases, not all. Why is that? First item is the lag effect. We honor our commitments to our POs. Some companies don't do that. Some of our suppliers surprisingly haven't done that. We'll get a confirmed PO, we're going to go ahead and confirm a PO with our customer based upon the expectation of raw material costs. In the middle of the process, we're told that our cost is going up, even though there's a customer PO that we have from our supplier. We get burned with that, we don't do that. You know, we live up to our commitments. That's it. It's not even a discussion.

It's not a gray area. We make a commitment. We live up to it. There's a lag effect. We need to wait until the next time we quote this customer in order to take into account the increased costs. The other thing is, forget about our suppliers for a second, just the other costs are going up. They have been going up very, very quickly. You know, people talk about inflation moderating. We don't see that. Sometimes it's hard to keep up. We anticipate a little inflation when we do our quoting, but sometimes it gets away from us, so we get behind the power curve. We live up to our commitments, so that's a lag effect. We'll wait till the next time we quote in order to take into account the inflation factors.

The other factor is LTA pricing with certain customers like that big one MRes, which we talk about a lot in these presentations. We have long-term pricing and fixed pricing. It could be subject to fixed adjustments, but it's not often based upon inflation factors. That's also an issue. Inflation is really a burden for us. It's really becoming a burden for us and our people, I think, are doing a pretty special job in finding ways to overcome that burden. It's a real burden. It's not just kind of a rounding error kind of burden. It's a real burden, and it's something that we live with every day, and we continue to live with. We don't. I'm not sure when it's gonna go away. Like I said, people say it's moderating.

We don't see it in our little world. Let's go on to slide seven. Still talking about margins. You know, not what happened to our margins, but things that impacted our margins. Let's put it that way. Some of our lower margin product mix in Q3 than expected. Why did we not fully anticipate this in our planning? When we gave you our forecast for Q3 back in when we did our Q2 announcement, why didn't we anticipate the product mix? My comment is, I think the same comment we gave you last time. Planning is interesting in the world of supply chain chaos. We have a nice plan.

It's great, but as soon as we put the plan in the drawer, then the chaos happens because the supply chain disruptions, and the freight disruptions. Whatever we plan is nice, but it's not what we're able to do. We have to shuffle. We have to move things around. We have to scramble. We have to make things happen. That's the Herculean effort that's involved to, you know, to make our numbers, to make our quarters. Because if we just kinda went as planned, it would not work out too well. Mike Tyson, everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.

I think it speaks to us because we have a plan, but almost immediately after the plan is put in the drawer, the world changes on us and a lot. This is not normal. I mean, things always change a little bit, but it changes on us a lot. It's very difficult to anticipate exactly what we're gonna sell in any quarter, and that's why it's difficult to anticipate the product mix exactly in terms of margins. What we planned is good, but we end up actually selling during the quarter may not be what we planned, and in fact, it has been not been what we planned. Supply chain disruptions continue to cause significant inefficiencies in our manufacturing operations.

If you know people that run manufacturing operations, you know, one of the things they really like the best is the ability to plan the manufacturing operation with some kind of predictability. When you have to scramble and adjust and move things around, it makes the manufacturing operation very inefficient. Again, this is another thing that our people had overcome and did an outstanding job, in my opinion, of overcoming it. At the end of the day, notwithstanding all the obstacles, challenges, and difficulties, our great Park people pulled together to get the job done to make our Q3 numbers. Each person, each Park person received a quarterly bonus, a Q3 quarterly bonus of $200. I thought in thousands. You see up top it says thousand. They didn't get $200,000.

They got $200 for his or her outstanding job under very challenging circumstances. Let's continue to slide 8. Slide 8 we won't discuss very much, but this is a slide that we provide in our presentations for historical context and reference. Any questions about the annual historical annual results, let us know. Let's go on to slide 9 just to save a little time here. Park's balance sheet, cash dividend history, and recent share buyback authorization. We'll skim through some of this stuff. One of our key investors recommended we cover this every quarter. I thought it was a good idea, we're doing that. Some of this stuff is not, you know, that newsy because it's just kind of going over things we covered before. Let's see.

Our reported cash was $103.3 million in Q3. What's our investment philosophy? We invest in highly secure liquid securities such as treasuries, governments, high-grade commercial paper. We don't take any credit risk. We do take interest rate risk, though, because look, our average maturity is 21 months. Interest rates spiking up, you know it happens. That means the value of the investment, at least, temporarily, ends up going down. Our practice, by the way, is to hold our investments to maturity, but the value of them on a current basis are gonna be depressed if interest rates are going up, which they have been, of course. We report, this is how reporting is done, mark-to-market.

It's not the investment value, it's the market value of our securities and investments that are reported to you in that $103.3 million. Just so you know, in case, FYIs put it that way, the amortized cost basis of our cash and marketable securities as of the end of Q3 is $109.2 million. I just want you to have that information, and you figure out, you decide what you think is the more relevant number. If we hold these securities to maturity, which has been our practice, we probably get closer to that $109 million. That one, when the securities mature, you get 21-month average maturity. The present value, $103.3 million.

The other reason I want you to know that is in case you're wondering what happened to our cash. Well, it's not like the cash has been. We're not spending the cash recklessly. The value of the cash for reporting purposes is affected by interest rates. Again, we don't take any credit risk, we just take interest rate risk. We have an average of 21 months, and that means we're exposed to interest rate fluctuations. Let's go on to slide 10. Any more questions about that, please call Matt later and ask him, because that's about as much as I can explain about our how we report our cash. Slide 10. We've got about maybe $13 million to spend on especially the installment tax payments.

Again, we like to share that with you because you're thinking about how much cash does Park really have, that's relevant. This is a liability we have. It's on our books, but we still have to pay the IRS over the next three years or something like that $12.6 million. Cash dividends. Every quarter, we cover this. Let's go to the last check item. Park has paid $558 million now in cash dividends since the beginning of 2005. I give you my comment that I always give you, which is that's a hell lot of money for a small company like Park. $558 million bucks, cash dividends. Let's go on to slide 11. Share purchase authorization.

This has been kind of a hot topic of late. We announced in May 3rd, 23, 2002, that our board authorized the purchase of 1.5 million shares of companies of our Park stock, common stock. Did we purchase anything in Q3? No, we didn't purchase anything, but not for not trying. Maybe the market was making us an offer we couldn't refuse. Well, we've been in a blackout since the middle of November, but during the Q3 period where we were not in a blackout, remember our stock went down to like, I don't know, like $10.11 or something like that. It was trading in that, the 10s for a little while, ten and a half.

At that point, we felt the market might be making us an offer we couldn't refuse. I told you the last time, we don't think it's our job to buy stock. We think it's your job to buy stock and your job to decide whether you want to buy stock or not. We don't think it's really our principal job. Our principal job is what? Do everything within our power to enhance the fundamental value of the company. That's what we work on every day. We're not market traders. We're not too excited about, you know, buying five or 10,000 shares a day. It seems kind of like silly, a waste of time and petty. When the stock was down to that level, we felt maybe the market was making us offer we couldn't refuse. Worked through an agent with our buyback.

They do a great job. You know, if you ever know somebody who wants to do a buyback program, I'd recommend them without reservation. We were looking for blocks and big ones, we didn't find anything. We're told that the institutions are more really all buyers, not sellers, so we couldn't find anything. If you remember, the stock started to move away from us, you know, up to 11, 12, 13, 14. At that point, we backed out because we didn't wanna compete against, you know, actual outside buyers who are buying the stock. I just want you to know that we're not setting a price here. We're not saying that the price goes down to ten and a half, we'll be back in the market.

That's for us to know and, you know, you not to know. That's we won't discuss what we'll do in the future. I just wanna give you the facts as to what happened in the past. All right? For your perspective. Last item, with interest rates rising, era of cheap and easy money coming to an end, we hope, with Park's or will Park's hard-earned money finally be worth something? Maybe. We hope so. Let's go on to item, slide 12, rather. We cover this every quarter. Let's just go through it. AAE Aerospace, that's the Mk 125 warhead with a Standard Missile-2, SM-2. That's a really nice program. Like being on that program. Let's see, in the next, Kratos Defense. Well, you can see the Kratos Valkyrie.

We're really very pleased to be on that program. It's a real exciting program. We love working with Kratos also. I don't know if you saw, but just recently it was announced that they did a new deal, Kratos, with the Navy, for a couple of Valkyrie aircraft. That's exciting for us anyway. Lockheed Martin, well, that's a secret program. We're not allowed to talk about it, so we can't give you pictures or anything else. They are in the top five, so we can tell you they're in our top 5 in Q3, and that's all we can tell you about that. Middle River, yeah, we know who they are. MRS, we call them. That's the like the Comac C919 with the LEAP-1C engines.

NORDAM, bottom right, the Bombardier Global 8000 with the PW20 engines. Actually, MRS is on that program as well as NORDAM, we're choosing to focus on NORDAM this time for the Bombardier Global 8000. Let's keep going. Slide 13, our pie charts. I guess what I would highlight of interest is you look at fiscal 22 and fiscal 23, first nine months. Boy, it sure looks the same, doesn't it? Hardly any change at all. I mean, commercial is actually the exact same %. It seems like the pie chart kind of break segmentation is stabilizing more or less at these levels, at least for now. Look at fiscal 21. That was that pandemic year, let's call it. You know, commercial was way off.

Remember, you know, maybe you do remember, the airplanes were being flown empty. Remember that? Okay, let's go on to slide 14. Park loves niche military aerospace programs. This is a slide we always do. This is, Donna does the presentations. She does a great job. You know, Donna works over the holidays and everything. It's really great duty by work by Donna. Elena is the one who comes up with the programs for the Park Niche Military Aerospace slides. I want to give her some a shout-out as well. What do we have here? The Aster 30 missile. Those are ablatives. The Predator radome materials, the Growler radome materials, structures materials, and the Poseidon structure materials.

If you look at the pie chart, rocket nozzle, drones, radomes, I would all consider those all to be niche markets for us, and we focus really on niche markets more than commoditized markets in commercial and military, but especially military. Let's go on to slide 15. Military markets. Not every slide we have is a happy slide, but that's not what we're doing here. We're just trying to tell you what we think. The new world order, the sea change, the war in Europe grinds on. Many of the governments seem to be willing and maybe even eager to continue to sponsor and fund the war with military hardware and equipment and other things. Asia is not a happy place either these days. There's now open talk about the possibility of nuclear war.

You mean like the end of civilization on Earth nuclear war? Is that the kind of nuclear war we're talking about? Elon Musk wants to establish colonies on Mars to preserve the human race in case we do not make it here on Earth. He better hurry. I don't think this is a joke, not for us anyway. Bottom line for us is that we hope, we sincerely hope the warring nations find a way to end their war and stop the killing soon. You know, what a waste of life. Even if they do, we believe the aggressive military build-ups will likely continue for a while because there's so much ill-will, fear, and mistrust in the world now. Let's go on to slide 16. Like I said, not every slide is a happy slide, but that's not our job.

Our job is, I think, to tell you what we think. Slide 16. Not surprisingly, there's currently much emphasis in many parts of the world on aggressively expanding military budgets and spending on the U.S. and foreign countries. Also not surprisingly, missile defense systems, including the Patriot Missile, are one of the key areas of emphasis for increased defense spending. That's probably not a shocker, you know, under the circumstances. The missile defense systems going to be very important. This is like the preeminent missile defense system, I think, for at least for a lot of missile systems. The Patriot I'm talking about. Remember the Patriot Missile that was in the First Gulf War, you know, back in the early nineties.

Well, this is obviously next generation, multiple generations after it, but it's been around for a while actually. Slide 17. Park, sorry. Park supports the Patriot Missile Defense System, with specialty ablative composite materials. Our ablative composite materials are sole source qualified in that program. Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Germany, Switzerland, Poland, Netherlands, Romania, we're all buying Patriot missile systems. We're upgrading our systems. I think next quarter, we probably want to just give you a list of countries that are not buying the or not using the Patriot missile system. During President Zelenskyy's visit to Washington, the U.S. committed to providing Patriot missile systems to Ukraine. That's a big thing because they've been asking it for a long time. That's like the big kahuna. Now, finally, Ukraine gets the Patriot missile system.

The last item on 17, slide 17, we previously discussed, we're getting a lot of indications about increased demands for ablative materials and this RayCarb C2B product to support the Patriot missile system and other missile systems. Let's go on to slide 18. We're just at the first item, the checked item. We're just updating you because we gave you prior indications on this number. As an update, Park is currently forecasting total fiscal 23 sales of ablative materials and RayCarb C2B product to be approximately $7.5 million. Again, we're just doing that because we've given you indications in Q1 and Q2. We want to update that indication.

Serious supply chain and inventory management challenges continue to be potential significant strengths to the pace of the global military build-ups. Why don't we continue? Let's go on to slide 19. What I think we'll do here, just to save time, this is an example what I was discussing at the during the introductory comments before we started into the presentation. This section of this presentation was included in our Q2 presentation. We'll just skim over it. You know, we're not gonna take time to go over it in detail. But I want you to have it so that, like I said, you have one-stop shop-shopping. The Q3 presentation is holistic, so you don't have to go looking around for prior presentations to figure out what we're talking about.

Just on this slide 19. Commercial aviation industry continues a strong recovery. Let's go to slide 20 quickly. There are watch items at the top here. We talked about these before. They haven't gone away. Still important watch items. The big question down at the bottom of the slide is, if commercial aviation industry falters, what will the commercial aircraft industry do? How will they respond? In our opinion, whether you're talking about Boeing or Airbus, the answer might be quite different. Let's go on to slide 21. You know, commercial aircraft industry is facing this kind of same kind of challenges everybody's facing at the top of the page. Interesting wrinkle is that international travel is recovering more quickly than people thought, and that's good news for the wide bodies.

Go on to the top of slide 22. That includes the Boeing 777X aircraft, which we'll discuss in more detail later on in the presentation. Silver lining, just to go over this quickly again. As jet fuel prices increase, that gives the airlines more incentive to switch off their older legacy gas-guzzling aircraft for the more modern, fuel-efficient airplanes. They'll do it earlier than they originally planned, as they have math. They have their own formulas and stuff like that. Every airline does. It's not that complicated. It's all numbers. As the fuel price goes up, that's a big variable that affects the equation, and that means, okay, now we're gonna switch out our older airplanes earlier. That's good news if you're supplying into the newer airplanes.

Slide 23, GE Aviation jet engine programs. We're not gonna go over this in great detail. This slide we include in every presentation with some minor modifications. Firm pricing LTA, it's a requirements contract from 19 to 29 with Middle River Aerostructure System, let's call them MRAS, a sub of ST Engineering Aerospace, which is a Singapore company. All these programs here are GE Aviation programs. You're probably wondering, "Well, what does that do with Middle River or ST Engineering?" Well, sorry, GE Aviation sold Middle River, MRAS to ST Engineering a few years ago. All these programs date back to when MRAS was owned by GE Aviation, that's the connection with GE Aviation. Even though GE Aviation doesn't own MRAS anymore, all these programs are GE Aviation programs, as you'll see.

Redundant factory, we talked about that many times. We built a redundant factory for GE Aerospace and for MRAS to support these programs. Sole source for composite materials for engine nacelles, thrust reversers for multiple programs, the A320neo family, 747, 2 Comac airplanes and a Bombardier Global. If you go to the bottom right corner of the page, we now start to talk about the 777X, produced with our AFP composite materials. Always like to say, here's a wonderful picture of the 747-8 engine nacelles, and I love this picture because you see the person in the, you know, in the background there. It gives you the kind of perspective on the scale and size of these structures. Let's go on to slide 24.

We have a lot of slides updating GE Aerospace programs, and we'll try to move through them quickly, but they are, you know, important to Park, so we'll wanna cover them a little bit. First we'll start with the A320neo family of aircraft and then with the LEAP-1A engines. That includes 19, 20, A320, A321, A321LR, A320P2F, A321XLR. The reason we say LEAP-1A engines is because A320neo programs, program rather, aircraft, has two approved engines. One is the LEAP-1A engine produced by CFM, which is a JV between GE Aerospace and Safran. The other is a Pratt engine. We're only on the CFM engine. If an airline buys an A320neo and they specify the Pratt engine, then that's not... There's nothing in it for us.

If they specify the CFM engine, there's a lot in it for us. I just want you to understand. Maybe I should have made that more clear in some of these presentations. Anyway, let's focus on the A320neo, the aircraft part of it. Discussed over many quarters that, you know, Airbus is aggressively trying to push up the rates and the supply chain has held Airbus back to a large extent. There's been some tension between Airbus and the supply chain. Why don't we just move on? We discussed that tension and that dynamic many times in the past. Slide 25. This is important. Airbus has indicated its intention to achieve A320neo aircraft family production rates of 65 per month by early 2024.

That was pushed back from mid 2023, which is the original target, because of supply chain restrictions or limitations and 75 airplanes per month by mid 2025. Just so you know, that's a lot of airplanes. No commercial program has ever achieved those rates before. I believe that the A320neo that Airbus was producing 63 per month before the pandemic hit, so they're still trying to crawl their way back up to even that level. This airplane will, I think indisputably be the, you know, biggest selling commercial aircraft ever. Airbus also recently indicated its intention to achieve a reduction in delivery rate of 50 neos per month by the end of 2022. Well, looks like they did that. November, they got to 53.

In December, preliminary report I just saw yesterday was 58 in December. That's a preliminary report. Hopefully it's that number will hold, but that's what I saw in the report. Is that rate sustainable? I don't know. I mean, Airbus certainly is on a mission to make it sustainable and move it up from there. One thing which, according to Airbus, is quite clear is the market and the A320 aircraft family backlog, they're there to support these aggressive rates. Current backlog is 6,349 airplanes. That's a lot of airplanes. A lot of airplanes. Just to give you perspective, at the 50 a month, what is that? 50 times 12, that's 600, right? Divide 6,349 by 600. That's over 10 years.

You see the problem that Airbus has is, if you want to order a new A320neo now, well, I guess they have to give you a delivery of like 2034 or something like that. That's terrible. They don't want that. This is one of the reason we're trying to push the rate up so that the lead times aren't so long, that obviously they want to increase the backlog, but they don't want to keep increasing the lead times for these airplanes. Let's keep going. Slide 26. Okay, some recent disappointing news from Airbus. First of all, they said they wanted to ship 700 total commercial aircraft in 2022. Not gonna make that, didn't make it.

I saw a couple reports yesterday, maybe 640, 672, but they indicated, I don't know, maybe about a month ago that they weren't gonna make a 700, so that wasn't a surprise. Another recent announcement, which probably is more impactful to Park, I'll just read from a quote, "Taking into account," this is Airbus, "the fact that this complex environment will persist longer than previously expected, Airbus will be adjusting the speed of the A320 family ramp-up to rate 65 for 2023 and 2024. It's not completely clear at this time as to when Airbus expects to reach the rate of 65 deliveries per month." They're saying that remember they said they were what was it? It was gonna be early 2024. Yeah, early 2024.

Now they're saying, "Well, maybe that's not gonna work." They haven't said what the new target for reaching the 65 rate is. Although they maintain that they wanna be at 75 by the middle of the decade, 2025. At this point anyway, they're not, they're not pushing that out, but they're putting a cloud over the 65 and when they're gonna get to 65. It's interesting that there's been recent news that the engine companies have more or less caught up because if you, if you go on slide 27, the engine companies were the main culprit, you know, in terms of slowing down Airbus's ability, you know, to ramp these rates. The Airbus CEO recently confirmed that the engine companies have basically caught up.

There are lots of other supply chain constraints, other than engines, forging, castings, you name it. You know, it's a real challenge with the supply chain. Real challenge. You know the story. I mean, with the pandemic, you know, lots of companies scaled back, laid off lots and lots of people. Now there's an aggressive attempt to ramp back up, and everybody's flat-footed. People are, you know, just reported saw this morning, people are still not going back to work. You know, there's lots and lots of job openings available and lots of people that aren't working. We won't go through that in any detail. I think you know that story. In a June 17, 2002 news release, we kind of took, staked out our ground, if you will.

We said, "Look, we're gonna support Airbus no matter what, no matter what the ramp rate is." As of the end of October 2022, here's some meaningful statistics data for you. CFM had that at a 60.7% share. Remember the CFM shares the A320neo program with Pratt, 60.7, so way over half. That's firm orders. This is not just speculation. Those are firm orders. Let's see. How many orders were there? There was right here, 6,816 firm orders for LEAP-1A engines. It's over 10,000 firm engine orders. There's a lot of balance in that number.

You know, I mean, it can move around a little bit month to month, but there's so many firm orders that are already in existence, that share is probably not gonna change so quickly. The share obviously favors CFM, which is good for Park, as I explained. On slide 37, we tell you what we believe, approximately how much revenue we receive per LEAP-1A unit. So maybe you can do your own math as to figure out what this LEAP-1A backlog it might be worth Park. Like I said, Airbus wants to take more orders. That's not the, that's not the whole world of it, in terms of A3 A320neos, and I'm sure LEAP-1A and Pratt & Whitney engines as well.

Slide 28, the A321XLR, we discussed this, you know, probably several quarters now. Pretty exciting program for Park, again, with the LEAP-1A engines. First test flight was in June with a LEAP-1A engine, not a Pratt engine. You're looking at their single-aisle aircraft. It's the only single-aisle aircraft, which with a 5,000-plus statute mile range. We'll go back to that in a minute. It's kind of interesting. The other item highlighted here, Airbus recently conducted an A320XLR long-duration test flight, 13-plus hours. That's a long, long, long time for a single-aisle airplane. That's kind of unheard of, actually. You know, if you go on a three-eighty or seven-forty-seven, you might be up in the air for 12, 13 hours, but a single aisle, no, I don't think so.

You know this, Boeing has said that they're not gonna respond. They're not gonna produce a new commercial aircraft this decade. They're not gonna introduce a new commercial aircraft this decade. Boeing has basically seeded this whole niche, this market to Airbus, which is a good thing for Park, of course, since we're on that program. Slide 29, let's go on to some other GA-based programs, COMAC 919. We talked about the big news last quarter. The bigger news is that COMAC got the production certificate for the C919. Now, the production certificate's a real big deal because that allows COMAC to go into volume production of this aircraft. Production certificates are often more difficult to obtain than type certificates.

There's a lot more fanfare about type certificates, but there are a lot of airplanes that got type certificates, never got production certificates, and never heard of them because they don't, didn't go into production. So production certificates are, I guess, not as much fanfare often, but probably more significant. That's a big deal they got their production certificate. There are 686 firm orders for the C919 at this point, all for the Chinese market, I suspect. They have LEAP-1C engines, CFM again. Slide 30. We haven't really discussed the Comac ARJ21 very much. In the last few quarters. But we just saw a report recently that there were 26 ARJ21 aircraft delivered in 2022. That's more than we expected, so we thought we'd highlight it for you.

You know, I mean, we're happy to be on the program. What can I say? This is for the Chinese market. Slide 31. We discussed the Bombardier Global 7,500 and 8,000 in the prior quarter, we probably won't spend a lot of time on this slide. Mach 0.94 max cruise speed, that's pretty fast. I think that they broke the sound barrier doing some of the test flying, which is interesting. Slide 32. Still with the, you know, the GE Aerospace area. We decided we'd provide a whole slide on the or 2 slides on the fan case. We haven't done this in the past because the 777X program had been kind of dormant and maybe in limbo.

We weren't sure, people weren't sure where it was going. It seems like it's going ahead. The fan case containment wrap for the GE9X engine for Boeing 777 aircraft, that's our end of the deal, the fan case containment wrap. Let's talk about the aircraft, the 777-8 variant, over 10,000 statute miles. Remember I was saying that 5,000 statute mile range for the XLR is a big deal. This is now, this is really the big leagues for wide bodies, 10,000 statute mile range. That's going a long, long way. 425 seats, depending on the how they set up the seating arrangements.

You know, since the 747 and A320 programs have been canceled, there's no other commercial aircraft which is anything close to those range and passenger capacity capabilities. This is gonna be an important niche, could be an important aircraft for Boeing. Hope it works for them. I'm not aware, I don't think anybody's aware that Airbus is trying to develop an airplane to compete against this airplane either, the 777X. Passenger and freighter version certification expected in 2025. This picture was sent to me by a friend of mine from a company called Alaska Aero Fuel in Fairbanks. The airplane is on the ramp at the Alaska Aero Fuel ramp in Fairbanks. This is one of the test aircraft doing cold weather testing in Fairbanks in the winter.

You know, if you want to do cold weather testing of an airplane, Fairbanks is the place to go because, you know, you could easily see -40, -50 degrees temperatures. I really like that picture, so I thought I'd share it with you. Slide 33. I'm going to try to move a little faster, I guess. Continuing with the 777X program, there was a little bit of an interruption in the test program, and it's been resumed, 353 firm orders. What do we do? We produce composite, AFP composite materials for the GE9X fan case. We have significant forensic content in this program. We recently quoted materials for the program exceeding $1.2 million. Why am I sharing that with you?

Not so much the number, just to say, "Yeah, this looks like it, you know, is getting real now for Park." We haven't received the POs yet, I wanna make that clear, but we did receive a quote request for, which we did quote $1.2 million approximately for delivery in 2023. Remember there's that design risk. We've talked about this in the past. The company that makes the fan case is trying to redesign their fan case, so a case wrap is not necessary, so the fan case can pass the fan blade out test without a case wrap. Slide 34, 747, Queen of the Skies. The last 747 rolled out of a Boeing Everett, Washington factory, December 6, 2022.

It was unit number 1,574. It'll be delivered to Atlas Air in early 2023. First, 747 was delivered to Pan Am, January 22nd, 1970. This is the airplane that changed the world. It's heartbreaking, at least for me, to see that, to see this program end. This picture was taken October 10, 2022 in Anchorage. Obviously an Atlas Air 747-8, and they get the last one. Anyway, okay. I took that picture. Let's move on to slide 35. This is where it gets a little complicated. You kind of think, "What the heck is going on here?" If you look at the history on the left-hand side of the...

left-hand column with the numbers, you see in fiscal 2022 and fiscal 2023, it's $6+ million per quarter for GE Aviation program sale history, and forecast estimates. $6 million-$7 million per quarter. The prior year was the pandemic year, so the numbers were much lower. In 2022 and then first two quarters of 2023, over $6 million per quarter. Then in Q3, at $5 million, the recent quarter, $5 million. We actually estimated, I think, four and a quarter, four and three quarters when we did the Q2 presentation. We came a little bit above that, but still well below the history. We're thinking, "What's going on here?" You know, the programs aren't going down, the programs are going up. Let's go to the right side.

GE Aviation Program forecast estimate for Q4. We're now again estimating $4.25 million to $4.75 million. If you do the totals, that's just adding up the year to date through Q3 with the estimate for Q4. That's just doing math. I wanna mention to you that we have $5.8 million already booked for Q1, for fiscal 2024 Q1, and we would expect to book more, you know, before book and ship more than that. What the heck is going on here? That could be a watch out sign, maybe a warning sign. Let's go on to the next slide. What the heck is going on here? Part two. Downstream inventory, production management challenges, dislocations causing serious misalignments between the aircraft program rates and the Park's material production rates.

At some point, maybe soon, those misalignments will be unsustainable and will reach a breaking point. The day of reckoning could lead to abrupt and even wrenching adjustments and realignments. It's just math. You know, if our production isn't matching what Airbus is doing and the other companies that are using these GE engines, something's got to give at some point. Remember, we're sole source these programs. On a day-to-day basis, downstream dislocations create major challenges for Park in managing our production and supply chain activities. We're trying to get some visibility, you know, we keep getting this, these kind of strange indications as we saw in Q2, sorry, Q3 and now Q4. This is a big one for us anyway.

Over the long term, only things, or 2 things which matter to Park in connection with the GE Aerospace programs we support are how many airplanes are delivered that have these engines on them. The LEAP, the A320neo with LEAP-1A, C919, the ARJ21, the Global 7500, 8000, and the 777X. The other thing that matters, if you want to complete the equation, is the top of 537, the expected Park revenue per engine unit for those programs based upon the Park material usage per engine unit for those programs which usage is given to us by our customer. Starting in 2025, we're giving you this information because we kind of got exasperated trying to predict what's going to happen.

We're gonna tell you now what our estimated revenue per engine is. You could decide how many units you want to assume in terms of doing the math. Starting in 2025, based upon the program engine unit material usage information provided to us by the customer, the estimated Park revenues by program engine unit is approximately as follows. For the A320neo family, $30.5 thousand. For the ARJ21, $29.5 thousand. The C919, $26.5 thousand. The Global 7500, 8000, $49 thousand. There are assumptions contained in each of these items which, you know, you need to look at. We're not predicting those things will happen.

We're just doing the best we can to kind of guess as to what will happen based upon indications from, our customer. This particularly relates to LSP and film adhesives. You know, which programs will be using our LSP products that are not using them now, and film adhesives that are not using them now. We have to make some assumptions there. We made the assumptions we think are reasonable, but they may or may not end up being correct. I just want to make sure you understand that. The last item, GE9X fan case, it's significant. We're not going to give you a number yet. It's still kind of a new program. I think it's a little early to do that.

Of course, there is the risk that the program, that the fan case is redesigned and the program doesn't continue. Okay. Slide 39. Now let's talk about Park's financial performance, history, and forecast estimates. Nothing too earth shattering here, I don't think. I just want to mention to you that we just, you know, kind of covered this. If you look at the sales numbers for fiscal 20, the quarters for fiscal 22 and 23, remember through Q2 that the GE Aerospace program sales were $6 million plus each of those quarters. All right? In the Q3, the current quarter, only $5 million, the total sales were still $13.9 million.

Somebody who's pretty smart figured it out and said, "What's going on here?" Obviously, we're getting to those numbers by making up the lack of GE Aviation sales with non-GE Aviation sales. If you look at the forecast for Q4, thirteen and a half million dollars to $14 million, what we're estimating. You know, we're only estimating a four and a half million dollars GE Aviation sales. Again, I think you should be thinking about that. It probably means that the non-GE Aviation sales are moving the right direction. EBITDA estimate, $3 million-$3.5 million. For fiscal 23, again, we're just kind of doing the math. We're taking year-to-date and adding the estimate for Q4, and those are the numbers we come up with. Let's go on to slide 40.

This we're gonna skip because we covered these comments and thoughts about our forecast and outlook during the last couple quarters, and not too much change to them. We feel just to reiterate that to provide a long-term forecast under the circumstances of great uncertainty that we're dealing with wouldn't be that meaningful. If you wanna skip, we can do that to slide 43. The end of this section, we're saying that based upon all these considerations, although there are serious concerns about the economy, inflation, workforce shortages, supply chain challenges, we believe the outlook for Park is quite positive. We don't think that we're in a position to provide a meaningful long-term forecast with numbers.

We are able to say, based upon this discussion, that we think the outlook for Park is quite positive. Let's go on to slide 44. Just some quick updates here. The expansion. The expansion is basically complete. The qualification should be done in a few months. That middle picture, we have and there's a, the top and bottom picture, we showed those before. The middle picture, though, is a passageway between the new plant and the old plant. We're looking at it from the new plant, looking to the old plant. If you look at the top picture in the back, you see there's that passageway right at the top of the picture. I don't know if you can see it.

There's a sign in this picture, or the passageway picture on the right, it basically says it's a fire door, if there's a fire, that door will close automatically. Why is that? Remember, this is redundant factory. If there's anything that goes and happens to one factory, you wanna make sure it's isolated, so it doesn't migrate into the other factory. Why don't we go on slide 45, James Webb. We talk about this every quarter. No more revenue for Park. You know, I don't think we're gonna get any more product up in the James Webb Space Telescope. It's 1 million miles from Earth right now. It does have our 21 Sigma Struts incorporated into the structure. Those struts are critical.

You know, without those struts, that telescope structure wouldn't work. It wouldn't happen. It just would collapse. Couple interesting items. The James Webb spotted concentric angular rings around a giant star, showing first visual evidence of light pushing dust around. To the right of it is an image of that. I have no idea what it means, to me, it just, you know, it seems very awe-inspiring. James Webb uncovers dense cosmic knot in the early universe. Again, that's way above my pay scale, to me, it just seems so inspiring to, you know, hear these kind of things about our comprehension, new comprehension, new insights, let's put it that way, into the universe. Slide 46. Okay. We talked about this Aero Design Lab program over the last couple of quarters, the ADRS program.

Park's materials are currently sole source qualified on this program. There are over 6,000 Boeing 737NG aircraft in service. This program is for the Boeing 737NG aircraft. In May of 2022, the ADL received an SDC for the 737-700. In November, ADL entered into an MOU with Delta to do the testing and certification for its kits for the 737-800 and -900 variants. That's all good. Based upon the forecast provided by the customer, Park expects to receive revenues of approximately $2 million in calendar year 2023 related to this program. Actually, a good portion is already booked, I think. Why are we telling you that?

Only because we want you to know that this seems like it's real, it's happening. We're not the customer. ADL asks us to keep it low-key. We're not gonna provide additional information about the program, the expectations, the forecast. We're not going there. We wanted to at least cover this. The part about Delta, that's public. That was just a, you know, in the news release. We're not disclosing anything that you probably don't already know. We'll consider additional investment to support this program if necessary. This could be a big thing for Park, we're happy about that. Let's see what happens. Slide 47. Okay, last quarter, we talked about AFP, update on Park on potential automated fiber placement, AFP manufacturing project initiative. We originally discussed this during our Q2 call, as I just said. Let's do an update.

Not much of an update. The project is under serious consideration and review. We haven't made a decision yet. It's a front burner project for us. We're seeing a lot of high-level attention and focus. However, just wanna let you know, there's a potential, the potential AFP manufacturing project is competing for high-level Park management attention and focus with a potential major multi-front JV project with a large aerospace company. This is something that's just been developing the last 6 months, but that's become a front burner project as well. The potential JV project is undergoing serious consideration and review, receiving a significant amount of attention. It's somewhat of a balancing act for little Park to manage both these important potential opportunities at the same time. Good problem to have. I just wanted you to know that.

This is the, you know, reward part of it. Let's go on to 48. These slides are the same slides that were included in the prior presentation about the potential AFP project. To us, AFP is a very interesting potential strategic opportunity for Park. In the slides, the next few slides, we go through the reasons why we think AFP is interesting. We're not gonna go back and review all the slides just to save some time. Obviously, if you have any questions, let us know. Slides 48 through 51 were pretty much what was contained in the Q2 presentation with some minor changes. Let's go on to slide 52. We're almost there. The Park family. Updates on Park's great customer flex program. We feature this every quarter, and we should because it's really important.

It would just not be possible to continue to get the job done under current very challenging circumstances without our customer flex program. Just not possible. Park's current people count, 112. Well, that's some progress. It's still not where we wanna be, but our current people count of 112 is up from the people count of 99 reported in our Q2 investor presentation. The great news is all the progress we made has been made the right way, the Park way. Beautiful picture of a few of the guys that won our 2002 holiday party paper airplane throwing contest. This is an annual event at Park. Congratulations to those guys. I won't mention their names right now. I wanna point out something.

In Q3, we were kind of limping along at 98, 99, 100, 101, 102. It's only after Q3 that we really ramped up to this 112 number. Everything that was got, everything got done, the $13.9 million that we shipped in Q3, we shipped a very, very stretched staff to a very short staff, on maybe 100, 101, 102. You know, just want you to be aware of that. Slide 53. We do not sell out or compromise our sacred principles in order to recruit the additional people we need. That's really important. Just so you know, other companies, much larger companies, continue to aggressively target our people for recruitment.

Question. When things feel bad, and sooner or later, we know they know, we all know they will, what will these larger companies do with the people they aggressively recruited? So yeah, we all know the answer to that question. As soon as these people are needed, they'll be thrown out like yesterday's garbage on the, on the garbage heap, which is what happens every time in the past. That's why I'm saying that. I don't think that's an outrageous comment to make because that's exactly what's happened, you know, every time in the past. You think that in the boardrooms of these companies that are, you know, hiring you know, 1,000 people at a time, throwing money, hiring bonuses, big money at these people, you think they're agonizing and hand-wringing over, oh my God, what happens when the aircraft rates go down?

What are we gonna do with all those people? It's not even being considered. Why? Because we know what they're gonna do. They're gonna throw them on the garbage heap like they always do, the people they hired. The good news is that we continue, Park continues to make progress recruiting and retraining people the right way, the Park way, notwithstanding what these other companies might do or not do. When we hire someone, our attitude is we hire for life. We won't casually just throw money at people or hire, let's bring on 25 people. They're for life. It doesn't mean if there are plenty of people and Park is not right for them or vice versa. If that's the case, somebody doesn't have the right attitude for Park, they're not gonna stay at Park. I'm not talking about that.

I'm talking about good people, the right attitudes. Our attitude when we hire somebody, we think about it carefully. Seriously. We're committed to them for life. We're not gonna throw them in a garbage heap as soon as, you know, business is down. We didn't do that during the pandemic. You know, our business, we had less than, I think, we had $9 million of sales one quarter. We didn't do it then. That's not our intention. Our attitude is not. People are not commodities, they're not pork bellies to be traded, you know, bid up and bid down. That's different. That's when I say we do things the Park way. That's one example of what we're talking about. Let's go on to slide 54.

Our people have been through a lot together over the last few years, many challenges and hardships and adversity to overcome. I won't give you a list, you probably can figure that out yourself. The wonderful news is that having endured and overcome the hardships, adversity, and challenges together, our Park family has, sorry, has come together more closely and tightly than ever before. With a dedicated, motivated, and inspired workforce, a company can move mountains. Without such a workforce, a company can move nothing. Our people are moving mountains. You know, to have 100 people push out $13.9 million on a quarter, there's some mountains being moved. I'll tell you that. Park is very fortunate to have the wonderful people we have. The last slide, this is the Christmas party.

You can see some of these folks with their Christmas ugly sweaters. This was, this is probably most of the Park people. It's not all 112 of them. We had a very nice Christmas party, and we thought we'd take a picture of the Park family for you. Sorry I went on so long. We're just about an hour into the presentation, Operator, we're ready to take questions if there are any. Thank you, everybody, for listening so far.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, at this time, we will be conducting a question-and-answer session. If you'd like to ask a question, you may press star one on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star two if you would like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star key. Our first question comes from the line of Nick Respeto with NR Management. Please proceed with your question.

Nick Rispatella (Analyst)

Thank you. First of all, Happy New Year, again, thank you for your very comprehensive presentation. I listen to so many conference calls, really, Park has about the most comprehensive presentation. It's wonderful. First time in all my years I've ever seen Vito Corleone mentioned in a presentation, by the way. I got a kick out of that. My question is, I know this might be a little difficult for you, the language you have in the slide about the China program, COMAC, significant upside potential. If there's any way you can quantify, you know, in your wildest dreams or just a range of what this might mean for Park, you know, a couple of years down the road. That's first. Secondly, you know, it is China. There's a lot of, let's say, tension.

Do you see any risk, politically for Park as a supplier in this program? Finally, this is kind of just a big picture question, Brian, how would you characterize Park's competitive position? You know, your moat, for lack of a better word. Okay, thank you.

Brian Shore (Chairman and CEO)

Thank you, Nick, Happy New Year to you. Appreciate the input. Just let me say, and if to the extent people are still listening, if there's anything you would like us to cover in presentations in the future, please let us know. This time is your time. It's not our time. It's not our opportunity to hype and promote our company and tell you how smart we are. It's, you know, an attempt to communicate to you what we think might be meaningful in terms of understanding Park, our business, and our objectives. Nick, the 919 program, what's the upside potential? You know, right now it's basically at, you know, kind of almost 0. The question is how many 919s COMAC produces.

The good news for COMAC is they have a captive market, which is a Chinese market, and it's a controlled market. The Chinese government will dictate to some extent, my opinion anyway, what Chinese airline what airplanes the Chinese airlines are buying. I, you know, we've seen some numbers coming out of COMAC, and we're reluctant to pass those on. We're not sure what they mean and, you know, in terms of forecasts and then, you know, ramp rates and stuff like that. We're reluctant to pass those on. We're not sure how much we can count on them. I mean, starting at zero, I mean,

Let's say they get to 100 airplanes per year, I'm just putting that number out there, you know, as compared to 75 airplanes per month, which is what the A320neo program is target is. That's still a lot of revenue for Park. What we did this time was we actually decided we'd give you the revenue per program so you kind of do your own math. Obviously, I think you know this, there are two engines per C919, so you have to multiply that by two. The good news with the C919 is that engine, the LEAP-1C engine, that program only uses a LEAP engine, only uses CFM engine. It's not a shared program with Pratt.

All the C919s that are produced are gonna be using that LEAP engine, LEAP-1C engine with the Park materials. The risk, it's a good point. I don't know how to quantify it. I would never say never. I guess the counterargument or consideration might be this, that the C919's a very important prestige program for the Chinese government, and there's a lot of risk in changing. Once you get an aircraft going, there's a lot of risk, a lot of expense, a lot of hassle in changing courses midstream. For them to decide they wanna change engines or change suppliers in the nacelle structures, anything's possible, but it's a lot of effort, a lot of risk, and it's a risk for their program, which they know the world is watching, is my opinion again.

I don't think they want any hiccups. I think they want a smooth introduction of this airplane into their market. They want the world to see how the world to be impressed with how it's going. I think they're gonna be reluctant, I guess, if you're smart, to throw variables into the program that really aren't necessary for them, that could cause some setbacks in the program, that aren't necessary for them if they look at the big picture.

There is some talk, I think we discussed this maybe a couple of quarters ago, that COMAC or the Chinese government, I don't remember where it came from, it's kind of the same, wants to have a Chinese alternative, Chinese engine alternative to the LEAP-1C from the C919 by 2025. You know, I would say highly skeptical about that target. I don't think that's realistic. I haven't heard that coming out of China for a while, so I think maybe they might, again, in my opinion, maybe decided to kind of back off on that target. Ultimately, you know, China wants to take the whatever technology, airplane technology, electronics, and have as much Chinese content in this technology as possible.

We'll have to see what happens. There's a risk, and I don't know how to quantify. I guess maybe the only other comment I would make about the risk is it's probably, in my opinion, a longer term risk rather than a risk that would have an impact, let's say, through the end of this decade. You're right, there are definitely are tensions. I think, just one other comment, GE has a lot going on in China, a lot of inroads in China. As much as there are tensions, there are also symbiotic relationships where, you know, both parties are kind of dependent on each other. As much as they may not want to work together, they kind of don't have a choice. They're being practical.

You know, they're being practical, and they want their programs to succeed. Let's see. The last question was, what was it? How we're different, how we're unique from, let's say, our competitors. That's a good question. Maybe good, better question for our customers, ask our customers. My perspective on it is probably many different kind of things. At Park, we have a pretty extreme culture. For me, you know, if you really want to have culture, you need to be willing to live and die by it and not just kind of talk about it in a boardroom somewhere. For us, we try to do things consistent with our culture, not just talk about it. One of the things that is kind of a calling card for Park is flexibility, responsiveness, urgency.

Aerospace industry is kind of strange, you know. It's well, yeah, it's nine months, 12 months, whatever, lead time. Okay, I guess that's what it is. We, that's not for us. We don't wanna kind of get ourselves dragged into that kind of mindset. I would just maybe list that 1 item as maybe a distinguishing factor between Park and our competitors.

Nick Rispatella (Analyst)

Thank you. That's very helpful.

Brian Shore (Chairman and CEO)

Thank you, Nick.

Operator (participant)

Our next question comes from the line of Brandon Dietz with Huffman Prairie. Please proceed with your question.

Brandon Dietz (Research Partner)

Hey, Brian. Happy New Year. Thanks for taking-

Brian Shore (Chairman and CEO)

Happy New Year.

Brandon Dietz (Research Partner)

taking the questions.

Brian Shore (Chairman and CEO)

Yeah.

Brandon Dietz (Research Partner)

Yeah. Just got a couple questions. First, to start off, for the AFP initiative, you noted a potential major multi-front JV project with a large aerospace company. Just curious, what does multi-front mean?

Brian Shore (Chairman and CEO)

Multi-front means there are really two different major initiatives that relate to the JV discussions. At this point, I think it's too early for us. It wouldn't be appropriate for us to discuss what they are, but both of them are significant initiatives, and they're in different types of things. This was raised by this company, it came from their side. Originally, these two concepts, I'm sorry, I wanted to put it out there because I wanted you to know that, you know, kind of in terms of transparency, that we're juggling two major projects, AFP project, as well as the multi-front JV project with this large aerospace company.

I'm sorry to do that because maybe I, you know, got to raise curiosity up too much, but we're not really in a position to, you know, to provide any more information about who that what company that is or what these, JV, opportunities relate to. Both of them are significant, in their own right. I mean, even if we only did one of them, which is possible, they're not dependent on each other, it still would be significant.

Brandon Dietz (Research Partner)

Okay. Okay, no worries.

Brian Shore (Chairman and CEO)

Essentially.

Brandon Dietz (Research Partner)

Yeah, just it definitely piqued our curiosity and.

Brian Shore (Chairman and CEO)

Yeah.

Brandon Dietz (Research Partner)

Very encouraging to hear. My second question is more of a housekeeping and modeling question around the RayCarb C2B sales. I think in the past, you noted you expected, like, a pretty small amount in Q2 and Q3. Based on your updated expectations, is it fair to assume the majority of what's expected for this fiscal year is going to accrue in Q4? Is it possible to quantify these amounts just for our modeling purposes?

Brian Shore (Chairman and CEO)

Let me just quickly check if I can find that information. About half of that number is expected in Q4. That's correct. That's right. About half. That seven and a half million dollar number is expected in Q4. That's a correct observation.

Brandon Dietz (Research Partner)

Okay. Okay.

Brian Shore (Chairman and CEO)

Yeah.

Brandon Dietz (Research Partner)

It was nice to see the increase in headcount. I know it had been a struggle over the past year or 2. You noted, you know, it was kind of a sudden increase after Q3. Did anything change at Park in its hiring strategy, or was it just the labor market being a little more cooperative?

Brian Shore (Chairman and CEO)

We didn't change our strategy, you know. We stuck to our principles like I said. There was one event, though, that took place in our little town of Newton. It's about 30,000. There's another company that has been in Newton for a long time, not in aerospace, that shocked everybody by closing its doors with maybe one week's notice. What surprised us about it is that this is one of the companies that was aggressively hiring people with hiring bonuses and, you know, big pay packages up until the day of the announcement. That was a good opportunity for us, and we've hired a number of people from that company. They're local people, which is really good.

Our preference, especially for production people, is to hire people that are local rather than from Wichita. That helped us a lot.

Brandon Dietz (Research Partner)

Yeah. Yeah, for sure.

Brian Shore (Chairman and CEO)

We really didn't change our approach. We didn't change our standards or, you know, we didn't do any of that. It was just that we had some people who were available all of a sudden. Look, I mean, I don't know what's gonna happen to the economy, but, you know, it's possible we'll see more of this in the future.

Brandon Dietz (Research Partner)

Yeah. Yeah, definitely. You noted that even with those hires, you're not still where you wanna be. I mean, how should we think about, like, what is an optimal level of headcount for Park, that you still need to get to?

Brian Shore (Chairman and CEO)

That's a good question and something we're actively discussing. Because it really is, it's not a black one answer. It depends on how we structure the shifts. Depending on how we structure the shifts, the number will be a little different. I think maybe another half a dozen people, approximately, maybe, you know, up to kinda like 120 would get us to a point where we feel pretty good, maybe wanna do some fine-tuning. We're certainly a lot closer to that number than we were when we were down at 99. You know, the requirement hadn't changed. It's not like we had needed less people when we were at 99. Moving in the right direction anyway.

Brandon Dietz (Research Partner)

Yeah. Yeah, that's for sure. maybe one last one, quick one. I know, there's limitations on the ADRS program in terms of what you can tell us, but really encouraging to see the $2 million forecasted for calendar year 2023. you know, is that something you guys are already producing, or is this still kind of tentative on when, you know, production will start to produce the kits for the program?

Brian Shore (Chairman and CEO)

Some of that is booked. A good portion of it is booked, I think maybe about 40% of it. We have orders to ship in our fourth quarter.

Brandon Dietz (Research Partner)

Okay. Okay.

Brian Shore (Chairman and CEO)

Our fourth quarter, meaning the next two months. I think it's real, and that's the reason we provide that number because we just. $2 million, kind of a round number, but we wanted to communicate to our to you and our investors that, you know, this is not just something we're talking about as a prospect anymore. It looks like it's really gonna happen. It looks like.

Brandon Dietz (Research Partner)

Yeah.

Brian Shore (Chairman and CEO)

It is happening.

Brandon Dietz (Research Partner)

Yeah, it seems like it'd be very pretty significant, so definitely encouraging to you guys on the program. All right, well, that's all my questions, Brian. Once again, thanks for taking them, and happy New Year.

Brian Shore (Chairman and CEO)

Happy New Year to you. Thank you for your questions, and thank you for your interest.

Operator (participant)

Our next question comes from the line of Daniel Baldini with Oberon. Please proceed with your question.

Daniel Baldini (Managing Partner)

Hi. Good morning. Thanks for taking my question. This is sort of a broad question. I'm trying to understand what portion of the demand for your products has been destroyed by the pandemic and related economic chaos, and what's just been deferred? For me, maybe the way to think about it is to go back, you know, basically three years ago, right before the pandemic started. You went to the Needham conference, and in your presentation, you had a long-term what you called a long-term forecast estimate. You had sales growing over the four-year period to $94 million-$100 million for fiscal year 2024.

Now, if I take your nine-month numbers and add your estimate for the 4th quarter and then apply the breakdowns that just for the nine months, it seems to me that your commercial business is back to pre-pandemic levels, and your military business is back to pre-pandemic levels. The business is off by, you know, I don't know, it's maybe half or a little bit more than half of what it was. If you say if I were to argue that the demand has simply been postponed by, say, three years, do you think that you could have $94 million-$100 million of revenue three years from now in fiscal year 2027? If not, what sort of changed over this three-year period about your sort of outlook for the potential?

Brian Shore (Chairman and CEO)

Okay. Well, thank you, Daniel. Another good question. As I've said, we don't feel comfortable providing a new long-term forecast because of all the short-term uncertainty. We as explained, we think the outlook is good for Park. You know, that's a really good question, like how much has been deferred. You used the term destroyed in your question. I'm not aware of any programs that were destroyed, but a lot deferred. We're not quite back to where we were. I think in the pre-pandemic year, our sales were $60 million. We're not quite at that level yet.

Daniel Baldini (Managing Partner)

The differences are accounted all for, as far as I estimate, by the big drop off in business.

Brian Shore (Chairman and CEO)

Yes, I agree.

Daniel Baldini (Managing Partner)

Yeah.

Brian Shore (Chairman and CEO)

For example, I mentioned that the A320neo program was producing at 63 airplanes per month before the pandemic. You know, the number I heard for calendar 2022 was only 41 per month. Now they're up to 50, maybe a little bit more. They're trying to claw their way back, but it's still quite a bit less than it was pre-pandemic. That's probably a good kind of metric for other programs, especially in the commercial area. Military is a little different because it has a different kind of different drivers, different dynamics, you know, I would say. The, do we just wanna say we're gonna shift everything three years? I don't think we're quite prepared to do that because of so much uncertainty.

The concept, it does make sense because I'm not aware of any programs that just went away and just died. I should say that. The 747, you know, that was probably a victim of the pandemic. That was never a major program because it was already pretty small. They were only doing about six airplanes per year, 24 engines. I think I mentioned that was probably a little under $2 million per year for us. That's true. The 747, that went away. Some people would argue maybe it would've gone away anyway, but who knows? There's probably a very few examples of that. Probably mostly things were deferred and not quite back to where they were.

The A320neo program, like I said, is a real good example because that's not anywhere close to back to where it was. Now, that's not Airbus's choice. They have lots and lots of orders. They'd like their production rates to be up to over 60 at this point, but just have had a lot of trouble. Well, they're struggling to get there. The, you know, the big issue with supply chain. Well, you know, we talked about what happened, and, you know, when the pandemic occurred, it was really Armageddon. I mean, it was very frightening times because we didn't know what's gonna happen. Not only it was bad, what had happened in terms of the contraction in the industry, but I mean, people are really talking about the world's coming to an end. What did companies do?

They slashed and slashed and slashed just to survive. Then things started coming back a lot more quickly than expected, and they're just totally behind the power curve and have not caught up yet. I think the Airbus guy, the CEO, said maybe by the beginning of 2024, the supply chain will be back in shape and have caught up. You know, I mean, I don't wanna be disrespectful, but he keeps pushing that date back because he's had other predictions that supply chain would be back, you know, in kinda normal shape earlier than that. I'm rambling here a little bit. I think part, just one other comment. Maybe part of our ability to get back those numbers are gonna be based upon these programs getting back to where they're supposed to get to.

These other things, like these other opportunities like ADL, for example. The PAC-3, I mean, I don't know where that's going, but it seems like, you know, everybody and their brother and sister wants PAC-3 missiles these days. It's hard to even quantify what the upside is there. You know, I just read the stuff you can read about this country, that country, they're all adding PAC-3 missiles. And AFP, that would be another example of a long-term strategic example of additional revenue. This joint venture that we're talking about, another example of, you know, significant upside revenue. I think when we gave those forecasts, Daniel, I think at that point, we said we're not looking at kind of...

We're looking at our current business and our current business growing organically rather than acquisitions and large joint ventures. Maybe I should take the potential joint venture out of the equation for this discussion.

Daniel Baldini (Managing Partner)

Yeah. Let me follow up. Last quarter, you had a slide where you noted that assuming a 59.75% LEAP market share and a 75 per month build for the A320neo, that represented approximately $32.5 million per year of revenue to Park starting in 2025. I'm just curious, if you can remember back three years ago when you were making your forecast for the business with the LEAP engine, did you imagine that it would grow to a larger number than $32.5 million, or is $32.5 million sort of what you've been expecting all along?

Brian Shore (Chairman and CEO)

The LEAP engine. You know, I don't remember exactly what we were thinking about when we did that long-term forecast. I guess I would say that I'd be surprised if that long-term forecast contemplated a rate of over 75 per month. That would be surprising. You know, the dynamic has changed, and we talked about this over the last few quarters. This is my opinion again, not completely because Airbus has been pretty vocal about this. They're on a mission. They're on a mission single-aisle to do what? To make Boeing a second-tier supplier. They, they see an opportunity, they're going for it. They're trying to be as aggressive as possible because they feel that Boeing has, you know, been weakened, so they wanna take advantage of it.

They want to emerge from this whole thing where, you know, I don't think they're thinking of putting Boeing out of business, but the, the single-aisle offering from Boeing, the, the MAX is really much less than the A320neo. You know, we talked about the XLR. That was something that was not on the table when we did that long-term forecast three, four years ago. Boeing doesn't have a response to the XLR. They said they're not gonna develop a new airplane in this decade. I think that's a new dynamic which partly was caused by the, the accidents with the MAX and then the pandemic, which makes Airbus even more aggressive in their mindset than they were previously.

I doubt we'd be contemplating more than 75 per month, even three or four years ago. You know, just to complete the thing about what that's worth. The reason that we gave you the revenue per engine is so you could figure it out. You know, we provide you the market share that LEAP has as compared to Pratt, and we, you know, tell you that the people at Airbus are still talking about 75 per month by 2025. You know, you read the stuff, same stuff I do, you know, is 2025 a realistic timeframe? Some people would say maybe it's not, although Airbus has not backed off that. I guess I would just add one thing is, which is that my opinion is Airbus will get there and maybe, you know, people could argue maybe it won't be 2025, but my opinion is they'll get there. They're highly motivated to get there. Highly motivated.

Daniel Baldini (Managing Partner)

Okay. If you'll permit me one last related question. As I've noted, your business jet business has fallen off quite substantially since the pandemic started. What are your sort of opinions about the prospects for that recovering?

Brian Shore (Chairman and CEO)

You know, our business jet business, or the biggest program that we have in the business jet segment is the Global 7500, 8000, which is a good program to be on, and we have a lot of content on that program also per engine unit. That's kind of the, maybe the leading big, big, big business jet right now. Gulfstream is trying to come up with an answer in terms of the range capabilities of size. My opinion about the business jet industry is this, and just an opinion, and I just wanna say that. People will disagree, some people will anyway. My opinion is that a recession is coming this year. The question is, how does that impact the business jet industry?

My opinion, again, is that it'll impact the industry differently, you know, in a different way for the really big business jets as compared to small and midsize business jets. Why is that? The Global 7500, 8000, I think it's $78 million per unit. We're talking about a lot of money. This is not the, you know, the average, regular, you know, local, wealthy guy. These are large corporations, Arab sheikhs, Elon Musk types. Recession, are they gonna hesitate to buy a $78 million airplane? Probably not, in my opinion. I think the Gulfstreams and the Bombardiers and the Falcon would probably do better in a recession. The smaller and midsize jets, that's a different market. That's a different buyer.

Maybe it's a guy who has, you know, four or five car dealers and, he, you know, he wants to have a jet, and it's maybe now not a $75 million jet. It might be a $5 million-$10 million jet. That guy probably doesn't have $500 million or $600 million in a bank, and he's more vulnerable to a recession. That guy might be affected more in his terms of his buying attitudes about jets than the guy or the company who buys the $75 million airplane. My feeling is that the larger aircraft, Gulfstream, Bombardier, Falcon, will do better. The smaller jets maybe will be more affected by the recession. I also would base that opinion upon past history.

In the past, when recessions have occurred, economic downturns have occurred, the companies that made the smaller business jets were hurt badly. I'm not aware of any reason why that pattern or dynamic would be very different if there's another recession.

Daniel Baldini (Managing Partner)

Okay, great. Well, thanks very much for your time.

Brian Shore (Chairman and CEO)

Sure. Thank you for your questions and your interest.

Operator (participant)

There are no further questions in the queue. I'd like to hand the call back to Mr. Shore for closing remarks.

Brian Shore (Chairman and CEO)

Thank you, operator. Thank you all for listening. We appreciate it very much. Have a happy new year. All the best to you and your family in 2023. Feel free to give us a call anytime if you have any follow-up questions. Thank you. Take care. Goodbye.

Operator (participant)

Ladies and gentlemen, this does conclude today's teleconference. Thank you for your participation. You may disconnect your lines at this time, and have a wonderful day.