Park Aerospace - Q4 2023
May 11, 2023
Transcript
Operator (participant)
Good morning. My name is John, and I'll be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Park Aerospace Corp Q4 full year 2023 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 Q&A session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press star and then 1 on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, please press star and then 2. Thank you. At this time, I will turn today's call over to Mr. Brian Shore, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer. Thank you, Mr. Shore. You may begin.
Brian Shore (Chairman and CEO)
Thank you, John, welcome all to the parts of fiscal 23 Q4 investor conference call. I have with me, of course, Matt Faber, our CFO, as usual. We announced our Q4 earnings this morning, you wanna pick up on that if you haven't so far. In the earnings release, there are instructions as to how you can access the presentation that we're about to go through. You can get it on our webcast. It's also on our website. I don't know if you know this, for our standards anyway, the presentation is a little bit shorter than it has been recently. I think it's about 40 slides or 39 compared to over 50, maybe 55. There's a lot to cover still, it may still take the same amount of time.
We're trying to take a little bit of different approach this time. We're gonna focus less on program and project updates and industry trends. If you want that information, I suggest you might wanna go back and check our Q3 investor call presentation or the company presentation, which has a lot of detail on that information that we tend to cover quarter after quarter. Like I said, a little bit of different focus we're gonna try this time. We will cover the numbers, this presentation will be more on our outlook, something new we haven't given you before. It'll talk about capital, dividends, and we'll talk about recent announcements. Matt and I will then answer after we're done with the presentation.
Going through the presentation, Matt and I will be happy, of course, to answer any questions you might have. Why don't we get started? Here we go. Let's go to slide 2, our forward-looking disclaimer. Just let us know if you have any questions about our forward-looking disclaimer. Go to slide 3. We have a little table of contents here, the presentation, supplementary financial information in appendix 1. As you know, we normally don't cover or go through that information, let us know if you have any questions about it. We have a little bit of a teaser here. We have a photo of our new film line in production. We'll talk about this a little bit later, if you notice from the news release, our new plant has been approved for production, it actually is in production.
Let's go on to slide 4. To slow down a little bit here. Here are the Q4 numbers. If you look at the right-hand column, sales $13,530, gross margin at 28.5%. As we always say, we don't feel very happy when the gross margin slips below 30%, so we're not so pleased about that. EBITDA, adjusted EBITDA, $2,625,000. What did we say about our Q4 during our Q3 investor call? We gave some estimates. Remember, our forecast estimate philosophy is that we tell you what we say is gonna happen. We don't pad it. We don't give you a lower number, so we can beat it and become heroes, that kind of thing.
I know that's what most other people do, but we just don't think that's appropriate for Park. Sales estimate, we, it was $13.5 million-$14 million. We barely squeaked in at the bottom end of the sales estimate. The EBITDA estimate was $3 million to $3.5 million. We came in considerably lower, what is that? $375,000 below the bottom of the range at $2.625 million. What happened here? Let's discuss that. The obvious question is, we made our sales number, why didn't we make the EBITDA number? We should go into that, and we will. Let's go to slide 5, so we can then begin that discussion.
First of all, I wanna give a shout-out to our people for making the top-line number, the sales estimate, under very difficult circumstances, especially considering significant challenges with supply chain disruptions and unreliability. I know that you're probably thinking we cover this stuff every quarter. That may be boring to you, but it's real life to us. It's a real life day-to-day struggle and challenge for us dealing with these things. We keep hearing that supply chain stuff will get better, is getting better. We haven't seen any meaningful improvement yet. Why don't we, when we get to the Airbus 380-20 ramp later on in the presentation, maybe we could think about supply chain and how well it's doing, because that might be a good proxy for the supply chain.
Let's talk about the... Sorry, let's go to the next bullet item. We're getting... This is important. This is a little bit new. We're getting better at managing the challenges by building inventory where it's possible and appropriate, and providing suppliers with longer lead times where it's appropriate. It's still a very challenging and difficult situation. Freight disruptions and unreliability, we'll give you an example of that in a second. Ongoing staffing shortages, this has not gotten better for us, continues to be a very difficult challenge for us.
They said there's full employment in our country, that's because so many people have left the workforce, which to us is a real tragedy, not only for us, but for the people whose, you know, kinda lives are lost and drifting, that just have left the workforce and probably are not so capable of coming back to it. It's very sad. What will cause this problem to improve? I'm not sure. You know, with the full employment situation, a lot of people say what was needed is a pretty good recession. It hopefully doesn't come to that, we'll see what happens. I guess I won't comment any more on that right now. Let's go on to slide 6. Now here we go. Total missed shipments in Q4, approximately $1.4 million.
That's a huge, huge number. You know, recently in the last few quarters, it's always a big number, but it's usually, what, $600,000, $700,000, $800,000, $1.4 million. That's a doozy of a number. Here's the thing, $1.2 million, approximately $1.2 million of that number were missed shipments of higher margin ablative materials to overseas customers. Really 2 shipments in Japan and Italy, 2 very big shipments. What happened? The raw materials came in late. See? There you go. International freight, this is a real, this is a real challenge. Our freight's all refrigerated. We can't just put it in any truck, that limits our, you know, freight options considerably. We go to international freight, it's even more challenging. It's difficult for us to flex up our workforce when we're already maxed out.
We get the raw materials in last couple of weeks. We're scrambling around always. You know, it's always adjusting our schedule. Not always. Often adjusting our manufacturing schedule because of supply chain issues. We don't have the ability to just kind of flex up because we're really maxed out in the last couple of weeks to get stuff through the, you know, through the manufacturing plant and through testing so we can ship. Factors which affected our margins. Let's talk about margins. We talked about top line. Let's talk about margins in Q4. Here's an interesting thing. It's just coincidence, but it's that $1.2 million number. Again, fiscal 23 Q4 sales of approximately $1.2 million of Raycarb fabric sold under by Park under our business partner agreement with ArianeGroup for ablative applications.
Remember how this works? This is just a markup. For a lot of our big customers, they want to stock this material. We have this exclusive arrangement with ArianeGroup in France. We'll buy it, resell the product to the customer. We hold it for them often. Then when they're ready for us to produce the material, we'll produce the material with this fabric that they've already bought, that they own. It's a small markup, very small margins. That's the plan. It's a good thing, though, we ultimately, when we actually make the prepreg, the margins are quite good. See what happened here? We lost $1.2 million of this high margin product, and we substituted with $1.2 million of low margin product.
That alone, that one factor alone, would fully explain the EBITDA shortfall. You know, would get us to the low end of the range, which is what you would expect since the sales were at the lower end of the range. Okay? It's that $1.2 million number, it's just a coincidence that it's exactly the same number, but it's very interesting how those 2 numbers work together. Like I said, I'll say it again, that factor alone, that's not the only factor. That factor alone would explain the shortfall in EBITDA. In other words, if that factor was reversed, we wouldn't have had a EBITDA shortfall. Let's go on to slide 7 because there's more to the story, even though that factor alone would explain the EBITDA situation.
What else are we talking about in terms of what affects our margins? Sorry. Significant inflation. Has it the way you're abated, not yet, not for us yet. I won't go through all these items because this is just a, you know, a repeat of what we've discussed in the last couple of quarters, pretty much everything. We've discussed this before, but let me just remind you, some of these increased costs were passed through to our customers in form of selling price increases. A couple of things here. First of all, you know, some companies are just, to us, I don't know, I mean, doing obscene price increases, like doubling their prices, and we're just not gonna do that. We, you know, we're long-term players. We don't abuse our-- what we consider to be abuse our customers. We wanna treat them properly and decently.
We do raise our prices, but not, you know, kind of in abusive ways. Why is that not, why is that not totally covered the cost increases? The lag effect. Remember we talked about this, you know, when we accept a PO or agree to a PO, we honor that PO. We don't halfway into the delivery period, we don't say we're raising our prices to our customers, and that's something others are doing. We won't do that. We have long-term LTA pricing with certain customers, particularly MRS. We're not able to just pass through our inflationary cost increases. Let's go on to slide 8. Supply chain disruptions causing significant inefficiencies in our manufacturing operation. If you're familiar with manufacturing, you know what manufacturing people normally want is good planning.
You know, plan out 3 or 4 months or 5 months in terms of what will be run and when. That's how manufacturing is gonna be most efficient. Now, our calling card is not like others. Our calling card is to be responsive, be flexible, have urgency. We like having the ability to move around, to adjust for customers. This kind of stuff is just, you know, beyond our experience. We get some supply chain changes. You know, we have something planned and then the raw material doesn't come in, something else comes in, we have to make adjustments. Every time we do a changeover with these treating operations, there's a lot of downtime, a lot of expense, a lot of extra expense. It's hard to appreciate unless you've seen the operation, but it's a big deal.
It has a big impact on our margins. Staffing shortages and limitations. We're paying lots and lots of overtime and other inefficiencies relating to our labor just because our staffing, rather, just because it's so tight. Costs related to the newly commissioned new plant in Kansas. It's a good thing. It's a great thing. We just started to run it, so obviously, you know, we don't have it fully utilized yet. There's a, you know, at least for a period of time, a negative impact of the cost of that new facility, that new facility which we just started to actually produce product in for sale. Let's go on to slide 9. This is the FY comparisons.
Obviously, you look at 22 compared to 23 and say, "Geez, you know, the top line was about the same. 23 as compared to 22, maybe a little bit better. What happened to the bottom line? What happened to adjusted EBITDA? What happened to gross margins?" Well, you know, it's those factors we already discussed. You know, inflation, supply chain, staffing. We'll actually talk about that when we get a little bit further into the presentation in terms of quantifying what we think the impact of that was when we get to slide 27. Hopefully I'll remember to bring that up again when we get to slide 27. It's further down the presentation. Let's go to slide 10. We're gonna move through this pretty quickly. You know, we do this every quarter.
Our top 5, Aerojet Rocketdyne, that's the Army Tactical Missile System. Aeromatrix, we own something for them, a photo for them. Kratos, we obviously have the Kratos Valkyrie. Middle River, we have the Boeing 777X, NORDAM, we have the 737-800. That's for the Weather Master Radome. Let's go on to slide 11, a pie chart. My only comment is, you note that 2023 is very similar to 2022, it seems like we're kind of settling in to this kind of market segment breakdown. If you look at 2021, it was very different, obviously, that was a pandemic year. Let's keep going. Slide 12, Park loves Niche Military Aerospace Programs. This is a slide we do every quarter for you.
We like to show you photos of some, you know, interesting military programs that we're on. Then we have our pie chart, which not that different than prior quarters, but rocket nozzles, drones, and radomes, we would consider those to be niche markets. Space mobile, that's niche. Aircraft structures, even for us, it's niche. For other people, it might not be niche. To us means, you know, more margins, better margins. Let's go to slide 13. Okay, we cover this, I guess every quarter for the last 3 quarters, the trends and considerations for the military markets. We talked about the war at length and how it's affecting the military budgets and spending. Let's go on to slide 14.
If you have any questions about any of this stuff, at the end, let me know. Let us know. We're just going to kind of scan through it, basically covered these things before. Slide 14. I guess the first item, arrow item's important because, you know, there is this desire to build up the military infrastructure, but what's holding it back is supply chain limitations. We also have some kind of issue regarding the debt ceiling negotiations. That seems to be a factor as well. I think big picture is really supply chain that's holding things back. Let's see, next item, missile defense systems. We talked about this. We talked about the Patriot missile. We're a sole source in that program for ablative materials. Lots of countries want the Patriot system for obvious reasons.
Go on to slide 15. Last, the check item in slide 15 are sales of ablative materials, and this C2B fabric were $7.75 million. We're providing that to you because we told you we would. You know, we told you we'd give you an update at the end of the FY. You have that. Slide 16, we got some trends and considerations for commercial aerospace, not too much new here. The commercial aviation industry continues a strong recovery and rebound. Domestic aviation almost back to where it was pre-pandemic. International, getting there as well, 75%-80% pre-pandemic. Customer demand seems to be there. There are some watch and question items which we talk about from time to time. Let's go to slide 17.
The economy, will people continue to fly at the same rates if the economy falters? Actually, there are early indications that maybe that the economy is having some impact upon travel patterns. I heard that Airbnb announced recently that they're seeing a little bit of slowdown in travel. Just something to pay attention to. Inflation. You know if you fly in airlines that the ticket prices are quite higher because the airlines have to cover the additional costs for the people and everything else, but especially jet fuel. Is that gonna be okay? Are people gonna continue to pay these prices? I don't know. The last check item on slide 17. These labor shortages, pilots and mechanics, flight attendants, you know, sorry, you name it, and you got it.
The other thing that we'll throw in, which we haven't mentioned before, what about those ATC delays that we're expecting to hear this summer? I mean, big ones. Big. I guess, some of the airlines are telling they need to cancel some of their flights because the ATC won't be able to handle it, particularly heard in the Northeast Corridor. That could be a factor. The $64,000 question, if the commercial aviation industry does falter, what are the airlines gonna do? How would Boeing respond? How would Airbus respond? We discussed this before. I think they both would wanna keep going with their production rates and ramp up. My opinion, not that I'm an expert, is that Airbus might be more capable of doing that.
Boeing may want to, but may not be able to for their own reasons. Let's go on to slide 18. Of course, even if commercial aviation industry remains strong, the commercial aircraft industry still has to deal with its own issues. What are they? Labor, supply chain, inflation, you know, kind of a broken record, these issues are not related to any one segment of the industry and not really related to one industry or one geography. They seem to be global issues. The silver lining, we've talked about this before, as fuel prices get more expensive, some of the airlines are looking to swap out their, you know, their legacy gas-guzzling airplanes for the more modern airplanes that are more fuel efficient. Let's go on to slide 19. You know, gotta slow up here a little bit.
We provide the slide every quarter, you know, pretty important stuff. GE Aviation jet engine programs. Firm pricing LTA requirements contract through 2029 with Middle River Aerostructure Systems, we call them MRAS. They're a subsidiary of ST Engineering Aerospace. I gotta remind you, we do usually that. What's going on here? Why all these GE Aviation programs? What does SDA Engineering have to do with that? Okay. I think you know, I'll just remind you if you forgot that Middle River used to be a sub for many, many, many years, a GE Aviation and all these GE. We were put on all these GE Aviation programs when Middle River was a sub of MRAS's sub of GE Aviation.
It was subsequently sold to ST Engineering Aerospace, a large Singapore-based aerospace company, probably 4 or 5 years ago. Those programs continue because we're qualified in those programs. Just so you know, MRAS is, and STE are asking for a life-of-program. Our current agreement goes through 2029. They're asking for life-of-program. What does that mean? That means that we would reach an agreement under which we're supplying to that program until the program ends. Let's say the A320neo, you tell me when it's gonna end. 2045? I don't know. I mean, these programs go for a long, long time. That's how life-of-program works. Dundas Acre, yep, we finished that. It's in production. Sole source for composite materials for engine cells and thrust reversers for these programs.
The first 5, let's call those the A320neo family. They all have the LEAP-1A engines. The 7.78. That program ended, but there's still spares actually for that program. Love that program. COMAC C919, that's the COMAC's a Chinese company, C919. I'll cover this a little bit more carefully just in the slide because we don't have any of the discussion in the presentation about these programs. As I said, you can go back to the Q3 presentation or the company presentation, which is on our website if you want to get more detail on these programs. COMAC is a, you know, Chinese company, the C919 is the designed to be the competitor for...
It's single-aisle airplane designed to be the competitor for the A320 and the 737 MAX. It's certified. They're starting production. I think they're just starting deliveries. We'll see what happens with that program. ARJ21, that's another COMAC program, that's a regional jet, and that's already in production. Has been for a little while. We have the Bombardier Global 7500, 8000 with the Passport 20 engines. Those are GE engines. That's a business jet, large business jet. Top right, Park Composite Materials. We're also sole source qualified as a primary structure component for the Passport 20 engines. That's not actually included in the MRAS LTA, but that's a part of it. That's actually a GE program.
The bottom right fan case containment wrap for the GE9X engine for the 777X, that's produced with Park's AFP materials. It's not included in the MRAS LTA. The MRAS people told us they wanna put it in the LTA. Remember, and this is important, you know, there's a design risk with this program. The company that produces the fan case is in the process of trying. They've done this a few times, so you know, you could be a little skeptical about their ability to succeed. They're trying to redesign the fan case so that the case wrap will not be required. The case wrap is required in order to pass something called FBO, Fan Blade Out, which is an essential test that has to be passed.
The engine has to demonstrate that if a fan blade separates, it will be contained. It won't escape the engine compartment, because if it does, it's, it's extremely dangerous for the airplane. That's kind of a non-starter. You can't have that. That's the issue, that the FBO test has to be passed. I just want to mention that it's a program we're really excited about, but there is some design risk with that program. Look, let's go on to slide 20. Just a brief update on the GE Aviation jet engine programs, and we're just gonna cover the A320neo, really. Update you on that. The rest of the programs we're not gonna update you on.
A320neo, we already said with the, you know, the aircraft family with the CFM LEAP-1A engines includes the 9, the A319, A320, A321, A321LR, A321XLR, those variants. Airbus recently, just a, I think about a week ago, reaffirmed their plans to achieve a production rate of and delivery rate of 75 A320neo aircraft family deliveries per month by the end of 2026. I think they said they wanna get to 65 by the end of 2024, actually. Will it get there? It's really hard to say if they'll get there by 2026, I would say, I'm very confident they will get to 75. Why is that? Because they got 6,000 orders for these airplanes. 6,000 orders.
Let me skip down and talk about how their delivery history, just for perspective. In 19, these are monthly deliveries, 47. In 20, 36. You know, going down there, 20, 21, 40. 22, maybe 42. 23 through April, 37. They wanna get to 75, 65. They also said they wanted to be at 50 by the end of last year, and they were for a couple of months in November and December. It's slipping back, you know, now they're at 37 for the first 4 months of the current calendar year. They have over 6,000 orders. This is a real problem. You tell me how the supply chain is doing.
If they had the ability to wave a magic wand and deliver 75 a month now, they would do it right now because the market is there. They have 6,000 orders. You tell me, this is the biggest program in the history of aviation, and they're not able to get to the rates they want to get to. They're really struggling. You tell me how the global supply chain is doing. You know, people say it's getting better, and it's, you know, it's really good. I don't know. These are facts, these are numbers. Airbus is desperate to get their numbers up. I think it's a good proxy for how the supply chain is really struggling, you know. Just do the math here for a second. If they were able to get to 50 a month, that's 600 a year.
That's 10 years, they got 6,000 in backlog. In other words, if they're at 50 a month, not 75, not 40, not 37, then they need to give somebody 10-year lead time. You wanna order an A320neo, good, 10 years. That's terrible. They can't get. You know, it's hard to get more business, hard to get more orders. They're desperate to get the rates up to 75, to 65, 75, and they're struggling. You know, they're struggling. Do I think they'll get there? Absolutely, I think they'll get there. They'll leave. In 2026, I don't know. Maybe 2026, maybe 2027. I don't know when they'll get there, but my feeling is very with lots of confidence they will get there. Why? Because they desperately want to get there, number one. Number 2, the market is there. They have the orders.
You know, the orders are there. Let's keep going. Did I miss anything in this? Oh, yeah. This is important. Let's keep going in this on this slide because there's a point to this. The A320 aircraft family offers 2 approved engines. One is the LEAP-1A engine, and the other one's a Pratt engine. We supply into the program using the LEAP-1A engine, so important to remember that. Now, what's the market share between the LEAP engine, the CFM engine, the Pratt engine? 60% for the LEAP engine. I believe, if I recall, there's over 11,000 orders, confirmed orders for these engines. There's a lot of ballast, you know, a lot of inertia in that market share. Let's say Pratt has a good month, CFM has a bad month.
It's not gonna change that 60% market share very much because there's so much ballast in that, in the order backlog already, so much inertia that the order backlog already that leads to that 60% market share. Assuming your 60% LEAP market share, 75, this is the, you know, the bottom check on them, 75 A320neo aircraft family deliveries per month. Ultimately, if you look at the stuff in blue, at the language in blue at the bottom, that would translate to 1,080 LEAP engines per year. Remember that number, we'll get back to it. 1,080 LEAP engines per year. This is just math.
If they get to 75, and that 60% market share is maintained, and it's going to be hard to move that market share very much with that huge backlog, engine backlog. This is the number. It's 1,080 LEAP engines per year. That's it. Just pure math. Not my opinion, just pure math. 1,080 LEAP engines per year. Keep that number in your head. Let's go on to slide 21. Goodbye to the 747, the great queen of the skies. Yeah, goodbye to the great 747 aircraft like no other. I like this photo. This is a few years ago. It's in Anchorage.
You can see there's snow on the ground. It's kind of supposed to be a metaphor. Maybe I shouldn't have to explain that to you. The airplane is going away. We're behind the airplane taking. That's a 747 through the windshield there. It's symbolic that, okay, it's going away. I think if you have to explain something like that, it's probably not worth it. 22, slide 22. Let's talk about the Q4 revenues with the GE Aviation programs, $4.7 million. I think we told you when we did our Q3 in earnings call about 4 and a quarter, 4 and 3 quarters. We kinda came in that range. A total of $22.3 million for 23. It's kind of a strange number.
Look at the left-hand column. The top 20 was $28.9 million, then 21, $13.2 million. Obviously a pandemic year, 22, $26.5 million, down to $22.3 million. What's going on here? Are the programs going down? Of course not, you know. Programs are They're trying to push the programs up anyway. It's all over the place. Short term, very erratic. It makes it, you know, quite difficult to supply into these programs. You say they just It's unpredictable. The requirements, for us anyway, keep changing, going up and down with very, you know, not very good. Visibility might be a little bit of an understatement. What are we estimating for GE programs, GE Aviation programs for Q1? $6 million to $6.5 million.
Even though there's only about 2 and a half weeks left in our quarter, we're still giving this little footnote that there are risks regarding that forecast for Q1. Why don't we go on to slide 23? Here's Park's situation, not just GE Aviation. We already went through the Q4 number and the total number for fiscal 23, total numbers. We have a forecast we're giving you of 14 and 3 quarters to fifteen and a quarter million sales for Q1. Q1 adjusted EBITDA is $3 million-$3.5 million. Again, look at the footnote, you know, because we have these risk factors.
Another question you might ask is, well, you know, if our sales are gonna be, let's say at around $15 million, wouldn't our EBITDA be expected to be higher? The answer is, yeah, higher than $3 million-$3.5 million, but the margins are under temporary pressure because these things we keep talking about, inflation, supply chain, staffing, and the new plant. That's why I think that we're looking at a little bit lower than you might expect EBITDA numbers based upon the sales numbers. Why don't we go on to slide 24? Okay, this is now just really the beginning of the meaningful part of the, of the presentation. We took a whole half hour to get here. This is our financial outlook for Park and GE Programs.
Let's call it a baseline outlook, because of ongoing significant challenges related to serious supply chain disorder. I know it's a broken record. I keep talking about the same things, but these are very kind of palpable things for us. Inflation concerns and severe staffing shortages, which seem to be a global phenomenon, and the significant uncertainty as to when these challenges will moderate and abate. As a result, providing a year-over-year financial forecast would involve much speculation and therefore would not be helpful or meaningful. Like I was saying, regarding the A320neo, for example. Yeah, I think it'll get to 75 per month. I'm, you know, pretty confident about that. When, you know, really that's anybody's guess.
You know, we can listen to what Airbus is, you know, saying, but that's really a target for them, and they've moved that target back because they're struggling with the supply chain. Already struggling. They're supposed to be at 50. They're not at 50. They're 37 for the first 4 months this year. These are real issues. These are not just people, things people are complaining about. Although we can talk about where we're going outlook-wise, it's hard to pin it down year-over-year, I think doing that would be guesswork. What's the point of doing that for you? It's not really meaningful or helpful.
Although it is not possible to predict with any meaningful confidence the timing of the abatement of such challenges, we're hopeful that as the world survives the crisis it is currently facing. You know, sorry for the sarcasm there. I'm talking about, like, nuclear war or things like that. At some point in the not-too-distant future, the supply chain will reestablish some degree of order, inflation will moderate, and staffing dynamics will normalize to some degree. As a result, we are providing, in the following slides, a revenue outlook for our GE Aviation jet engine programs and let's call it a baseline financial outlook for Park generally. Let's go on to slide 25. What are the assumptions in doing these things and providing these outlooks?
In providing the GE Aviation programs revenue outlook and the financial outlook for Park, these are the following assumptions. There's not a severe or prolonged economic downturn during the outlook timeframe. That doesn't mean if there's a recession, let's say, this year or next year, that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about in the outlook timeframe. You could decide what year that is, 2026, 2027, I don't know, that timeframe. The global supply chain returns to some level of order and normalcy. Inflation moderates, returns to historically more normal levels. Staffing dynamics return to historically more normal levels. We're assuming that at some point the world will get better. Let's go on to slide. We'll skip 1. Slide 26. All right, this is where it gets interesting. GE Aviation jet engine programs revenue outlook.
We gave you the building blocks for this analysis, I think, in the last quarter when we gave you the revenue per engine unit estimates. You look at these numbers. These numbers come from our Q3 presentation. The real question is engine unit assumptions. You know, these are the assumptions we're using. You can, you know, put your own numbers in if you'd like. Unfortunately, we're gonna have to go through some of the footnotes as well, because they are meaningful. Engine unit assumptions, per your assumptions is footnote 1. Well, we already talked about this. A320, neo aircraft assumption, there's that 1080. Remember I said keep in your head. That 1080 is based upon information we have from Airbus.
The rest of the engine unit per your assumptions are things we came up with, and we'll explain, you know, the basis of the assumptions that we came up with. I think they're relatively kind of middle of the road, maybe even conservative. Let's go on to footnote 2. Engine estimates based upon information from the customer. These numbers, the engine unit, the revenue per engine unit, I should say, numbers are, come from our customer. That's not something we just came up with on our own. Let's see, footnote 3. We already talked about that. In footnote 3, I won't go through this. 3, 5, 6, and 7 through our assumptions in terms of whether film adhesive and lightning strike are used on these programs.
The assumptions could be a little conservative, but we're trying to be conservative. If we say we're assuming that, let's say, film adhesive is not gonna be on this program or lightning strike is not gonna be in a program, doesn't mean that it won't happen, doesn't mean that we're not working on it happening, because they have to get those products have to get approved by the OEMs. They have to be certified by the OEMs. We're trying to be conservative in this outlook. Let's go through the individual programs, Passport 20. We're assuming 90 units per year. That was actually information that was given to us by our customer. It's, I think, relatively middle of the road.
They've been doing about 40 airplanes per year or so, 2 engines per airplane. I think 90 is a reasonable assumption. C919, 200. That means 100 airplanes. How do we come up with that? You know, Airbus for the A320. Remember, the C919's a single aisle competitor. Airbus wants to be at 75 airplanes a month. That's 900. Boeing wants to be at 50 airplanes per month. That's 600. The 737 MAX, Boeing wants to be at 600. Airbus wants to be at 900 for the A320neo. We're assuming 100 airplanes, 200 engines. We think that's actually a relatively conservative assumption. It really is probably driven mostly by supply chain because the Chinese control the market.
Obviously, the Chinese want this aircraft to be a success, and they'll control who buys the airplanes and who doesn't buy the airplanes inside China, especially. ARJ21, that's not too complicated. Last year, there were 26 airplanes that were delivered, 2 engines per airplane, so we assume 50. The GE9X, we're not giving you the details here. We have them, we're trying to keep this program a little more confidential, so obviously if you if we fill in either of these blanks, you know, you'd be able to do the math and figure it out, and we're trying not to do that. I would say that, well, the revenue per engine unit, that's something we know from our customer.
The engine unit, per your assumptions, we're being pretty conservative here. Remember, there is a design risk. This whole $6.5 million number can go away. We add everything up, we get to this $50.625 million number. Just to remind you, wanna remind you, fiscal 2023, the number is $22.3 million. There's a significant amount of incremental growth expected from the GE Aviation JED Edge programs. Again, we call it an outlook because we can't exactly give you what year it is. With A320, as I said, a lot of confidence that we'll get to 75. We think we're being middle of the road and maybe even conservative.
This is just math after we decide, you know, what end unit per year assumption is to put into the table. Just math. 50,562. Like I said, a lot of incremental growth expected from the GE Aviation programs. Let's go on to slide 27. This is where it gets even more interesting, and we'll have to slow it down even more to cover this properly. Park Aerospace Corp. baseline financial outlook, this is for the company. It's principally based upon growth estimates of programs in which Park is sole source qualified. We're not talking about new programs we're trying to get on. These are programs we're already sole source qualified on. We're gonna have to go through the footnotes.
Let's start with the first line, base year, $54.1 million and $11.5 million. Those are just the numbers for fiscal 23, which you already have. Estimated GE program incremental sales, you look at footnote 1, $28.3 million. That's just doing the math. They've taken that outlook from the prior slide and taken the 23, fiscal 23 number, and there's the incremental number, $28.3 million. The next item, estimated incremental sales for ADL, ADRS program, PAC-3 Missile System, and Kratos Valkyrie unmanned aircraft, $20 million. We're not giving you a breakdown. That's really because we wanna protect the confidentiality of these programs. We have the information, but we don't feel comfortable sharing that with you. I just with you at this time, making those assumptions public.
But we feel that assumption's, you know, kind of middle of the road, maybe a little conservative. Non-GE program incremental sales, $8 million. If you read the footnote, what we're basically saying is there are about last FY, 2023, there were about $32 million of sales for non-GE Aerospace programs. We're saying by the time, you know, we get to the outlook year, it'll be 25% growth. $32 million times 25%, that's $8 million. That's $8 million of incremental sales for the non-GE Aerospace business. We think that's a fairly conservative estimate, and we get the estimated revenue outlook of $110.4 million, that's approximately $110 million, when we get to the outlook year. Let's talk about EBITDA.
We started with $11.5 million estimated EBITDA contribution from incremental revenues. You look at the footnote, we're just saying, okay, we take 110 minus 54. Those are the incremental revenues. We multiply that by 37%, which we think is a proper contribution number based upon our, you know, our historical financial data and performance. We think that's a pretty reasonable middle-of-the-road number, $20.8 million. Adjustment to base year EBITDA. You can look at the footnote, at $2.5 million, I referred to it earlier in the presentation, we're saying that we have about a $2.5 million impact in our current FY.
Sorry, that's the, let's say the 2023 FY from all these things we keep talking about broken record-wise, meaning inflation, supply chain issues, staffing issues, and now of course, the cost of new plant. We're saying these things are gonna go away long term. You know, inflation, we hope will moderate. Our pricing will catch up with inflation. Staffing shortage, we hope will moderate. Supply chain issues, we hope will moderate. We're making an adjustment because we think our P&L in fiscal 2023, the baseline EBITDA of $11.5 million, was burdened by these factors, which we think are gonna prove significantly improve significantly. We get to an estimated EBITDA outlook of $34.8 million. Okay? That's just doing the math here. Remember, this is just an outlook. This is not a forecast.
We're not taking into account any new programs that we're working on, only things we're sole source qualified on already, and taking that baseline number of $32 million and increasing it by 25%. Let's go on to slide 28. I don't think we need to go through the individual footnotes because I think we already kind of talked through them. Yeah, we did talk through them. If you have any questions about the footnotes on slide 28, let us know. Slide 29, this is an important one. This is footnote 6. The above outlook analysis is not a forecast, as it only considers the estimated growth of programs on which Park is already sole source qualified, plus a 25% growth of non-GE program sales by the outlook year, as we discussed.
The analysis does not consider any other revenue opportunities, including, for example, these are just examples. This is not an exhaustive list. These are examples. Revenue opportunities related to the AFP manufacturing project, which we discussed for the last couple of quarters. The company's new film and heater product line, which we just introduced. No sales for that, 0. The Asian JV the company is discussing now with 2 separate large aerospace companies. The potential new product family JV, which the company is discussing with a large aerospace company. A large aerospace program in which the company's composite materials are a finalist of structures, assemblies, and integrations project, of which the company is in serious discussions with an existing customer. A technology license arrangement, under discussion with a large OEM.
Several rocket and missile programs with respect to which the company's products are under qualification. These are examples, like I said, not an exhaustive list, but I just wanted you to understand we're saying that's not a forecast because if we're doing a forecast, we would take into account these new opportunities and try to figure out, you know, okay, how many of these we're gonna get, how many we're not gonna get. That was not the purpose of the exercise. We wanted to give you a baseline outlook. I'll explain in a little while why we did this, because originally we did this related to the dividend decisions that we made a couple months ago. Let's go on to slide 30. We're gonna change gears here a little bit. Got to rush now. We're running up against 45 minutes.
We did a news release on this, so you're probably aware of it. Our major expansion in Newton, Kansas is complete. A new facility was qualified, approved by MRAS for production April 5th. If you look at the photo here, it's a nice little group photo of people from MRAS, SDE, and Park. This is when they visited on April 5th to review the new plant approval, and approval was actually given at the time during the visit. It was a very happy little visit we had. First production run didn't fall too long after that, was April 19th. The expansion cost $20 million, which I think you know about. It has been a long and winding road since we broke ground on a new facility on August 15, 2019, but we made it. Job is done.
Well done, Park people. Of course, when we broke ground, we didn't know that was, the pandemic was around the corner, it made it much more challenging. We never slowed it down from our side, but obviously, it was much more difficult to get the job done. You know, we have a construction crew. You remember how it was at the beginning of the pandemic. One guy tests positive, the whole crew has to go home for 2 weeks. One guy on their, you know, on their crew, and for COVID, of course. Let's go on to slide 31. Another new event. We recently announced our Aeroadhere. Sorry, I got to pronounce that right. FAE-350-1 structural film adhesive product. This is a new product offering for Park.
We announced this on May ninth, just recently. It's used for use in bonding of aerospace, primary, and secondary structures. Film adhesive is used in the production of composite structures. The main component is the composite materials, the prepregs that we produce, but film adhesives, not the same quite volume, but still significant, are used in producing these composite structures. The key thing is the customers, really all of them, I think, that buy our composite materials, also use film adhesives to build, to produce their composite structures that they produce. Aeroadhere FAE-350-1 is a 350 curing epoxy based formulation. It's suitable for all these applications. Why don't we go to the last item?
The introduction of our new Aeroadhere product is an important milestone for Park, as it represents a first offering in a planned major new adhesive product line, with more in the works and tend to come. This is a big deal. This is kind of a whole new area for Park, even though it relates to construction and composite structures. We're a company that has, that has been producing, sorry, prepreg materials, composite materials or composite structures, and light strike materials on that as well. Now we're into film adhesives, which is a big leap for Park and a, and a big, top-line opportunity for us as well, I would think. Let's go on to slide 32. Changing back to the, you know, our number kind of stuff, changing gears again.
Well, you know, there's a reason for this. We'll get to that in a minute. Analysis of Park cash and cash application. Let's just kind of go through this math here a little bit. $105.5 million. That was our cash that was just reported as at the end of the FY. The transition tax installment payments remaining, $12.5 million. We spoke about this many times, and that's payable. Let's see what this footnote say. It's through 2025. Dollar per share dividend that we just declared and paid, $20.5 million. The solution treater project for solution treater for the ADL project, if we do it, that'd be $6 million. The AFP project, if we do it, that's $10 million.
We haven't made a final decision on those things. I'd say it's more likely not. We add all the things up, $49 million. We subtract $9 million from $105.5 million. We end up with $56.5 million. That's a conceptual computation, but it's basically saying, look, this is kind of like how much cash we have left after we take care of all these things, $56.5 million. That's an approximation. There's a reason for doing this, and I'll get to that in a couple slides. Let's go on to slide 33. Park's balance sheet, cash dividend history, and thoughts about capital allocation. Gotta remind you, we have 0 long-term debt. Very pleased about that. Our cash dividend.
While others cut or canceled their dividends, we maintained our $0.10 per share regular dividend throughout the pandemic. Park has now paid 38 consecutive years of uninterrupted regular cash dividends without ever skipping a dividend or reducing the dividend amount. On February 9, 2023, our board approved a 25% increase in the company's regular quarterly cash dividend, going from $0.10 per quarter to $0.125 per quarter, or $0.40 per year to $0.50 per year, or total dollars, about $8 million-$10 million per year. Why do we do that? Let's go back to slide 27, because that's kind of why we did the analysis for... that we did in slide 27 originally.
This was done with something we reviewed with the board, which, you know, a little bit more detail provided, of course. When we saw that our outlook for EBITDA on our forecast was about $35 million, we felt very comfortable increasing our regular dividend from $8 million to $10 million per year. You know, one could have taken a position or argued that we could have done more, but since Park tends to be a conservative company, we just said, okay, we'll go to that, $10 million or $0.125 per quarter of regular dividend. We always could do more later if we want to.
Seeing that this is really why we originally did the analysis on slide 27, was for the board to consider, you know, whether we should be changing our dividend policy. At the time, what we reviewed with the board was more detailed than this, but this is basically the kind of analysis that the board used to make the decision. We've had a long run with a regular dividend back to slide 33. Did not intend to disrupt that run. In other words, the point is that we feel very comfortable increasing the dividend, that we're not gonna need to reverse that at some point. Let's go on to slide 34. Again, just continuing with Park's balance sheet, et cetera.
On February ninth, same date, Park's board also declared a special dividend of $1 per share, total amount of approximately $20 million, which was already paid on April 6th. That money is gone. Why do we do that? Let's go to slide 32, because there's a reason for slide 32 as well. This is the analysis that we reviewed when we made the decision. The board made the decision to pay the special dividend. We felt that actually spent a lot of time on this, and we had advice from outsiders, you know, investment bankers, did a very careful evaluation. We felt that this number, this, you know, this kind of concept number, $56 million, let's say, is a proper number for Park.
We felt comfortable with the $20 million or $20.5 million, $1 per share dividend. That was based on a pretty serious, thoughtful analysis, I must say. What about M&A? Good question. We're not giving up on M&A. We're still looking at M&A, but I think we've concluded that M&A is probably a less likely opportunity for the expenditure of our cash than maybe we originally thought. Why is that? There's 2 types of things we're looking at. One is something comes to us. It's usually an auction that's being handled by an investment banker. We've looked at a number of these things, the prices that they're sold for, these companies sold for, are significantly more than we would be willing to offer or bid. We don't have any regrets about that.
We think the world's insane, and we're sane. We feel fine. We don't have any regrets, fine about the valuations we came up with. You know, the outside world has a different opinion, and we're not going to chase those kind of values. That's a little bit of an issue with the companies that are auctioned. Of course, when companies are auctioned, they're not exactly what we want anyway. There's, you know, the company that's is for sale is brought to our attention by an investment banker. The other thing we've been looking at is companies we target, we go after, that are not necessarily for sale.
That is, you know, a little bit of a different kind of problem, which is that, you know, if the owner isn't willing to sell or isn't willing to sell at the price that we think makes sense, then it's not gonna necessarily happen. We're not giving up at M&A. We're just looking at another opportunity now in the last couple of weeks that we're just starting to look at. I guess a little less optimistic that we're gonna have an outlet for our cash with M&A. If we find something, would we be willing to finance? Sure, we'd be willing to finance if it makes sense for Park.
The good news, though, and this is I think the main point that we should make, is that even though we may not be investing, in companies via acquisition, maybe we will, but may not, there are many opportunities, very attractive opportunities that are coming our way to invest in. Some of those were listed on, that slide, that footnote, 6, the slide regarding our outlook. Those opportunities that we're saying we're not taking into account in the outlook computation and many more. These things are coming our way, actually. Why? Is it just luck? I don't know. Maybe it's because we've paid a lot of dues and sacrificed a lot and overcame much so that we're in a position now, we've earned that right, to have these opportunities presented to us.
What I would say is the ROI on these opportunities, for let's call it internal investment on programs or projects, are usually much, much, much more attractive than the potential ROIs on the acquisitions by orders of magnitude sometimes. That's the good news, is that we're not out of opportunities. That's quite the opposite, actually. I think our focus is gonna be on a different type of opportunity at this point. The $56.5 million number, we're comfortable with that number. We think it's okay, and we think that we'll be able to take advantage of some of these other opportunities. Like I said, if we feel we need to finance an opportunity, we'll be willing to consider that as well.
Just continuing back on slide 34, Park has now paid $583 million or over $28 per share in cash dividends since the beginning of 2005. Our thoughts about cash and capital allocation. No bucks, no Buck Rogers. That's a Tom Wolfe thing from The Right Stuff. You have the right stuff. Our version of that is no capital, no capital allocation. Somewhere along the way, someone has to generate the capital or there will be no capital to allocate. There's a lot of talk about capital allocation, and it's all fine. It's good. I'm not criticizing it. It seems what's missing sometimes is, well, you have to generate the capital. Somebody has to do that. That's not something that's easily done by, you know, discussion at a, you know, business school.
That requires, as far as we're concerned, hard work and sacrifice. Let's go on to slide 35. How about Park? How's Park done in terms of generating capital? Well, how have we done? The company was started by 2 guys in a garage in Woodside, Queens in 1954, with just a few bucks they had left over from war duty. Basically, they started with no money. Nobody ever gave us anything. Nothing I can remember anyway. No, nothing special. We've paid that $583 million in cash dividends since 2005, so that somebody at Park must have figured out how to generate capital over the years. No capital, no capital allocation. The fact that we generated capital makes the discussion about capital allocation meaningful and relevant. If we hadn't generated capital, nothing to talk about.
Let's not forget that part of the equation. Slide 36. Park family culture eats strategy for breakfast. That's a Peter Drucker thing. At Park, yeah, we have a strategy too. We're not downplaying strategy, but it is our Park family culture which makes us strong and allows us to endure. How do we generate capital at Park? How do we generate lasting value at Park? It's through dedication, through sacrifice, through perseverance. I'm not sure these things are really taught in these elite business schools. You know, the capital allocation part of it might be taught, but how do you generate capital? This is how we generate capital anyway, and you have to judge whether we've been successful. I think we have been, but that's my opinion.
Because of our ongoing staffing shortages, our film line and tape line people have been working 60 or more hours per week in and week out, for over a year now. That's not only film and tape, but we're focusing on film and tape at this point. This is how we generate capital at Park. Let's go on to slide 37. Why do our people do such things? Why do they wanna work 60-plus hours per week in and week out? How does that work? 5 days, 12 hours. There are 2 shifts, 2 crews, day and night. We got pretty much 24/5 coverage on those 2 machines, critical machines, the hot metal machines, film and tape. Maybe it's why do people do such things?
What, because, what, we're nice people or something like that? We say nice things. Maybe it's because actions speak louder than words. Do you know where that came from? Abraham Lincoln. I didn't know that. I looked it up, and apparently he's the one who first coined that phrase. It's a good one. When everybody was laying off their employees at the, you know, at the beginning of the pandemic, remember that? In some cases by the thousands. We at Park laid off nobody. We kept all of our precious Park family people, even though we were told we were crazy to do so. You know, we're in aerospace. Remember the planes were flying. We just saw pictures of it, 1 or 2, 3 people. Most of them were just parked and not flying at all.
The industry was in terrible shape. I mean, it just was almost collapsed, you know, the aircraft industry. More than that was the fact that there was this great uncertainty about what was gonna happen. We all remember that. People talked about Armageddon, the end of days. Yeah, things were really bad, but what was gonna happen for the future? You know, a lot of people gave into fear, and I don't blame them. They dramatically reduced costs, laid off lots and lots of people. There's this thing, George Patton said, "Don't take counsel of your fears." I think that, I think that's the correct quote. We didn't take counsel of our fears, and we didn't lay anybody off. Somehow we decided we're gonna stay with our people, and that's the last thing that would go.
Remember the vaccine mandates where we were being pressured, pretty heavily pressured, to fire our people who dared to defy the mandates? What did we tell our people? We said, "No, we're not gonna fire you. You know, it's up to you whether you get vaccinated or not." We didn't tell people not to get vaccinated. We're against vaccines. We told people, "No, we're not gonna do it." As a matter of fact, we said, "We're not gonna fire you." Matter of fact, we said in writing, "Over our dead body," just to make sure that they understood we're not fooling around. I meant that. I meant that literally, over our dead body.
If you wanna have a culture which has any real meaning and power, you better be willing to live and die by it. You know, people have cultures. They have nice PowerPoints that some PR firm does to present a culture, it's meaningless unless you're really willing to commit everything you got to it, in my opinion. Otherwise, it's a waste of time, it's silly. Our people remember those things. I suspect they do. Actions speak louder than words. That may be why our people are so dedicated. At least, you know, example as to why our people are so dedicated, because we've demonstrated with actions, not words, how important they are to us and how dedicated we are to them. Let's go on to slide. Our last slide, we're just finishing up within an hour. Slide 38.
If you want your people to love your company, you better love them, and it better be true love also. You can't fake love. Our people are family, and we don't turn our backs on family. Peter was right. Here's a picture of our dedicated film line and tape line crews. These are wonderful people. I really was very pleased when I asked Corey to take a picture of these guys and gals during shift change, because that's the only time we can get most of them in one photo. It's really an honor for me to be able to work with these people. Actually, I was a little emotional.
I got a little emotional when I saw this picture because they looked so happy, you know, and they're working so hard, and there are so many nice smiles on their faces. That meant a lot to me. I don't know if it means anything to anybody else, but I just wanted you to know it meant a lot to me. Okay, thank you very much. We got 1 hour and 1 minute. We're done with our presentation. Operator, if there are any questions at this point, we'd be happy to take them.
Operator (participant)
Thank you, sir. We will now be conducting the Q&A session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate that your line is in the question queue. You may press star 2 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 keys. One moment please while we pull for questions. The first question comes from the line of Nick Ripotella with NR Management. Please proceed with your question.
Nick Ripostella (Investor)
Good morning, Brian and the team. Can you hear me okay?
Brian Shore (Chairman and CEO)
Yeah, I hear you fine, Nick. Yeah. Thank you.
Nick Ripostella (Investor)
Great. A couple of questions. If you could just give a little update on your thoughts on what's going on with China and the COMAC program. Really haven't heard much about in the press about that lately. Secondly, you know, you've again laid out how Park is really a U.S.-based growth manufacturing concern. That's the way I look at it. I look at you as a growth stock, based on the outlook. If we were to, you know, have some stutter steps here, would you still have an appetite for share repurchase if, you know, Mr. Market became silly at some point, the equity were to, you know, become depressed? Finally, this may be a stupid question, if there is.
Do you have any thoughts on the removal from the S&P index? I know that's out of your, you know, control. If you have any thoughts on that, it'd be appreciated. Thank you so much.
Brian Shore (Chairman and CEO)
Okay. Thanks, Nick. COMAC. You know, it's funny that the Chinese are not as transparent, a little opaque. We follow news. You probably see the same things we see, and we haven't seen much in terms of updates to their programs. The programs are progressing, though, from our perspective, in terms of material requirements. The ARJ21, that's at this point, really, an aircraft that's in full production. I don't know if it'll ramp up to higher rates. As I said last year, I think they did 26 airplanes. So it's a small program. It's a little meaningful program for us, and it's also targeted for approval of our LSB product, which we'd be very happy about. The C919, that's obviously the big one for the Chinese.
It's a real prestige program. They're going up against the 737 and A320, as you know. We'll have to see what happens. I haven't heard any recent news, though, Nick, although I would just go back to what I've said numerous times, which is that this is a big, big, big prestige program for the Chinese, and my bet is that they're gonna do everything they can to make it successful. Let's see. You had a comment about our being a growth stock. Let's see. I don't remember what the question was there, but you can remind me, but buyback. You asked about buybacks. Yeah. If the market can make us another offer we can't refuse. Yeah, we're very open to doing buybacks.
I guess maybe you're tying the, you know, the growth outlook to buybacks, and maybe that was the question. Yeah. Actually, something that we are thinking about, something on our radar screen, considering, especially like, I think we were suggesting the outlook, is our company valued properly? Probably not. That actually ties into the removal from the S&P, the small cap index. We were given no notice about it. You know, you read about it probably the same time we read about it. Was very disappointing.
Somebody made a comment which I didn't really appreciate too much, that we were deleted from the S&P small cap index, because our market cap hadn't increased as much as it needed to or hadn't increased very much or something to that effect. My thought was, well, okay, of the companies in the S&P small cap index, how many pay cash dividends? Okay, second question. Of those who pay, which my guess is not too many, because smaller companies generally don't pay cash dividends. Second question. Of those companies in a small cap, S&P small cap index, which do pay cash dividends, how many have paid $28 of cash dividends per share since 2005? Obviously, that has a big impact upon the value of the company.
Very disappointed. You know, we had increased our dividend, our regular dividend, that seemed to drive the stock price up quite a bit to, I think, the equivalent of high fifteens. If you take into account the $1 special dividend, maybe $15.80 or something like that. You know, the deletion occurred. We had no notice about it. The stock, you know, went back down to where it was. We have no control over it. It's just disappointing to us. What we're going to say, it's not fair, of course not. We've been in touch with S&P. They've been very polite and very nice, you know, they're not very transparent about how they go through these decisions, obviously it wasn't what we wanted.
We just have to keep going and, you know, we'll see what happens. I don't know if we have a chance to get back in the index, but that's not really our main objective. Our main objective is to realize the goals for Park. Nick, did I miss anything? Did I cover all those questions or?
Nick Ripostella (Investor)
No, that's pretty good. Thank you so much. I appreciate it.
Brian Shore (Chairman and CEO)
Sure.
Nick Ripostella (Investor)
Keep up the good work.
Brian Shore (Chairman and CEO)
Thank you very much, Nick.
Operator (participant)
The next question comes from the line of Matt Spiegel with GWK Investments. Please proceed with your question. Oh, excuse me. The next question comes from the line of Brian Glenn with Olcott Square Investment Partners. Please proceed with your question.
Brian Glenn (Founder and President)
Hey, Brian. Thanks for the always very thorough walkthrough.
Brian Shore (Chairman and CEO)
How you doing, Brian?
Brian Glenn (Founder and President)
Good.
Brian Shore (Chairman and CEO)
Good.
Brian Glenn (Founder and President)
I have a couple questions. The first is on the MRAS, which I know was 3, 5, and 5 years. Are you able to discuss, and you probably can't go into detail, but to discuss the mechanisms for the reprice, which I think, correct me if I'm wrong, would be 2025?
Brian Shore (Chairman and CEO)
That's the cast in concrete. We have a price increase. All of our pricing goes up in beginning of calendar 2025. That was part of our tenure LTA. That's kinda built-in. When we did the 10-year LTA, we were using an inflation assumption of maybe 3%. The raw materials, we have LTAs from our suppliers on the raw materials, except for 1 where there's a kind of a risk-sharing arrangement for 1 of the raw material components. It's really the non-raw material area of our cost that, you know, we are at risk for. We assumed about 3% inflation year-over-year, obviously that has not been the case in the last, like, 12 months or so. That's where we have the risk.
The price increase that goes into effect January of 2025, used that 3% assumption. It's not. I just wanna be clear. It's not an index. In other words, it doesn't change based upon what happens with inflation. I'm just saying when MRAS and Park negotiated the agreement, we agreed that we would assume a 3% inflation year-over-year in order to come up with a pricing.
Brian Glenn (Founder and President)
Okay. Yeah, thanks for that. I appreciate it and understood. My, my second question, it's twofold. I guess there's a lot of talk on the impressive dividend record, and it certainly is impressive and large and respectable and appreciated. Does the board, to the extent you can share, does the board have discussions around total shareholder return at all, or is it mainly just around dividends? Related to that, is there anything I know a lot of people have asked over the last few quarters and years about dividends versus buybacks.
Is there any other factors that would influence that decision related to you or the board's preference for amount of shares outstanding, trading liquidity or anything like that, or ownership interest, that may bias you guys one way or the other, or is that just not a factor?
Brian Shore (Chairman and CEO)
Brian, it's all a factor, you know. Maybe I didn't explain it that well, when we went through the analysis to where we decided to do the $1 dividend and also the increase in our dividend, we had discussions about all those things: total share return, buybacks, you know, M&A, investment, using our cash for internal investment. You know, there's nothing that's off the table. Everything is being considered, everything's being evaluated. In our discussions, all these things are considered. If I implied that it's only a one-track thing, you know, only about dividends, I didn't mean to do that. Probably the reason we focused on dividends in the presentation is because we have the recent increase in the regular dividend and also the special dividend.
Brian Glenn (Founder and President)
Understood. Okay.
Brian Shore (Chairman and CEO)
I.
Brian Glenn (Founder and President)
Go ahead.
Brian Shore (Chairman and CEO)
Yeah, Brian, let me just say, I just wanted to say again, I think the board is pretty sophisticated about this stuff. If there's some belief that's not, I think that's not correct at all. In addition to that, we do get regular advice from outside experts, you know, investment banking people that are, you know, the tops of their firms, like CEO levels, president levels at their firms. I think we're well advised, and I think we're well aware of all the different factors that you mentioned in terms of total shareholder return.
Brian Glenn (Founder and President)
Yep. Yeah. Understood. I mean, I think if this is just me, but if you look at your outlook and maybe that's hit one day, maybe it's not, I understand it's not a forecast and there's a lot of levers there. It seems to me that there's substantial return that could be realized over time by retiring a share and possibly higher than the return on assets or return on invested capital rate of the firm historically. I know that's changing with the footprint and the new plant coming online and some of the internal projects. That's just my own observation and, you know, just something that I believe to be true. I do appreciate you doing this walkthrough.
It's always appreciated, and I find the level of detail you guys put into this presentation, extremely helpful and appreciated.
Brian Shore (Chairman and CEO)
Okay. Well, thank you very much for your input, Brian. Yeah. Thanks again.
Brian Glenn (Founder and President)
Thank you.
Operator (participant)
At this time, there are no further questions, and I would like to turn the floor back over to Brian Shore for any closing comments.
Brian Shore (Chairman and CEO)
Okay, this is Brian again. Thank you very much for everybody, very much for listening again. These calls are... I try to make them quick, and I try to rush through these things a little bit, but they end up going for an hour. I appreciate you hanging in there. If you have any follow-up questions, feel free to give us a call, and feel free to give Matt or me a call. Otherwise, we'll be talking pretty soon because our Q1 report is at, I think, the beginning of July. Thanks. Have a great day. Bye.
Operator (participant)
Thank you, everyone. This does conclude today's conference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.