Teledyne Technologies - Q1 2024
April 24, 2024
Transcript
Operator (participant)
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Teledyne Q1 2024 earnings call. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. Later, we will have a question-and-answer session, and instructions for queuing up will be provided for you at that time. Should you require operator assistance during the call, press star zero on your phone's keypad, and as a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. At this time, I'd like to turn the conference over to your host, Jason VanWees. Please go ahead, sir.
Jason VanWees (Vice Chairman)
Hi, thank you, and good morning, everyone. This is Jason VanWees, Vice Chairman. I'd like to welcome everyone to Teledyne's first quarter 2024 earnings release conference call. We released our earnings earlier this morning before the market opened. Joining me today are Teledyne's Executive Chairman, Robert Mehrabian, CEO Edwin Roks, President and COO George Bobb, SVP and CFO Steve Blackwood, and Melanie Cibik, EVP, General Counsel, Chief Compliance Officer, and Secretary. After remarks by Robert, Edwin, George, and Steve, we will ask for your questions. However, before we get started, attorneys have reminded me to tell you that all forward-looking statements made this morning are subject to various assumptions, risks, and caveats as noted in the earnings release and our periodic SEC filing, and of course, actual results may differ materially.
In order to avoid potential selective disclosures, this call is simultaneously being webcast and a replay, both via webcast and dial-in, will be available for approximately one month. Here's Robert.
Robert Mehrabian (Executive Chairman)
Thank you, Jason. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining our earnings call. Today, we reported record first quarter non-GAAP operating margin, record adjusted earnings per share, and record free cash flow. While overall orders remained strong, sales were impacted by deterioration in some of our short cycle imaging and instrumentation markets. We had previously assumed no full-year sales growth in industrial automation as well as test and measurement markets. However, those markets weakened more than planned in the first quarter, and we now forecast full-year sales in those product families to decline meaningfully in 2024. Nevertheless, we believe such sales declines will be offset by our marine, aviation, and certain defense businesses resulting in full-year flat sales compared to 2023. Despite those anticipated sales reductions in what are among our highest margin businesses, we believe overall operating margin will remain flat in 2024 versus 2023.
Within the digital imaging segment, year-over-year sales declined due to significantly lower sales of machine vision sensors and cameras related to industrial automation. However, this was partially offset by organic growth and significant margin improvement at Teledyne FLIR given our unmanned system businesses' growth and the resiliency of our core infrared imaging businesses. Similarly, in instrumentation, we were relatively flat where significant reduction in sales of test and measurement instrumentation were almost entirely offset by marine electronics and unmanned underwater systems. Despite the overall flat sales, segment margin increased considerably. In our smallest segment, engineered systems, which is largely at U.S. government prime contractors, sales were impacted by the very late approval of the U.S. 2024 budget. We also revised estimated progress and cost to complete uncertain contracts resulting in some revenue and profit reversal.
Finally, given that our even stronger balance sheet with quarter-end leverage just at 1.7 combined with record free cash flow, we believe it is appropriate time for us to add stock repurchases to our capital deployment plan. I will now turn the call over to Edwin and George who will further comment on the performance of our four business segments.
Edwin Roks (CEO)
Thank you, Robert. This is Edwin, and I will report on the digital imaging segment which represents 55% of Teledyne's portfolio. Like Teledyne as a whole, this segment is a mix of longer cycle businesses such as defense, space, and healthcare combined with shorter cycle markets including industrial automation, semiconductor inspection, and infrared components and cameras for applications ranging from factory condition monitoring to maritime navigation. First quarter 2024 sales declined 4.1% compared with last year as certain products declined considerably but were largely offset by those with meaningful increases. For example, sales to industrial machine vision markets declined approximately 30% year-over-year. On the other hand, unmanned air systems, unmanned ground systems, and integrated counter-drone systems collectively increased nearly +30%.
Other year-over-year changes were less significant but included continued growth in our space-based imaging business, resilient sales in healthcare and FLIR's core infrared and maritime businesses, and declining sales of semiconductor-related microelectromechanical systems or MEMS. As Robert mentioned, the FLIR businesses grew organically and for the third consecutive quarter were positive contributors to overall segment margin. Finally, segment orders were healthy with a first quarter book-to-bill of 1.06x. George will now report on the other three segments which represent the remaining 45% of Teledyne.
George Bobb (President and COO)
Thanks, Edwin. The instrumentation segment consists of our marine, environmental, and test and measurement businesses which contribute a little over 24% of sales. For the total segment, overall first quarter sales decreased 0.9% versus last year. Sales of marine instruments increased 15.3% in the quarter primarily due to both strong offshore energy and subsea defense sales. Sales of environmental instruments decreased 5.8% with greater sales of process gas, emission monitoring systems, and gas and flame safety analyzers more than offset by lower sales of drug discovery and laboratory instruments. Sales of electronic test and measurement systems which include oscilloscopes, digitizers, and protocol analyzers decreased 18.2% year-over-year on the toughest quarterly comparison of 2024 versus 2023. Overall instrumentation segment operating profits increased in the first quarter with GAAP operating margin increasing 183 basis points to 26% and 175 basis points on a non-GAAP basis to 27.1%.
In the aerospace and defense electronics segment which represents 14% of Teledyne sales, first quarter sales increased 7.2% driven by growth of commercial aerospace and defense microwave products. GAAP and non-GAAP segment operating profit increased year-over-year with segment margin increasing approximately 80 basis points. For the engineered systems segment which contributes 7% to overall sales, first quarter revenue decreased 10.5% and operating profit was impacted by lower sales and the cost to complete estimate revisions Robert mentioned earlier. I will now pass the call back to Robert.
Robert Mehrabian (Executive Chairman)
Thanks, George. In conclusion, orders have been strong for two consecutive quarters with the increase almost entirely due to our longer cycle businesses such as defense and energy. However, given the nature of these businesses, converting much of the greater backlog to sales would not begin until the second half of 2024. At the same time, the pace of orders in our short cycle instrumentation and imaging businesses did have a near-term sales impact in the first quarter and likely will continue to impact total sales in the second quarter of 2024. So, while our current outlook for full-year sales is flat with 2023, we expect second quarter sales to be sequentially flat with the first quarter and then increase in the second half of the year. The current market environment is reminiscent of the 2014 through 2016 period.
That is, when total Teledyne sales at earnings were flattish except market dynamics were the opposite of what we are experiencing today. Specifically, growth in certain short cycle markets was partially offsetting declines in our longer cycle defense and energy businesses. Hopefully this time, the recovery in the short cycle businesses would be shorter. In any event, during the 2014 through 2016, we executed approximately $400 million of opportunistic share repurchases, completed 10 acquisitions, and subsequently experienced significant sales and earnings growth when markets normalized. Today, we are pleased to renew our stock repurchase authorization and plan to begin repurchasing shares this quarter. At the same time, because of our strong balance sheet, we are continuing to evaluate a number of acquisition opportunities. I will now turn the call over to Steve.
Steve Blackwood (SVP and CFO)
Thank you, Robert, and good morning. I will first discuss some additional financials for the quarter not covered by Robert, and then I will discuss our second quarter and full-year 2024 outlook. In the first quarter, cash flow from operating activities was $291 million compared with $203 million in 2023. Free cash flow, that is, cash from operating activities less capital expenditures, was $275.1 million in the first quarter 2024 compared with $178.6 million in 2023. Cash flow increased in the first quarter due to stronger working capital performance. Capital expenditures were $15.9 million in the first quarter of 2024 compared with $24.4 million in 2023. Depreciation and amortization expense was $78 million for the first quarter of 2024 compared with $82.1 million in 2023. We ended the quarter with approximately $2.33 billion of net debt. That is, approximately $3.25 billion of debt less cash of $912.4 million.
Now turning to our outlook. Management currently believes that GAAP earnings per share in the second quarter of 2024 will be in the range of $3.57-$3.70 per share. With non-GAAP earnings in the range of $4.40-$4.50 per share. For the full-year 2024, our GAAP earnings per share outlook is $16.02-$16.27 and on a non-GAAP basis, $19.25-$19.45 per share. The 2024 full-year estimated tax rate excluding discrete items is expected to be 22.5%. I will now pass the call back to Robert.
We would now like to take your questions. Operator, if you are ready to proceed with the questions and answers, please go ahead.
Operator (participant)
Ladies and gentlemen, if you would like to ask a question and have not already done so, please press 1 then zero on your phone's keypad. If you are on a speakerphone, switch over to your headset before pressing numbers if available so the system can hear the touch tones accurately. Once again, for questions, press one then one at this time. Our first question is going to come from Jim Ricchiuti with Needham & Company. Please go ahead.
Jim Ricchiuti (Senior Analyst)
Hi. Thanks. Good morning. First question, just given the weakness that you are seeing in some of the higher margin areas of the short cycle business, I wonder how you are thinking about gross margins over the next couple of quarters?
Robert Mehrabian (Executive Chairman)
In terms of the gross margin, we are looking at relatively flat gross margins of somewhere around 43%.
Jim Ricchiuti (Senior Analyst)
Okay.
Robert Mehrabian (Executive Chairman)
Over the next couple of quarters, yeah.
Jim Ricchiuti (Senior Analyst)
All right. Robert, with the shift in capital allocation, I am wondering what does this imply just in terms of the M&A pipeline? Are you still seeing more opportunities for the smaller deals as opposed to the larger M&A? Is that a fair way to characterize the environment right now?
Robert Mehrabian (Executive Chairman)
Jim, kind of, but let me just start with some numbers that are significant. Our debt to EBITDA is at 1.7 now. We have one acquisition in the pipeline. Once we make that, we would have spent over $300 million since we bought FLIR in acquisition. If we do not do anything else, by the end of the year, our debt to EBITDA ratio will be closer to 1.3 where it is at 1.7 today. So, we think that it is an appropriate time first to look at our stock and repurchase some shares because since we bought FLIR, our shares have increased by almost 700,000 shares because of stock option exercises and restricted stock awards. We would like to get that off the table first. But at the same time, we have a lot of capacity for acquisitions.
We can spend up to $1.5 billion-$2.0 billion because we have not touched our line of credit at all and we have cash on hand. So, we are looking at acquisitions. The issue is that smaller acquisitions we may be able to complete this year, larger acquisitions even if we find it with all the various regulatory hurdles that you have to go through will not happen until next year. But the answer is we are going to do both. We are going to do exactly what we did in 2014 to 2016. We bought our shares back, we bought 10 companies, and then some of our competitors did not do as well in that constricted period and we were able to acquire e2V right after that because we had the financial wherewithal. So, I do not know if that answers your question.
Jim Ricchiuti (Senior Analyst)
It helps. I mean, in the past, more recently, you have talked about valuations still being a bit on the rich side. Do you see, as you look at the pipeline for some of the larger M&A, have you seen any change in terms of the prices out there that it is going to take to do some of these larger deals?
Robert Mehrabian (Executive Chairman)
Not yet. On the other hand, I have to tell you, Jim, they have not all come out with their earnings. In this market, kind of a bifurcated market, I expect that some of those will come down and there will be just like it did before. Interestingly enough, history does repeat itself. It does not repeat itself on the time scale that we always expect, but repeat itself.
Jim Ricchiuti (Senior Analyst)
Got it. Thanks very much.
Robert Mehrabian (Executive Chairman)
Thank you, Jim.
Operator (participant)
Our next question is going to come from Greg Konrad with Jefferies. Please go ahead.
Greg Konrad (SVP in Equity Research)
Good morning.
Robert Mehrabian (Executive Chairman)
Good morning, Greg.
Greg Konrad (SVP in Equity Research)
This is a bit of an unusual question, but one I have been getting from investors. In light of the uncharacteristic guidance cut which there has not really been many over the past 20 years, is Teledyne different today than what has made it so successful thinking back over the past 20 years? Or what has really changed just given some of these uncharacteristic items? Or is this just you think about it as part of the normal cycle?
Robert Mehrabian (Executive Chairman)
Well, two things. First, in the 25 years or so, Greg, we have only had this occasion in four earnings. So, almost 100 earnings calls and releases. We have experienced this four times, 4%. So, it is not something that happens very frequently. The flip side of it is that the economy and the market are not quite predictable. Some parts of the economy are doing well like our marine businesses are hitting the ball out of the park. And defense, of course, is doing well with a recent passage, etc. We expect that to continue. What is unusual is that the prediction of the slowdown in industrial automation took us by surprise. We thought in January that we would be relatively flat for the year in our machine vision businesses. And now we are suddenly faced with, in April, projecting a 20% decline.
Now, that sounds like a lot, but it is only $120 million. What is different today from the past is that Teledyne can absorb those kinds of shocks much more easily than it could before. In 2015, 2016, when oil went from over $100 down to $30, that was a shocker to Teledyne because our revenue was only $2.5 billion, $2.6 billion. And that decreased our marine businesses by almost a third over a very short period of time. So, what is different is that the shock absorber in Teledyne is a lot stiffer and can absorb shocks like that. And we did this quarter. Everything else being equal, when I look at it, I say, "Look, we had two hits that we took in one quarter. One of them was this significant decline in industrial automation and some semiconductor, but semiconductor seems to be recovering slowly.
So, we see signs of that. And I think the machine vision business will come back. We took another hit in our engineered system business which was unexpected. But we had to go in and look at everything and do some estimates and change our estimates to complete. That was a one-time event. So, I am not going to worry about that too much. What I am saying is that, "Look, yes, we took a hit and we are taking our revenue down by $220 million out of $5.9 billion towards $5.7 billion. In the old days, at those days, if we had taken a $220 million hit, that would have been just devastating. We recovered those times, those kinds of shocks.
I think we will recover this time just as well, if not better because we have the muscle and the ability and the credit to buy companies and when necessary, buy back our stock.
Greg Konrad (SVP in Equity Research)
Then I appreciate that. Maybe just kind of a follow-up to that. I mean, just thinking back to what Teledyne did out of the oil and gas downturn and there was the sequester before that and impacted defense. I mean, if I remember back, I mean, you took pretty aggressive actions and we saw what margins and growth did out of those two downturns. I mean, is there similar actions that you are undertaking on the short cycle side? Does that offer opportunity maybe to examine the margins where you have an even better kind of trajectory coming out of market recovery?
Robert Mehrabian (Executive Chairman)
Yes. First, if you look at the FLIR businesses, year-over-year, the margins are up almost 200 basis points year-over-year. And the reason that happened is very simple. We took about $52 million worth of cost out last year and we are taking additional $10 million-$15 million cost out this year early on. So, that is affecting the margins. If you look at the DALSA e2v which is our traditional businesses, our estimates are that by the end of second quarter, we would have taken another $40 million out of that altogether. We are talking about almost $100 million in cost out. And we anticipate that DALSA e2v margins were the lowest they have been for a long time. They were at 19.5% in Q1.
We expect that to recover and frankly, we expect the overall margins for digital imaging to be flat with last year on much lower revenues. So, it basically says that we have taken the cost out and if need be, we will take more. But I think right now we are doing okay. We are just not very aggressive in our hiring.
Greg Konrad (SVP in Equity Research)
Thank you.
Operator (participant)
Our next question comes from Joe Giordano with TD Cowen. You may begin.
Joe Giordano (Managing Director in Industrial Technology, Robotics and Automation)
Hey. Hey, guys. How are you doing?
Robert Mehrabian (Executive Chairman)
Hi.
Joe Giordano (Managing Director in Industrial Technology, Robotics and Automation)
Maybe I will start on DI as well. Just, I am curious on the timing of this, right? Because if you look at some of the pure players with vision, they had huge declines last year and you guys did okay relative to them last year. And now this year, it seems like, well, they are yet to report largely, but it sounds like they are going to be sequentially improving offload levels starting like now. And it seems like now is when you guys are starting to see declines. So, I am just curious your thoughts on what that timing mismatch is because it is pretty short cycle stuff.
Robert Mehrabian (Executive Chairman)
It is. We know a couple of businesses that took a pretty good hit, but their quarters are kind of a little different and their years are a little different from ours. They took a pretty big hit and lowered their numbers significantly. So, now they are coming up from the bottom slightly better. We did not take a hit because we did not have short cycle declines of the magnitude we saw. We anticipated it would happen, but it happened fast and we took the cost out. The flip side of it is that in even digital imaging, we have, of course, the short cycle businesses, but we also have long cycle businesses like space and defense. And those markets are doing really well. So, I have got to be a little careful when we designate what is digital imaging.
Basically, the average we think in the second half we will recover because of the space and defense business.
Joe Giordano (Managing Director in Industrial Technology, Robotics and Automation)
And then just to follow up on the question earlier about, you know, is Teledyne different today? I think what you guys have been known for for so long is being very good estimators of your own businesses and with high precision. And when you think about all the M&A companies you have done, does that become just inherently more challenging today versus a decade ago just because you have so many more businesses? And is there maybe, like, does there need to be a tinkering of the process with how you communicate upwards from the businesses towards management to fine-tune the budgeting process in light of some of these, you know, being caught off guard here?
Robert Mehrabian (Executive Chairman)
Well, I mean, you are right in one respect. I will kind of paraphrase, but is that the estimating the short cycle businesses actually has always been inherently challenging. The flip side of it is the part that you mentioned, we have a lot of businesses, etc. That part is actually a help to us rather than a hindrance because it opens up the platform from which you can make acquisitions. That is true and it will remain true. We will accelerate that. The only thing we do not want to do is make stupid acquisitions with very high prices that are not going to be accredited. Acquisitions we will do. We have a larger platform to do that with. Look, we just bought something in our marine businesses, of course, in the UK.
We have Adimec, which is a digital imaging business in the Netherlands that we are in the process of buying. The only difference between that business and our short cycle businesses is that they do a lot more custom imaging designs and they have a significant market in imaging in the defense domain. So, I think this is an opportune time for us. Let us see what happens to the rest of the earnings and cross that come out. We did not lower our numbers significantly. If we had lowered, we would be up now, right? So, all we are saying is we are going to be flat with last year. Our margins are going to be the same by the end of the year. Our revenue is going to be about the same. That is without making any acquisitions.
We are going to have enough muscle to buy our shares. You know, that is a good place to be with even after those purchases. I think we will end the year, let us say we bought $200 million of our stock. We will still end the year below 1.5 debt to EBITDA ratio which is below our target of 1.5-2.5. So, I think we are doing fine. I am not worried.
Joe Giordano (Managing Director in Industrial Technology, Robotics and Automation)
Thank you.
Robert Mehrabian (Executive Chairman)
Thank you.
Operator (participant)
Our next question comes from Andrew Buscaglia with BNP. Please go ahead.
Andrew Buscaglia (Senior Analyst for US Industrial Technology)
Hey. Good morning, guys.
Joe Giordano (Managing Director in Industrial Technology, Robotics and Automation)
Morning, Andrew.
Andrew Buscaglia (Senior Analyst for US Industrial Technology)
So, I wanted to just get a sense of how much this guidance is really de-risked. Maybe number one, are you assuming buybacks in the guidance? And then secondly, why should we have confidence given the low visibility that there is not another step down here in some of these shorter cycle areas?
Robert Mehrabian (Executive Chairman)
A very good question, Andrew. First, no, the buybacks are not built into the numbers primarily because when we buy back, it is really going to affect next year's EPS, not this year's. So, that is fairly neutral for this year depending on, of course, how much we buy. So, I would put that aside. The second part of the question, we have struggled with that mightily over the last 10 days and with our board in the last 2 days trying to decide how conservative we should be or how aggressive we should be. We have ended up being somewhere in between the two. We think that we have de-risked some of the downsides. On the other hand, we have not de-risked it all. Flip side, our defense businesses have relatively good backlog and the overall backlog in the company is 1.06.
So, the defense and space businesses are going to come back in the second half. So, they are going to balance that. In a situation like this, you can do one or two things. You can really lower the numbers and just play it very safe or you can do what is a reasonable judgment of what you see in the market and go forward. We have taken the latter approach.
Andrew Buscaglia (Senior Analyst for US Industrial Technology)
Yeah. Okay. You know, just I think some investors are also somewhat confused by the small portion of the sales. It seems like a small portion of digital imaging is driving these profound declines. Can you kind of walk through within digital imaging? We know machine vision is weak, but that is probably only low double digits as a percentage of that segment. Can you walk through the other items beyond just machine vision and tell us how much that is as a percentage of that segment sales just so we could get some more clarity around what is affecting the overall decline?
Robert Mehrabian (Executive Chairman)
Sure. First, let us start with machine vision specifically. Approximately $600 million in 2023. We are projecting a decline of about $120 million of that. So, the reason it is affecting other things is that is the highest margin businesses that we have in digital imaging. And overall, when you put the two parts together which is DALSA e2v, TS&I, and FLIR, our total revenue there is going to be down about by year end, about 1.5%. So, it is not a big number, right? 1.5%, but that is 1.5% with something like over $3.1 billion. So, it is meaningful only because the top line $3.1 billion is significant and it is our highest margin business. By year end, we are projecting that basically the declines would be 1.5% overall with FLIR up and DALSA e2v down because of that. So, I do not know if that answers your question.
The numbers, when you look at them, look large, but in retrospect, it is not huge. It is 1.5% of the total.
Andrew Buscaglia (Senior Analyst for US Industrial Technology)
Yeah. Okay. Beyond machine vision, what other areas are short cycle that are out of favor?
Robert Mehrabian (Executive Chairman)
Well, the only other one that I would say is out of favor, I would not call it out of favor. I would say it is decline. It is test and measurement. Test and measurement is the oscilloscopes and protocol solutions that we have. Last year, we had $340 million of revenue there. We expect right now that in January, we thought it remained flat. Now, we are expecting it to go down about 10%. So, that is $30 million in revenue. The good part of that is that its margins are remaining very healthy and at the very high end of all of our margins. And we can take that decline in revenue without having a big hit anywhere else because marine is making up those sales declines. The last area which is a little different is engineered systems. In 2023, we had $440 million in revenue.
Right now, we are projecting about a 10% decline or about $35 million-$40 million decline. If there is a good part to it is that that is only 7% of our portfolio and it is our lowest margin business at 10% or less. So, that is why, well, you know, the surprise here is that yes, we do have declines, but we are saying we are going to keep our revenue the same as last year and our operating margins are going to be the same as last year in an environment that is a little more constricted for our digital imaging short cycle business.
Andrew Buscaglia (Senior Analyst for US Industrial Technology)
Yeah. Okay. Thanks, Robert.
Robert Mehrabian (Executive Chairman)
Thank you.
Operator (participant)
As a reminder, if you have questions, would like to queue up, please press 10. Next, we will go to Kristine Liwag with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Kristine Liwag (Managing Director and Head of Aerospace and Defense Equity Research)
Hi. Good morning, guys. This is Gabby on for Kristine. Thanks for taking the question. So, I was just wondering if you can provide a little bit of color if you have been seeing improvements in the supply chain and your expectations for the supply chain going forward and how that is going to impact the business throughout the year.
Robert Mehrabian (Executive Chairman)
Thank you very much. Great question. The supply chain improved in 2023 significantly versus 2022. It has improved further this year. Just to give you exact numbers, when we buy from brokers, we pay higher percentages of price. Last year in the first quarter, we bought about $10 million for electronic suppliers brokers. This year first quarter, we only bought a little over $2 million. So, I think there has been significant improvement. Having said that, there are a couple of suppliers that make very sophisticated boards or semiconductor devices that are still lagging and it is more of a delay problem rather than a price problem. So, I think the supply chain is okay. We are all experiencing some delays of some sophisticated parts. Other than that, I think that is behind us.
Kristine Liwag (Managing Director and Head of Aerospace and Defense Equity Research)
Great. Thank you so much.
Robert Mehrabian (Executive Chairman)
For sure.
Operator (participant)
Our next question is going to come from Noah Poponak from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.
Noah Poponak (Managing Director and Aerospace and Defense Equity Research)
Hey. Good morning, everyone.
Robert Mehrabian (Executive Chairman)
Morning, Noah.
Noah Poponak (Managing Director and Aerospace and Defense Equity Research)
Robert, to have the second quarter revenue be about flat from the first, the year-over-year rate of decline would need to accelerate. Is that right? Is that what you are anticipating?
Robert Mehrabian (Executive Chairman)
Right now, we are anticipating that it will be flat only because the answer is yes, only because we do not think where we have really good backlog is going to kick in until the third quarter. The decline is about 4.5% from last year-over-year in second quarter. Yes.
Noah Poponak (Managing Director and Aerospace and Defense Equity Research)
Okay. Yeah. And then I guess that would imply kind of mid-single digit organic revenue growth year-over-year in the back half. I was going to ask you just alluded to it, but I was going to ask how much of that is kind of purely visibility from longer cycle things in the backlog versus what is the assumption embedded in that on the short cycle side?
Robert Mehrabian (Executive Chairman)
I think primarily it is what we have in the long cycle. The majority of that recovery is in what we have in our backlog. Maybe 3.5%-4% improvements in revenue in the second half. There is a little bit of positivity in some of our short cycle businesses only because our larger customers or platforms on which we serve, like semiconductors, the data shows that it is better than it was last year and improving itself. So, we have a little of that in mind. So, I think that is there, but we are not counting on industrial automation, other things to improve significantly because frankly, we have no visibility.
Noah Poponak (Managing Director and Aerospace and Defense Equity Research)
Okay. What are the pieces of the engineered systems margin in the quarter? I assume there is some kind of cumulative catch-up adjustment mark to market write down in that?
Robert Mehrabian (Executive Chairman)
Yeah. What happens in that business is that, as you well know, we are obligated to do cost-to-cost accounting. And so, you estimate your cost and completion timing. When we went back and looked pretty hard, we saw that some of the costs were higher than we had anticipated. So, we adjusted those. I think that took a kick out of our sales, but when you do cost-to-cost, once you take the sales down, let us say several million dollars, you have to take the profit down the same amount. So, that is what took the hit, but I think we know exactly what happened. We fixed it. We are fixing it and we should get beyond that as we move forward.
Noah Poponak (Managing Director and Aerospace and Defense Equity Research)
Do you know the size in front of you guys there on how much of a markdown you took in the quarter?
Robert Mehrabian (Executive Chairman)
Well, in Q1, we took about a $7 million EBIT hit which was basically $0.10-$0.11. So, if that had not happened, we would have made our earnings.
Noah Poponak (Managing Director and Aerospace and Defense Equity Research)
Okay.
Robert Mehrabian (Executive Chairman)
Despite the downturn in our short cycle imaging. We will fix that.
Noah Poponak (Managing Director and Aerospace and Defense Equity Research)
Got it. Got it. That is helpful. That is helpful. Last one, I guess, given how much you have now delevered balance sheet, net debt, EBITDA, post-FLIR integration, you are still going to have pretty healthy free cash flow despite the tweaks you are making here today. You know, if you are coming out with a share repurchase, I guess the number you are talking about is kind of small relative to your forward annual free cash flow generation, how much balance sheet firepower you have if you were to take leverage a little higher, little bit of like a, you know, if you are going to lay up, lay up type of thing. I guess I am surprised that you maybe part of it is you formulated all this before moving the stock today. Is there a scenario where you reevaluate something more aggressive in 2024?
Do you need to keep room for the M&A pipeline? How would you respond to that?
Robert Mehrabian (Executive Chairman)
Well, two ways. First, we will put out the case about our authorization. And if you look at that, we have authorization to go from what we said was $200 million to $250 million-$300 million. We can go up to $1.25 billion in buybacks. As you know, Noah, that depends on the stock price and how the market reacts. But at the lower stock price that I am just looking at this morning, I was looking at this morning, that would be a significant number of shares. We can do that if we choose. We will still have enough powder to make acquisitions.
Frankly, that part of our portfolio does not bother me. If you look at the final data point you may want to know is we have only $150 million of debt, fixed debt that we have to pay in the second half of 2024 in October. $150 million.
We just paid $450 million. The next payment does not come due until 2026. And then if you look forward, the next three or four payments, our average borrowing cost, and those are all fixed, our average borrowing cost is more like 2.35%. So, that is about as ideal a debt as you want to have. And as we generate cash, we can buy the shares and we can make acquisitions and we have not even touched our line of credit yet. So, from that perspective, I feel pretty comfortable.
Noah Poponak (Managing Director and Aerospace and Defense Equity Research)
Okay. Helpful. Thank you.
Robert Mehrabian (Executive Chairman)
Thank you, Noah.
Operator (participant)
At this time, there are no additional questions in queue.
Robert Mehrabian (Executive Chairman)
Thank you very much. We would like now to conclude the conference, operator. I will now ask Jason to do so.
Jason VanWees (Vice Chairman)
Thank you, John, and thanks everyone for joining the earnings call this morning. Again, all the earnings releases are on our website. The replay is available and for those who are on the call, please feel free to contact me so I can talk further. Thank you everyone. Bye.
Operator (participant)
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