Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to the conference call to discs Elbit Systems' 2022 annual report. All participants are at present in listen-only mode. Following management's formal presentation, instructions will be given for the question-and-answer session. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand over the call to Rami Myerson, Elbit Systems' Investor Relations Director. Rami, please go ahead.
Thank you, Yoni. Good day, everyone, and welcome to the call today to discuss our 2022 annual report that includes disclosure on the new segment's reporting structure. On this call with me today are Butzi Machlis, our President and CEO, Kobi Kagan, our CFO, and Yossi Gaspar, Senior VP, Business Management. Before we begin, I would like to point out that the safe harbor statements in the company's annual report on Form 20-F, filed on 1 May 2023, also applies to the contents of this conference call. As we do on our regular quarterly conference calls, we will provide you with both our regular GAAP financial data as well as certain supplemental non-GAAP information. We believe that this non-GAAP information provides additional detail to help understand the performance of the ongoing business.
You can find all the detailed GAAP financial data as well as the non-GAAP information and reconciliation in the annual report. On this call, we will only discuss our financial results as of 31 December 2022. We plan to report Q1 2023 results towards the end of May. We reported our earnings for 2022 on 28 March 2023 in our 2022 annual results press release.
There are no changes to the financial information we disclosed in our 2022 annual report. We would like to highlight our segment financial information included in the annual report, which we will report going forward. Butzi will begin with a presentation of Elbit Systems' five segments, followed by Kobi, who will provide information on the financial results of the segments. We will turn the call over to a question-and-answer session. With that, I would like now to turn the call over to Butzi.
Butzi, please.
Thank you, Rami. The annual report that was filed today includes new information on the segmental reporting structure that Elbit has adopted and plans to disclose going forward. I would like to provide some background on our decision to update our disclosure. At our investor conference on 28 March, we presented the transformation that Elbit is implementing from a company with revenues of around $3.5 billion a few years ago, to a company with infrastructure in place to support annual revenues of $6 billion-$7 billion, with improved profitability and cash generation. This follows the strong growth in our backlog to a record level of more than $15 billion, approximately 2.8 times our 2022 revenues.
As part of our regular processes and the operational transformation that also includes changes to our internal reporting as well as correspondence with our regulator, we decided to adapt the way we disclose our operations to the market. This is also an opportunity to provide additional transparency to investors and analysts. Elbit Systems reports segment information in 5 segments, beginning with the year ended December 31, 2022.
The 2022 financial information we reported from each segment is compared retrospectively to the financial performance of each segment in 2021 and 2020. The segments are organized by a combination of the nature of products and services offered together with the geographically-based segment, Elbit Systems of America or ESA, reflecting the way management manages the company. The U.S. is the largest market, and we believe this structure is suitable to maximize the significant potential.
The five reportable segments are aerospace, which provide products and systems for airborne platforms, unmanned aerial solutions, precision-guided ammunition or PGM, sensors, infrastructure, training and simulator systems, as well as commercial aviation systems. C4I and cyber provide C4I systems, data links and radio communication systems and equipment, cyber intelligence, autonomous and homeland security solutions. ISTAR and EW provides a wide range of electro-optics and laser systems, as well as a range of electronic warfare and tagging systems. Provide land-based systems for armed, armored, and other military vehicles, artillery and mortar systems, munition for land, air, and sea applications, including PGM, armed vehicle and other platforms for mobility and protection systems. Elbit Systems of America or ESA, provides products and systems solutions principally to the U.S. military, foreign military sales, homeland security, medical implementation, and commercial aviation customers.
Management encourages the segment to cooperate on a range of common projects performed by the company. It is common for this segment to provide the products to the same customers, either through joint projects or by marketing and offering combined and integrated solutions containing a variety of capabilities, products, and technologies of the company's portfolio from various businesses or subsidiaries, all tailored to satisfy the customers or project-specific requirements. Management also remains focused on the consolidated results as an important measure of performance, particularly given the high level of cooperation among the segments. I will now hand over the call to Kobi to discuss the financial results of each segment for 2022. Kobi, please.
Thank you, Butzi. Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. I would like to reiterate Rami's comment that there are no changes to the consolidated financial results we reported on the 28th March in the annual report filed today. I will start my review with some of the highlights of our consolidated 2022 financial results, and will then elaborate on the financial information of each segment. Our consolidated revenues increased by 4% to $5.5 billion in 2022, from $5.3 billion in 2021. GAAP operating income was $368 million versus $419 million in 2021. Non-GAAP operating income in 2022 was $357 million or 6.5% of revenues, compared with $451 million or 8.5% of revenues in 2021.
As a reminder, GAAP and non-GAAP operating income in 2022 included expenses of approximately $62 million related to stock price link compensation plans. I will now review the financial results of each segment. We note that our segmental disclosure of operational income is provided on a GAAP basis. Aerospace revenue increased by 9% to $1.73 billion in 2022, from $1.58 billion in 2021, mainly due to training and simulation and UAS sales. Aerospace operating income in 2022 was $106.8 million and 6.2% of aerospace segment revenues, compared to $129.2 million and 8.2% of segment revenues in 2021.
The $22.5 million decrease in operating income was mainly due to increased employee compensation expenses and negative program mix. C4I & Cyber revenues increased by 8% to $678 million in 2022 from $625 million in 2021, mainly due to growth in radio, enable, command and control system sales. C4I & Cyber operating income in 2022 was $49 million, and 7.2% of C4I & Cyber segment revenues, compared to $44.4 million and 7.1% of segment revenues in 2021. The $4.6 million increase in operating income was mainly due to the increase in revenues, partially offset by increased employee compensation expenses.
ISTAR & EW revenue increased by 2% to $1.05 billion in 2022 from $1.03 billion in 2021, mainly due to armored vehicles, night vision, and target acquisition system sales. ISTAR & EW operating income in 2022 was $49.1 million and 4.7% of ISTAR & EW segment revenues, compared to $66 million and 6.4% of segment revenues in 2021. The $16.9 million decrease in operating income was mainly due to increased employee compensation expenses and negative program mix. Land revenues increased 5% to $1.17 billion in 2022 from $1.12 billion in 2021, mainly due to airborne precision munition sales.
Land operating income in 2022 was $28.6 million and 2.4% of land segment revenues, compared to $35.6 million and 3.2% of segment revenues in 2021. The $7 million decrease in operating income was mainly due to increased employee compensation expenses. ESA revenues decreased by 2% to $1.46 billion in 2022 from $1.49 billion in 2021, mainly due to lower medical instrumentation and military avionics sales, partially offset by growth of night vision sales and one additional quarter of Sparton sales compared to 2021. ESA operating income in 2022 was $75 million and 5.1% of ESA segment revenues. Compared to $124.3 million and 8.3% of segment revenues in 2021.
The $49.3 million decrease in operating income was mainly due to the decrease in COVID-19 medical instrumentation sales that peaked in 2021, supply chain disruptions and negative program mix. Other operating income was $68.9 million in 2022 compared to $14.7 million in 2021, and included capital gains related to the sales of buildings and investments by subsidiaries in Israel and the UK, as well as facility evacuation grant received by a subsidiary in Israel. Going forward, we plan to continue to report revenues and operating income of each segment in our annual report. In our press release for the first, second, and third quarter, we will provide revenues by segment, which reflect the way we manage our business.
Revenues by segment in our press releases for the Q1, Q2 , and Q3 will replace revenues by areas of operation that were previously provided. The revenue split by geographical revenues and areas of operation will also disclose in our annual report. The areas of operations are a capability or platform-based classification that cross over the different segments. An example of this are our EW systems provided to the U.S. and customers through our ESA segment for installation on the U.S. Air National Guard F-16 aircraft. They are reported as inter-segment sales by the ISTAR and EW segment and as third-party sales by the ESA segment. With that, we will be happy to take your questions, operator.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, at this time, we will begin the question and answer session. If you have a question, please press star one. If you wish to cancel your request, please press star two. If you are using speaker equipment, kindly lift the handset before pressing the numbers. Your questions will be polled in the order they are received. Please stand by while we poll for your questions. The first question is from Peter Skibitski of Alembic Global Advisors. Please go ahead.
Hey, good afternoon, guys.
Good afternoon.
Hi, Pete.
guys, do you expect any cost savings or any revenue synergies from this new alignment? Butzi, maybe you could give us more color on how you think things could change as a result of this.
As you know, Pete, we organized the company in a different structure recently. Just for now, we combined the UAV division with the airborne division, and we combined the EW and the electro-optics activity together under another division. It's part of the transformation we are performing in the company in order to gain more synergies, to reduce overheads and to be more effective and proactive to the market. As I said, this is part of the transformation process the company is activating right now in order to reach the revenue level of between $6 billion-$7 billion in the coming years and to improve profitability and cash generation.
That's great. Very helpful. You might have touched on this at the beginning, but in terms of the segment heads and their annual, incentive compensation, how are you guys incenting them? Is it sales growth, margin growth, anything else? I wasn't sure about that.
Hi, Pete. This is Yossi. How are you?
Good. How are you?
Good, thanks. Regarding the incentive program, we have for each individual, starting from the highest level, executive level, and down to our program managers and below, defined goals that vary from function to function. That includes, for example, cash generation, that include profitability, that include revenues, new business, quality, criteria and so on. Every year, we define the major highlights that are important for the company. Accordingly, we assign for each function the goals, and we measure them, of course, quarterly, and we compensate them by year-end, usually with an advance by mid-year.
Okay, very helpful. Thank you for that. Just a last one for me. Question about the U.S. segment. I think you guys mentioned it was a 5.1% operating margin in 2022, which 5.1% I would say is below U.S. peers. I know you guys have built ESA up over, decades, kind of one piece at a time, small pieces, initially, to get a foothold. My question is
Do you guys expect to consider, maybe some portfolio reshaping, maybe some portfolio pruning in the U.S.? Because I imagine there are some big margin differences among the businesses in ESA for you. I imagine there are some lower margin businesses and some much higher margin businesses, and it strikes me that maybe there's an opportunity there, longer term.
I think we see all our activities in the U.S. as core activities. We always adapt here and there in some of the activities, in general, we all the activities we have in the U.S. are core to the company. The U.S. is very important. It's the largest market for Elbit today, we see it's a strategic market for us. It's true that in 2022, the OpEx or the profit was impacted by stock price linked compensation expenses as well as lower medical instrumentation sales and by supply chain disruptions and the increase of electronic components. I also want to remind all of us that we went live with the new ERP system in the U.S. which was not an easy task as well.
All of it, and of course project mix as usual. All of it is, most of it is behind us, and I expect, our numbers in the U.S. to improve.
Okay. Thanks so much for the color, guys. Appreciate it.
Thanks, Pete.
The next question is from Sheila Page of Jefferies. Please go ahead.
Hi, guys. Good morning.
Good morning.
Just following, Pete's question on margins. If we look across the segments, you're in kind of the mid to high single digit range across segments. Where do you see the most opportunity for margin expansion? You used to talk about a 10% total company target long term, just as we think about margin improvement across the businesses to get there.
I would expect all segments to grow to the neighborhood of 10%. That's a strategic, or even above that's a strategic goal we have placed to the management. I think that we are there also going into this direction. The beauty of Elbit is the wide portfolio we have on one hand and the geographical spread on the other. The combination of these two creates stability. All together, I altogether, I think the company will reach the 10% target. As Ron mentioned in the conference, which was held a month ago, 2022 was a year of transformation.
We are investing $100 million in new facilities in Israel as well as in the U.S., in Germany, in the U.K., in order to convert the backlog to revenues and to profits. We are going to conclude implementation of new ERP system mid this year. After that, we will all operate on one ERP based on one standard system, which will help us also to create, to be more effective and more efficient. We reorganized the company recently in order to be more relevant to the market and more effective as well. This is true for all the segments.
Okay. Is there any kind of normalized profitability to think about for the aerospace segment? It looks like it was pretty depressed a couple years ago, and I just wanna understand, like in 2020, and I just wanna understand where it was like in the previous decade.
Ellen, hi, it's Kobi. We had on 2020 one-time write-off related to COVID-19, which was around $50 million on that segment. We disclose it in our disclosure. There is the non-cash items are being disclosed by segment. You can go and you can look and see the numbers are there in our new disclosure.
Helpful. Okay. I'll hop back in the queue.
Thanks,
Thank you.
The next question is from Ella Friedman of Bank Leumi. Please go ahead.
Good afternoon from me, good morning for all the people on the other side. I would like first to say that it's very, I think, very positive for the company and for the market. This sector information is really enlightening. I have a question maybe already partly answered, but still, maybe you could add something. I see that most of the sectors that were the weakest this year were about 2% higher, really dramatically higher profit in the previous year, in 2021. Is it mostly the... you mentioned you inaudible factors, but is it mostly in the supply chain across the board? I mean the...
If you could choose one factor that really hurt, I don't know what to say, ESA and aerospace and then the ones who are lagging in.
Hi, Ella. Good afternoon.
Hi.
There are several reasons for that. In 2022, we had stock compensation expenses, which affected the 22 numbers. Actually it, if you, if you convert it to percentage, it's about 1.2% of the profit, which was hurt by these expenses. On top of that, supply chain disruption and price increases of electronic components also affected us all over the company. These two factors are common to all segments, and they all affected us. Both of them will be less relevant or almost non-relevant in 2023.
I also want to remind you that, as was presented in the conference, we have invested hundreds of millions of dollars in new facilities in order to support the transformation the company is going through. This took place in 2021, in small numbers. In 2022 was big numbers, and it will continue also, in 2023 in order to enable us to convert the new business we got, the backlog we have, into revenue and profit. I also want to say that, the exchange, the exchange rate, in 2023 is much more favorable than it used to be in 2022, and we see less pressure in the labor market. I do not expect to invest, so much in bonuses as we invested in 2022.
Okay. Thank you. I don't know if you are relating to current updates, but the same trend that you showed us with the first annual report, are they intact? Are they, I mean, are there any changes, I mean, for better or worse that you could mention, if you can mention them?
No. The answer is very simply no. We do not see any effect on our businesses. We see a lot of potential ahead of us in Europe as well as in the Far East and in the U.S. and also here in Israel. I do not see any impact on Elbit.
Ella, we report our results in a few weeks time, mentioning also to, the current environment. That is of course only until the end of December 2022.
Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you for this conversation.
Thank you.
Thank you, Ella.
If there are any additional questions, please press star 1. If you wish to cancel your request, please press star 2. Please stand by while we poll for more questions. The next question is from Shahar Carmy of Psagot. Please go ahead.
Hi. Thank you for taking my question. Just a quick one for me, please. With regard to ESA, is the fact that you now present it separately means that, at one point in the future, that subsidiary might go to an IPO? Is it something that you even consider? Thanks.
Hello, Shahar. Good afternoon. It's Guti. The answer is no. The synergy between all the businesses, all the segments are crucial to the success of the company. As you can see, there are many transactions between them. We see Elbit Systems of America as an integrated part of Elbit, and it will continue to be this way, so we do not consider any IPO.
Okay. Thank you.
Thanks, Shahar.
There are no further questions at this time. Before I ask Mr. Machlis to go ahead with his closing statement, I would like to remind participants that a replay of this call will be available two hours after the conference ends. In the U.S., please call 1-888-782-4291. In Israel, please call 03-925-5900. Internationally, please call 972-3-925-5900. A replay of this call will also be available on the company's website, www.elbitsystems.com. Mr. Machlis, would you like to make your concluding statement?
I would like to thank everyone on the floor. Thank you for joining us today and for your continued support and interest in our company. Have a good day and goodbye.
Thank you. This concludes the Elbit Systems Ltd 2022 annual report conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may go ahead and disconnect.