Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Bombardier fourth quarter and full-year 2022 earnings conference call. Please be advised that this call is being recorded. At this time, I'd like to turn the discussion over to Mr. Francis Richer de La Fleche, Vice President FP&A and Investor Relations for Bombardier. Please go ahead, Mr. Richer de La Fleche.
Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Bombardier's earnings call for the fourth quarter and full-year ended December 31st, 2022. I wish to remind you that during the course of this call, we may make projections or other forward-looking statements regarding future events or the financial performance of the corporation. There are risks that actual results or events may differ materially from these statements. For additional information on forward-looking statements and underlying assumptions, please refer to the MD&A. I am making this cautionary statement on behalf of each speaker on this call. With me today is our President and Chief Executive Officer, Éric Martel, and our Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Bart Demosky, to review our operations and financial results for the fourth quarter and full-year of 2022. I would now like to turn over the discussion to Éric.
Alors merci, Francis. Bonjour et bienvenue à tous et à toutes. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. I know that many of you listening today are eager to unpack our guidance figures and discuss where we see the business jet market going. Bart and I are excited to walk you through this in detail and showcase the team's solid work. I do want to take a few moment upfront to reflect on how great the last year has been for Bombardier. No matter how you measure our company, our products , or our people, Bombardier has delivered excellent results and met or exceeded commitment across the board. I look at Bombardier's 2022 success through a few lenses. First, at the core of everything we do is the products. We announced that we are developing the fastest jet in the industry, the Global 8000.
We secured NetJets as a fleet launch customer with a milestone order in Q4. This key customer will transition their entire Global 7500 fleet to Global 8000 aircraft. The team also brought the Challenger 3500 into service on plan. All of this keeps us, our portfolio, at the top of each market we compete in when it comes to quality and performance. Services. With not one or even two major announcement, but five major facility project announced or completed as part of expansions plan in Singapore, Australia, the U.K., the U.S., and the United Arab Emirates. Defense was another key market. We reoriented the offering under a fully integrated Bombardier Defense banner. This team will play a key role in Wichita, which we design as our U.S. headquarters.
Defense will also be in Canada and the many other markets where governments and armed forces are proudly selecting Bombardier jets for their missions. On the financial side, I can't talk about 2022 achievement without mentioning deleveraging. What a job the team has done. We repaid $1.1 billion of debt with cash from our balance sheet and operation. $1.1 billion. Finally, ESG. Once again, we can point to efforts by talented Bombardier team member to lead the industry. In 2022, we revealed our EcoJet Research Project. Simply put, it is a tangible and promising solution for business aviation path to net zero. In the short term, we have adopted sustainable fuel for all of our operation through Book and Claim, which immediately lower our flight operation emission by 25% on an annual basis.
I want to express my sincere thanks to the Bombardier team member who made all of this possible. I also want to recognize the many partners that supported us and our vision along the way. What a simply fantastic way to mark the company's 80th anniversary. All of these achievement also translated to business performance or in the most cases, overperformance. I have certainly talked a lot about our proactive supply chain efforts. Let me be clear, managing supply chain has not been easy and will continue to require a lot of focus. The efforts we make allow me to sit here today and confirm 123 deliveries for 2022. This is a testament to our execution, especially considering the work to deliver 49 airplane in Q4 alone.
We have successfully ramped up to deliver the growth we have been forecasting for this year. Bombardier is now expecting to deliver more than 138 units in 2023. This is well in line with the plan we have been sharing. Looking at this more closely, this delivery guidance will represent an increase of at least 15% in our deliveries versus 2022, excluding Learjet. Our facilities have this work in progress at the higher rate. We are also once again in a comfortable position with the skyline full for a year. Our $14.8 billion backlog provides a high degree of comfort with our production plan well into 2024 as well. All this to say, we are operating in a sweet spot that allows us to remain predictable.
I do wanna pause for a moment here to speak about demand and sustaining a higher delivery profile. It is important to note that our plan is simply as it was presented in 2021, and did not depend on market upside. We did end up getting that upside in 2021 and in the first half of 2022. Now, as we see the market stabilizing, we are not going to over-tweak our rates. We are going to stick to the plan and ensure our production remain de-risked. I talked last quarter about reaching a book-to-bill cruising altitude of 1. That's where we are at today. You can expect quarter-over-quarter variances slightly above or below that due to the seasonability of the delivery schedule. The demand itself is stable to the level of full-year production and further padded by our healthy backlog.
The way to look at this for Bombardier is simple. We are seeing steady demand on a higher production base this year. Industry fundamental remains favorable in the medium and long terms. Bombardier has the right product mix to compete and win. Turning back to the results, I am delighted to confirm that our $6.9 billion in revenue include an impressive $1.5 billion from service activities. We have highlighted potential market share growth in this field. I'm proud to say the execution has matched the ambitions. Opening new facilities and expanding existing one is a significant step. The hard work continues to ramp up, hire more skilled technician, and capture the customer through a world-class offering.
In 2023, our guided revenue of more than $7.6 billion reflect our increase in deliveries, as well as continued and steady growth from services. Overall, steady and predictable growth is at the heart of our success. That approach is accelerating our bottom-line growth. In 2022, we came in well over guidance , recording adjusted EBITDA of $930 million. This is a year-over-year increase of 45%. Our efforts to tighten our cost structure and generate recurring savings are ahead of plan, with more than 80% of our target already benefiting our P&L, and we have full line of sight on the remaining initiative. In fact, Q4 2022 margin reached the most impressive levels we have seen in a while.
Adding to this, we are where we need to be on key programs like the Global 7500 and now setting ourselves up to smoothly cut in the Global 8000 jet ahead of its planned entry into service in 2025. All in all, this puts us in a solid position to guide more than $1 billion $125 billion in adjusted EBITDA for 2023. Making a jump of that proportion in one year is impressive, but a lot of our team members can take pride in their effort because three straight years of significant EBITDA growth is quite an accomplishment. When it comes to free cash flow and liquidity, Bart will go into much more detail shortly. I do wanna highlight that overachieving on this metric is really welcome from a management perspective.
We beat our revised full-year guidance by $220 million. We again see positive free cash flow generation in 2023. We have a clear and repeatable ability to generate free cash going forward. The Bombardier team and I will continue to prioritize retiring debt or be opportunistic refinancing maturities. We have made significant moves towards this and in turn lowered the cost of carrying what remains. Like on liquidity, Bart will deep dive into that shortly. I want to highlight that in the past year, we have retired more than $1 billion of debt with cash from our balance sheet. We are ahead of our plan. We have flexibility, we are being proactive and opportunistic, and most importantly, we are succeeding.
I am encouraged by the credit rating increases we saw from Moody's and S&P's, as well as the simple positive energy that has surrounded discussion about Bombardier's future over the past months. To conclude, I am proud of how the team executed in 2022. We have built a strong business which can grow volumes, generate cash, and predictability deliver growing EBITDA margin. We are well-placed to capture demand where interest is increasing to offset where it may plateau in the coming months after nearly two years of historical high. Before I leave the floor to Bart for the deep dive into our impressive number, I want to fully recognize all the people behind the results. Today, there are 15,900 women and men at Bombardier that proudly stand behind each of our products and services.
They have all played a key part in winning as a team and delivering today's exceptional results. It's also important to note that this is a team that is growing as we recruit all over the world. I am so proud of everyone's passion and commitment. I am excited for our continued growth centered on our people and our customers. Thank you. Bart, over to you.
Thank you, Éric, and good morning, everyone. As we cap off what was clearly a very strong year, I am pleased to speak to you today about our outstanding results, as well as how our company is set up for continued success. Today, we are confirming the very strong preliminary results we released a few weeks ago, and we are also sharing with you our 2023 outlook, which continues to demonstrate strong growth. We are planning for a minimum of 15% growth in our Global and Challenger deliveries versus the prior year, a more than 21% year-over-year growth in our EBITDA, and , most importantly, continued positive cash flow generation. I'll touch more on our guidance in a few minutes, but before talking about 2023, I will recap some of the progress we have made in 2022 on our key strategic initiatives, starting with deleveraging.
As Éric said earlier, we reduced our debt by $1.1 billion in 2022, which came with a recurring annual interest savings of more than $80 million. That's a 15% reduction in our gross debt in a single year. If we look back to December of 2020, we have reduced our debt by more than 40%. The significant amount we repaid in 2022 was the result of several factors, which include a strong and consistent free cash flow generation, being opportunistic in the markets with timing of calls, tenders, and open market repurchases, and finally, cash optimization through securing a five-year revolving credit facility, allowing us to reduce cash on our balance sheet. Our vastly improved debt and leverage profile provided another benefit as our credit ratings were raised by both Moody's and S&P last summer.
The benefits from our efforts can also be seen through our debt refinancing last month, where we were able to refinance some of our debt at stable interest rates despite the broader market seeing interest rates rise significantly. On that note, we have successfully called all of the outstanding 2024 maturities with the final settlement plans for next week. While our tender on the 25 notes reached $258 million of our $396 million repayment target, we fully expect to deploy the entirety of the proceeds from our refinancing towards debt repayment. I am also happy to say that the $400 million of restricted cash we have held on the balance sheet for the past two years has been released and is now sitting in our bank account, available for us to use.
At the end of 2022, inclusive of this cash, our adjusted net leverage stood at 4.6 x, down from 7.7x in 2021, representing an improvement of more than 3x . Deleveraging remains our top priority and number one use of excess liquidity. Our operational achievements last year were equally as impressive. Our EBITDA grew 45% between 2021 and 2022. We did this while growing deliveries by three aircraft and growing revenues by 14%. This impressive margin expansion is attributable to the execution of our key priorities, ensuring the Global 7500 contribution, delivering cost and productivity improvements, and growing our aftermarket. The Global 7500 EBITDA contribution materially improved throughout 2022.
In fact, we were at our targeted unit cost for most of the year. During the course of 2023, we will have fully transitioned from our launch pricing to current market pricing. Our cost reduction program continues to track exceptionally well. We again outperformed the savings assumed in our original guidance, finishing the year at $330 million in recurring savings. The remaining balance to reach our $400 million run rate target is included in our 2023 guidance. All of the initiatives have been launched to achieve that run rate. Last but not least, our aftermarket business had a remarkable year, growing its revenues by 22% versus the prior year as we executed on our service center expansion strategy. Flight hours of Bombardier aircraft over the same period were up approximately 11%.
Clearly, our strategy is working. We are gaining market share and are now at $1.5 billion of aftermarket revenues, on track with reaching our $2 billion objective. There are two other impressive metrics that I would like to highlight. That is our adjusted net income and resulting earnings per share, which for the first time in many years are both positive. These metrics really embody the reduction in interest costs coming from our accelerated debt reduction, the rapid growth in our profitability, and the recognition of the significant tax attributes on our balance sheet. We believe we've reached the point where we are structurally able to generate positive adjusted net income on an annual basis. I'll now dive a bit deeper into our 2022 results before talking about our 2023 guidance.
We ended the year with revenues of $6.9 billion, resulting from 123 aircraft deliveries, as well as $1.5 billion in aftermarket revenues. This represents a year-over-year improvement of 14%. Our aircraft manufacturing and other revenues grew by $557 million, largely the result of three incremental deliveries, further compounded by improved aircraft mix as we replaced seven Learjet deliveries in 2021 with higher revenue Globals and Challengers in 2022. Our large cabin aircraft were up four deliveries, and our Challengers were up six. As I mentioned earlier, our aftermarket business also increased its revenues by an impressive 22% year-over-year, which also helped tilt our consolidated revenue mix in favor of aftermarket, now representing 22% of our total revenues versus 20% in 2021.
I'm also very proud to report that in Q4 of last year, our aftermarket revenues topped $400 million for the first time, another impressive milestone illustrating the progress we've made from the $252 million we generated in Q4 of 2020. Moving to our profitability, total adjusted EBITDA for the year was $930 million, representing an adjusted margin of 13.5% and a 300 basis point margin expansion over 2021. Our adjusted EBITDA growth is largely attributable to maturing our Global 7500, generating incremental cost reductions, and our aftermarket expansion. Our adjusted EBIT totaled $512 million, more than doubling our 2021 result of $223 million.
As I mentioned earlier, our adjusted net income also had meaningfully improved to a gain of $101 million versus a loss of $326 million a year earlier. Turning our focus to free cash flow, we had an impressive 2022 with a cash generation of $735 million, an improvement of $635 million from the prior year. In Q4, we saw a free cash flow generation of $169 million.
This cash generation resulted from our strong EBITDA generation of $352 million, a positive working capital driven by a $481 million release in inventory from 49 aircraft deliveries, partly offset by a reduction in our accounts payable, a drop in advances of $312 million due to those same 49 deliveries, and a book-to-bill that was a bit below 1, but again reflects the high number of deliveries rather than a drop in demand. Our CapEx finished at $337 million, a bit on the high side of the range we have provided previously, largely the result of greater investments to our Pearson facility as well as timing related to a land sale for which today we continue to be active on. Now let's turn to our 2023 guidance.
We are very pleased to continue demonstrating consistent progress towards our 2025 objectives. Our aircraft deliveries are expected to be greater than 138, in line with our prior commitments. We expect Global 7500 deliveries to remain stable and the growth to come relatively equally from the Global 5500 and 6500 platforms and the Challenger platforms, also offsetting the three Learjet deliveries we had in 2022. Given the strong backlog we have entering the year, we have very nice predictability and visibility in our top line. With the planned increase in deliveries combined with expected continued growth in our aftermarket, we see our revenues being greater than $7.6 billion, which translates into a more than 10% increase versus 2022.
On profitability, we are expecting to increase our EBITDA to greater than $1.125 billion, representing at least a 21% increase versus last year. We also expect our EBIT to grow to greater than $695 million, an increase of greater than 36% year-over-year. Our profitability growth is again outpacing our revenue growth as we continue to expand our margins by delivering on our strategic priorities. The bridge from the $930 million of EBITDA in 2022 to our 2023 guidance of greater than $1.125 billion can be explained by margin conversion of the incremental revenues, positive tailwinds from the Global 7500, as well as delivering the last portion of our cost reduction plan, for which we have around $70 million to go.
We do see some headwinds which partly offset our growth drivers, including increased bill of materials and production costs resulting from the high inflation environment we have been in for much of 2022. Supplier disruption costs as we continue to adjust to accommodate supply chain challenges. Earlier last year, we shared our expectation that pricing and inflation would offset over the next few years, and this is still how we see things playing out. Our free cash flow guidance is coming in at greater than $250 million, including a non-recurring cost related to legacy RVG liabilities, which totals about $125 million for the year. The bridge from EBITDA is straightforward.
From our greater than $1.125 billion in EBITDA, we expect to remove cash interest, which should be in the neighborhood of $400 million-$450 million. Our CapEx is expected to be around $350 million. The CapEx for 2023 is higher than our previously mentioned range, mostly a result from some higher construction costs at our Pearson facility. We do fully expect to return to a $200 million-$300 million range in 2024. Our working capital is assumed to be relatively neutral as we are planning for a book-to-bill of around 1. Cash taxes continue to be negligible even as we materially grow our earnings. From there, we must deduct the aforementioned $125 million in non-recurring RVG payments to reach our guidance for 2023.
This is the last year of significant RVG payments. Between 2021 and 2023, we will have paid out more than $225 million of RVGs within our free cash flow performance. Let me wrap up by providing some color on our first quarter of this year. We expect growth to both our revenues and EBITDA in Q1 when compared to the same quarter last year, while delivering around 20 aircraft, which is in line with our production schedules. Delivery ramp-up throughout 2023 will be progressive, and we again expect to see a high delivery output in the second half of this year. We also expect our working capital to be negative in the first quarter, driven by a buildup of inventory in support of our higher deliveries later this year.
We expect that this working capital build, coupled with seasonally lower EBITDA and continued investments on our Pearson global facility, will result in a negative free cash flow. In conclusion, with the past two years of hard work putting us on very firm footing, the team is ready and focused to continue building on our success. We look forward to another strong performance in 2023. I also look forward to sharing with you an update of our strategic plan during our March 23 Investor Day. Thank you very much. With that, let me turn it back over to Francis to begin the Q&A.
Thanks, Bart. I'd like to remind you that Bombardier Investor Relations team is available following the call and in the coming days to answer any questions you may have. With that, we will open up for questions. Operator, we're ready to begin.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, if you do have any questions at this time, please press star followed by one on your touch-tone phone. You will then hear a pre-tone prompt acknowledging your request. If you'd like to withdraw from the question queue, please press star followed by two. If you're using a speakerphone, we do ask that you please lift the handset before pressing any keys. Please go ahead and press star one now if you have any questions. Your first question will be from Benoit Poirier at Desjardins Capital Markets. Please go ahead.
Yes. Good morning, Bart. Good morning, Éric, and congratulations on the nice achievements. Just looking at the booking activity, could you mention some color in terms of what you're seeing by customer type, model, and geographies, and whether you see any change in the market dynamics given the fact that the used inventory are slightly increasing and maybe the higher production rate expected at Gulfstream? Thank you.
Good. Well, thanks, Benoit, for for the question. I guess I think, you know, what we see is a resilient start of the year, you know? We all understand, you know, there's a nervousness in the economy right now, but we see, you know, our start to be a normal start, you know? I would call it resilient towards the market. I think the category of customer that we are working with remain attracted by our products. We see activity not just on one category of airplane, but very much across the board. That's the, maybe to answer your first question.
I think second also, we still see, you know, the activity well-distributed with maybe a little bit more in Asia than we had probably over the last year. That's how I would probably describe the activity so far. Maybe, yes, the used airplane inventory is going up very slightly, when I look at our product, but it's far from being to a normal number. You know, we're still at about 4.8% right now of used inventory by the end of Q4, when you and I know that usually things are around 10, 12, sometimes even 14%. We're still way below, you know, what a normal situation would be.
Okay. Maybe just a quick one for Bart, with respect to the CapEx of $350 million, how much is related to Pearson and maybe the trend going forward in terms of CapEx beyond 2023?
Yeah, great question, Benoit. You know, we're looking in 2023 for Pearson to be around a third. It'll be somewhere between a third and 40% of CapEx during the year. It's the most significant use of CapEx of the $350 million forecast. It's the last year where we will be spending significant dollars on getting our Pearson facility up and running. I'm very pleased to say, Éric and I just took a review of the project this past week. We're absolutely on track to commission on schedule beginning in August of this year, which is quite an accomplishment for the team, just given how difficult labor markets and supply chain has been.
Hats off to the team who's been working on the project. For the coming years, because Pearson will be out of the mix, we do see ourselves returning to a more normalized CapEx range of $200 million-$300 million per year.
Okay. That's great, Colin. Thanks for the time.
Thanks, Benoit.
Next question will be from Seth Seifman at JPMorgan. Please go ahead.
Hey, thanks very much and, good morning and, congratulations on a very strong year.
Good morning, Seth.
Morning. Just wanted to ask about the aftermarket and, you know, thoughts about, I know tracking to the 2025 target, but we see the growth in flight hours kind of slowing. As you think about the flight hour growth that's kind of required from here to generate the aftermarket growth you're looking for both in 2023 and beyond versus what comes from, you know, the additional capacity that you're adding in terms of service centers. You know, how do we think about that? Does an environment in which flight hours are not growing or maybe even shrinking a little bit, you know, still conducive to the targets that you have?
Yeah. No, that's a great question, Seth. You know, what we've seen so far this year is a very, very strong market on the after service. Actually, we see a amazing, you know, spare parts ordering and sales. We see our facility filling up very nicely. You know, of course, we emptied some of it by the end of the year, but we're going back to, you know, having pretty much everything, you know, sold out very rapidly in the year. I think, you know, we still see the Bombardier airplane flying quite a bit. The fleet operator are still flying quite a bit, so the hours are there.
You know, even when we compare 12 months over a year ago, we're pretty much being ahead across the board. Of course, we've installed, as you know, 1 million sq ft of extra capacity, which allows us to go and bring market share at our place that we didn't have before. All this together give us a pretty strong start, and we feel pretty good about being able to meet our objective for the year.
Great. Thank you very much. Appreciate it.
Thanks, Seth.
Next question will be from Walter Spracklin at RBC Capital Markets. Please go ahead.
Yeah, thanks very much. Good morning, everyone. I wanna touch a bit on your production guide. Éric, you're clearly pointing to what you had indicated of the 15% guide to 2023. It looks like it's gonna be in that kinda 140-ish range and just on a go-forward basis. I'm just curious, you mentioned that this is something that you wanna maintain from a run rate perspective. Is that therefore something that we should just kinda model out that kinda 140, 145 for a number of years? Or is it? You touched a little bit on the supply chain issues. Could you flex that? If you didn't have those issues right now, would you be flexing higher than that 140 to 145? Perhaps touch on how much higher could you go in that run rate or that line rate without having to expand your footprint?
That's a, that's a great question. First of all, we still have quite a bit of room to increase our rate, you know, without adding any footprint. Our line actually that we have either in Toronto or Montreal mainly, could take on more airplane. You know, I would say in the magnitude of, I think, probably of 200 of overall capacity. That we still have quite a bit of room to get there before engaging into adding footprint. In terms of how I characterize, you know, our number is, you know, for this year, I think, you know, we were talking about being 15% higher than, you know, this year. Than last year, sorry, guiding greater than 138.
Yes, we are recognizing in that guidance that, you know, there's, you know, supply chain risk and everything that we wanna make sure we manage properly. That's reflective of that. In terms of what we're gonna be saying for next year, you know, our backlog is super solid. We have all, you know, the reason to think about that. I think at Investor Day, at the end of March, I will be in a position with Bart to give you more precision probably about our intention for 2024.
That's great. Really it's on that 25 guide, and I know you'll give us an update in March, but I wanna make sure that we're properly characterizing how you looked at 2025 back when you provided it a number of years ago. I think, you know, I just wanted to again be clear, 2025 was not an end goal, that's the run rate that, you know, growth after that is going to be just modest. I think what you've been indicating here is that it was kind of a first step. With 2025, we may see other aspects of growth, either on as supply chain issues decline and you're able to potentially raise your run rate, but also, you know, looking at new revenue opportunities with certified pre-owned.
Is that the right way to look at it, that 2025 was just kind of your first step and that it's not over after that? You're going to be looking at some other areas of new revenue growth as well. Is that fair?
Yeah. No, you're looking at it exactly the right way, Walter. You know, 2025 was what we guided for in 2021. Clearly, you know, last year we've spent detailed time to look at post 2025. Clearly, you know, exactly to what you said between CPO, defense, and other things we're doing today, we definitely foresee growth in the future.
All right. Looking forward to hear. Yeah, go ahead.
Walter, if I could just add one small comment. In that first forecast and strategic plan we laid out, we gave a target of $7.5 billion of revenues for 2025, and our guidance for this year is $7.6 billion. To Éric's point, you know, there is a lot of work that the teams are doing to develop and ultimately deliver incremental growth. We're really excited about it, and we'll share more towards the end of March when we have our Investor Day.
That's fantastic. Look forward to hearing about it.
Thanks, Walter.
Thank you. Next question will be from Noah Poponak at Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.
Hey, good morning, everyone.
Good morning.
Bart , just wanted to ask a few more follow-ups on the cash flow plan. Could you maybe, you know, given how much you've done with the balance sheet, how does that cash interest line move into the 2025 target? Just wanna confirm 100% RVG is zero next year. I'm curious about the advances given, you know, how positive those were last year. Does that just kinda level out and it's a net zero, or, you know, do we have to think of that as a headwind at some point? Then on the capital plan, you know, there had been this moving piece of you had the placeholder in 25, then there was, you know, sort of the de facto raise but not raised because there was maybe some investment in the 25 capital plan. What's the latest thinking on that?
Thanks, thanks, Noah. Let me talk about the cash flow first. You're essentially right on the RVGs. This is the last significant year. We do have $10 million or $20 million left that will come off over the following couple of years, but We're basically down to zero. For all intents and purposes, you can model that out now after 2023. On the cash advances, the only thing I would say there is when we originally came up with our forecasts, our production and delivery levels were in the original modeling, were a bit lower than what we're seeing in actual terms today.
If we look at a book-to-bill of one, just for modeling purposes going forward, naturally, we're gonna deliver more free cash flow than we would have otherwise. With interest expense coming down a lot more quickly than we had built into even our modeling, that's a great help as well. For 25, what I would say today, given that we, you know, we are gonna talk more about this at Investor Day, is that because our debt is coming down more quickly, we've also been able to reduce our absolute average interest rate modestly, but that's helping as well.
We do see a clear path now to de-lever to a level that's better than what was in our our original 2025 outlook and guidance. We'll talk more about that at Investor Day. We'll give you some clearer pictures as to what our longer-term goals are. Hopefully that helps, Noah.
Okay. That helps.
Perfect.
If I could just ask you on your margin goals. Obviously, you know, the performance and the progression has been impressive. The 2023 guidance, you know, I think implies the EBITDA margin up 100-150 basis points, you know, getting kinda in that 15% zone. You do still have the target of 20% in 2025. That still looks, you know, somewhat steep, I guess, despite everything you've accomplished. How do we still get to that target in 2025?
Again, I mean, we'll come to that in a little more detail about the longer -term goals and objectives when we're at Investor Day. All I would say to this point, Noah, is that, I mean, we came from about 5% to 15% in three years. You know, adjusting for accounting differences, I think we're now getting very close to the point where we are, on a margin basis, the leader in our space with the other OEMs. We do have incremental margin expansion coming this year and next year, a little bit from getting full pricing from our 7500 platform. You know, we refreshed our Challenger 350 into the Challenger 3500.
The sales has been very impressive for that aircraft. Just incredibly impressive. Of course, when you do a refresh like that, you know, we get some margin expansion as well. Of course, we're growing our aftermarket, and it's becoming a higher percentage of our overall revenues annually. As it continues to contribute more and it's a greater than 20% EBITDA margin business, it puts us in a place to continue to see growth in EBITDA. We're very pleased with where we're at today. We see a clear path, or the $1.5 billion in EBITDA that we had projected a couple of years ago is clearly in sight for us. We'll talk more about how much more than that is achievable and how we might get there when we meet on Investor Day here later next month.
Thank you very much.
Okay. Thank you, Noah.
Thank you, Noah. Next question is from Konark Gupta at Scotiabank. Please go ahead.
Thanks, operator. Good morning, everyone.
Good morning.
Morning. My first question is on the leadership changes that you guys announced pretty recently. I was just wondering if you can provide, you know, any color on what was the kind of basis of making those changes.
Yeah. A great question, Noah. You know, it's important, you know, First of all, you know, I had one thing that one of my, you know, a member of my team was gonna be retiring, you know, mid-June this year, Michel Ouellette, and I just wanna thank him also for at the same time for everything he's done an amazing job. He was behind the 7500, you know, and he had an amazing career, but he's retiring next June. That has trigger, of course, for me, the ability to make a change. I was thinking about it for a while all, too. I had some of my team member that were in their current job for at least two of them for more than seven years.
All this to say that when you're the CEO, you have to think also about development of your team and, you know. Two things you're trying to do. First is make sure you keep the business running properly, make sure that you can still deliver the plan and the growth that you are anticipating. Believe me, that structure will. I had the opportunity also to bring, you know, a very talented person from the outside, somebody that's been with us before 18 years, that knows our business inside out also. I feel that I have a very solid team, and the way we work together is, anyway, when anything can happen when there's challenges in one area, everything step into this area to help.
I think in a , in a spirit of, you know, giving, making sure we can deliver our plan, making sure that we, you know, we give opportunity for our people to develop and beef up our succession plan in the future, that's with the spirit of the most recent announcement were made. I hope that helps.
No, that helps, Éric. Thanks so much for that. Just maybe a quick follow-up. One of the comments I think I heard from you this morning was the skyline is full for 2023, and maybe it extends into 2024, but you are also assuming a one-time book-to-bill ratio. My, my question or clarification is really if you get any new orders this year, net new orders after cancellation and changes, would that mean that you might exceed the 138 delivery target, or, you know, would that support the target?
No, I think we're pretty much sold out right now. We still have a few airplane options and things like that, but we are on solid ground in terms of backlog. I think where there could be opportunity this year would be a, if we can have a better performance of the supply chains. I think that's where the opportunity resides.
Okay. That makes sense. Appreciate the call. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you, sir.
Thanks, Konark . Thank you.
Next question will be from Fadi Chamoun at BMO. Please go ahead.
Yes, good morning. Congratulations on the progress you've made so far. I have a question about the, you know, underwriting new projects or new programs going forward. I mean, I think with you kind of being more focused on the maintenance CapEx for the last, you know, number of year and, bringing the Global 7500 and all those into production, are you getting, from a balance sheet perspective, to a place where you makes you more comfortable to underwrite some bigger project? Or is there a balance sheet target that you can have in mind before you can enter into those types of maybe larger programs that, you need to support long-term growth?
I think, Fadi, that's a, that's an excellent question that we've been discussing in detail here with the management team and the board. Clearly, you know, we are very disciplined in our approach to new program. There's different criteria that we have. Some are related to technology, some are related to the market expectations, some are related to what our competition is doing. Clearly, one of them, and probably the most important or one of the most important, clearly, is, you know, clear criteria about our, the state of our balance sheet and our ratios. We're gonna be very disciplined about it. The good news is that, you know, that criteria is we're, as Bart said this morning, we're ahead of plan in terms of improving, you know, our, our balance sheet.
We still have work to do. Clearly, I want this to be clear, we still have work to do to get to our target, you know, that we have in terms of net leverage ratio. We're better than we were supposed to be this year. We're already at four point something. And aiming to continue to improve that, especially with our EBITDA improving. And as cash will become available, we'll continue as a priority to reduce that debt. We are getting into a place right now, and if you do the street math, it's fairly easy. Bart did them with you this morning, and all of you guys can do it.
You know, if we take our target of 2025, which for now remain 1.5, and we'll re-discuss that at the end of March. You know, you take the interest rate, the CapEx we're talking about, we have a lot of room, you know, and we're generating some pretty solid cash as a business. You know, after the RVGs are done, so you have CapEx, you have interest rate, and it means there's a lot available. It's gonna be a question of capital allocation. What do we do with that capital? Clearly , a new program will be an option if the other criterias are there too. You know, we haven't crossed that road yet, but we are setting ourselves up for having the flexibility to make the right decision.
Okay, great. Appreciate that answer. On the $400 million of cash that freed up, I guess, now, is the plan to use that to repay debt or to kind of stronger liquidity, I guess, in an environment like this?
Great, great question, Fadi. We'll, I think without telling you exactly how we're gonna deploy the cash, what I would say is that you should expect us to be consistent with the way we've done things in the past. By that I mean, call it cash and liquidity that's available above $1.5 billion to us is excess. What we've said is that excess cash will be put towards debt retirement. With that money coming into our accounts and now being there, it would qualify as excess to our needs.
Okay, great. Appreciate it.
Okay, perfect. Thank you, Fadi.
Next question will be from Myles Walton at Wolfe Research. Please go ahead.
Thanks. Good morning. I was hoping to go to Pearson, if I could, not physically, but mentally. Maybe you said the cut-in is gonna happen in August, I'm just wondering, are the commissioning happens in August? It's, you know, it's not trivial to lift and place final assembly lines for the Global. Is there conservatism based in the EBITDA margins due to that move, particularly?
No, not really, Myles. I think, you know, we are, you know, still targeting all our delivery this year. The move is very well orchestrated and will be starting, you know, this, this coming fall, with, of course, a couple of months of moving station by station and our people and ramping up production. We foresee the building, you know, still being ready on time and on track for this. We'll be having a bit of a working capital to transition because, you know, you are transitioned, but it's all in our plan, it's all budgeted, and we're planning for that. No impact on EBITDA.
Yeah. Myles, Bart here, just to add, maybe one or two other comments to Éric's. The cutover on a production basis for our Globals, because it happens in the second half of this year, would not impact any of our 23 deliveries. If there was gonna be any impact, it would be 24. We're not anticipating any impact whatsoever. The cutover plan is very well laid out. All of the capabilities, people, machinery, tooling, everything, is...
The facilities are actually quite close to one another, so we're not having to travel long distances, and it's simpler for us, and we're doing a bit of a lift and shift into the new facility rather than, you know, building all kinds of new things that would add, would add complexity. In terms of the margin, we're showing, you know, strong year-over-year margin growth. We still see clear path forward for a lot more growth from here. My only other comment would be that we've been very consistent since our first numbers we put out in early 2021 in that we are, we tend to be a bit conservative in our approach and our guidance. We'll be consistent with that today and going forward.
Just one clarification, the land sale, is that embedded in the CapEx guidance for 2024, or is that, would that be, a lower net CapEx if that occurred?
Yeah. There's a potential for a bit of a reduction, an offset from that land sale if we're able to execute on it. It's not a huge number, but it's an opportunity for us, for sure.
Okay. All right. Thank you.
Okay. Thanks a lot, Myles.
Thank you.
Operator, we'll have time for one last question.
Thank you. Your last question will be from Cai von Rumohr at Cowen. Please go ahead.
Yes. Thank you so much. To maybe follow up on Seth's question, services, what sort of growth do you see this year, and what do you need for flights going forward? It looks like, you know, to get to $2 billion, you need 10% growth over the next three years.
I think, you know, Cai, that's a great question. Thank you for that. We are clearly, as I said, foreseeing, you know, the growth will come from different angles. One is market share gain. Because of the 1 million sq ft we've added last year, there'll be a significant part of that that will come our way. I think, you know, we're being successful also in having more and more customer adhering to our Smart Parts program, so that's another way for us to do that. This is, I would call it the market share category. Plus, of course, the activity level is very strong. You know, our airplane are keep flying quite a bit.
You have to to also think about us as being, you know, clearly a leader with the fleet operator, and the fleet operator are flying quite a lot. Every airplane they have usually fly 1,000 and more hours a year, which is great business for us also looking forward. All this together, we do foresee a clear path to our objective of going to $2 billion over five years. We've achieved $1.5 billion, and we do foresee with the million sq ft and everything else we're doing, the ability to get there.
Thank you very much. What sort of growth do you see this year? Because by my numbers, you know, it looks like, obviously, your sales are gonna be better than $7.6, and it would look like aftermarket might be down as a percent of sales this year.
No, this year we foresee that we should be in the $1.6 billion-$1.7 billion range.
Yeah, for the aftermarket.
For the aftermarket.
Okay, great. Thank you.
Thank you so much.
Thank you, Cai.
I would like to turn the call back over to Mr. Martel.
Okay. Thank you. Maybe the first thing that I would like to say is thanks to all of you this morning for joining us. We look forward to connecting again during our Investor Day. There is a lot right now, I think, to be excited about when looking at Bombardier's activities and how we are realizing our potential. Overall, we have accelerated and plan to stay the course predictably. In March, we will be excited to dive further into the nuts and bolts and spend a longer morning together virtually. Thank you all for your time today and your continued interest and confidence in Bombardier.
Thank you, sir. Ladies and gentlemen, this does indeed conclude your conference call for today. Once again, thank you for attending. At this time, we do ask that you please disconnect your lines. Enjoy the rest of your day.