Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to the CACI International Fiscal 2022 fourth quarter and full year earnings and fiscal 2023 guidance call. Today's call is being recorded. At this time, all lines are in a listen-only mode. Later, we will announce the opportunity for questions and instructions will be given at that time. If you should need any assistance during this call, please press star zero and someone will help you. At this time, I would like to turn the conference call over to Dan Leckburg, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations for CACI International. Please go ahead, sir.
Well, thank you, and good morning, everyone. I'm Dan Leckburg, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations for CACI International. Thank you for joining us this morning. We are providing presentation slides, so let's move to slide number two. There will be statements in this call that do not address historical facts, and as such, constitute forward-looking statements under current law. These statements reflect our views as of today and are subject to important factors that could cause our actual results to differ materially from anticipated. Those factors are listed at the bottom of last night's press release and are described in the company's SEC filings. Our safe harbor statement is included on this exhibit and should be incorporated as part of any transcript of this call. I would also like to point out that our presentation will include discussion of non-GAAP financial measures.
These should not be considered in isolation or as a substitute for performance measures prepared in accordance with GAAP. Let's turn to slide three, please. To open our discussion this morning, here's John Mengucci, President and Chief Executive Officer of CACI International. John.
Thanks, Dan, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us to discuss our fourth quarter and fiscal year 2022 results, as well as our fiscal 2023 guidance. With me this morning is Tom Mutryn, our Chief Financial Officer. Slide four, please. In July, CACI celebrated our 60th year of business. I'd like to start this morning's call with a quick moment of reflection on this milestone. Back in 1962, our two founders started CACI with modest means, a park bench, and a telephone booth for an office. What they lacked in resources, they made up for in ingenuity, confidence, and sheer tenacity. That spirit survives today and is foundational to our culture. Today, we generate more than $6 billion of revenue and support some of the most critical missions that keep our nation and the world safe.
Our founders would be astonished and proud of what CACI has become, especially the positive impact we've had on countless customers, employees, families, communities, and shareholders over the last six decades. We are all truly honored to carry on this legacy started over 60 years ago. On to our results. Slide five, please. Last night, we released our fourth quarter and full year results for fiscal year 2022. Our results were in line with our expectations. For the full year, we delivered revenue growth of 3%, adjusted EBITDA margins of 10.3%, and strong free cash flow of nearly $700 million. We also won $7.1 billion of contract awards, of which nearly 60% is new business to CACI.
That represents a 1.1 x book-to-bill for the year, with a good mix of recompete wins to support our base and new awards to drive future growth. Slide six, please. Turning to the external environment, as we look out over the next several years, prospects are positive. Demand is strong, and there continues to be bipartisan support for national security priorities. A favorable government fiscal year 2023 budget is currently moving through Congress with higher spending in defense, the intelligence community, and homeland security, and in particular, in key addressable areas like digital solutions, enterprise IT, and C4ISR, cyber and space. This strong backdrop gives us confidence in our ability to drive long-term growth and margin expansion, robust cash flow, and additional shareholder value. Slide seven, please.
We continue to invest ahead of need in differentiated expertise and technology to address key priorities that will drive long-term customer demand and spending. Let me give you some examples. Within digital solutions, we are modernizing applications and consolidating disparate systems across the federal government to drive efficiency, improve data accessibility, and enhance cybersecurity posture. As an industry leader in agile software development at scale, including executing two of the federal government's largest agile programs, we are seeing increasing customer interest and pipeline opportunities to leverage agile software development, DevSecOps, and open architectures to enable digital application modernization. In enterprise IT, network modernization is the key trend. Agencies need to improve cyber defense, support an increasingly dispersed workforce, and consolidate and modernize legacy networks for efficiency. In addition, real-time multi-domain integrated data and communications won't be available for efforts like JADC2 without modern network infrastructure.
To address these challenges, we bring deep capabilities and past performance, and we are making investments in new technologies like commercial solutions for classified or CSfC to enable access to classified networks from commercial devices from anywhere in the world. Broad modernization of both digital solutions and enterprise IT across the federal government will drive healthy spending for the foreseeable future and is an area CACI is well-positioned with both capabilities and past performance. Turning to C4ISR and cyber, the electromagnetic spectrum remains critical for intelligence collection and modern warfare. For more than a decade, we have invested to address critical priorities in the electromagnetic spectrum, including signals intelligence, electronic warfare, counter-UAS, and secure communications. For example, we provide software-defined capabilities to detect signals used by our adversaries, determine their location, and degrade, deceive, or deny their use, as well as protect our own use of the spectrum.
In the context of the global threat environment and near-peer adversaries, these are even more critical and are gaining traction with customers recognizing the necessity. Lastly, in the increasingly important space domain, we are leaning forward to position CACI in areas where we see the opportunity for decade-long technology-driven growth. In photonics, we're very excited about our continued progress in optical communications in both the higher-volume LEO market and the more bespoke GEO and interplanetary markets. Our photonics capabilities have been successfully demonstrated in space, not just in a lab, and continue to generate interest and opportunities for government customers and space platform providers. In fact, we recently made our first production delivery of optical communication systems to one of our OEM partners. We also remain on track to put an upgradable, software-defined, assured precision navigation and timing, or APNT payload, into low Earth orbit early next year.
This payload will demonstrate a unique technology, qualify its capabilities in space, and prove out an alternative to the existing vulnerable GPS systems, a vulnerability that needs to be addressed. Slide eight, please. As you all know, a number of years ago, we embarked on a purposeful strategy to create a different company within our market. We made significant investments in both expertise and technology to drive differentiation and value for our customers and ultimately increase the quality of our revenue. As we stand here today, our EBITDA margins are more than 200 basis points higher than they were earlier in this journey. We delivered sustained, durable, long-term margin expansion over those years. Even with this success, we remain committed to continued long-term margin expansion. Revenue growth plus margin expansion, compounded by effective capital deployment, drives our leading free cash flow per share growth and ultimately shareholder value.
With that in mind, I'll turn to our fiscal 2023 guidance. We expect revenue growth of between 4.5% and 7.5% and adjusted EBITDA margin in the mid- to high-10% range. In addition, we expect to continue generating healthy cash flow, and Tom will provide additional details on all elements of our guidance shortly. To wrap things up, we remain committed to our stated performance goals of long-term growth and margin expansion. CACI will continue to invest ahead of customer need to drive future growth and differentiation. As we've discussed many times before, our goal is to drive free cash flow per share, and our commitment remains consistent to utilize CACI's strong cash flow in a flexible and opportunistic manner to deliver the greatest long-term shareholder value. With that, I'll turn the call over to Tom.
Why thank you, John, and good morning, everyone. Please turn to slide nine. Our fourth quarter results with increased revenue and strong cash flow were solid, although continue to reflect the slower funding and other short-term headwinds we previously spoke about. We generated revenue of $1.6 billion in the quarter, representing overall growth of 5% and approximately 2% organic growth. Fourth quarter adjusted EBITDA margin was 9.6%, impacted by delays in mission technology sales. Adjusted net income was $107 million for the quarter, and we realized a lower-than-expected tax rate driven by certain state tax benefits. Slide 10, please. Fiscal year 2022 represents another year of top-line growth, healthier margins, and strong cash flow. For the year, we generated just over $6.2 billion of revenue, representing 3% total growth and positive organic growth.
Adjusted EBITDA margin of 10.3% were slightly below our point estimate of 10.5% due primarily to fluctuations in mission technology sales. Adjusted net income in FY 2022 was $422 million. As a reminder, in fiscal year 2021, we realized a large one-time increase in net income from a tax method change which impacts the year-over-year net income comparisons. Next slide, please. Fourth quarter operating cash flow, excluding our accounts receivable purchase facility, was $152 million, reflecting continued healthy profitability in cash collections. Free cash flow was $117 million for the quarter. For the full year, we generated operating cash flow of $770 million, excluding our AR purchase facility, and free cash flow was $695 million.
The year-over-year increase for both was primarily driven by the realization of $190 million of cash benefit from the tax method change we previously discussed. This was partially offset by the deferred payroll taxes under the CARES Act. In FY 2021, we realized a benefit of $52 million. In FY 2022, we had a $47 million outflow. We had been expecting an additional $40 million tax refund in the fourth quarter associated with the method change, but that payment is still pending. We ended the year with net debt to trailing twelve-month adjusted EBITDA margins of 2.5 x, similar to our leverage at the start of the year, even after acquiring four companies for a total purchase consideration of $600 million.
Given our strong cash flow profile, modest leverage, and access to capital, we continue to have significant optionality to deploy capital in a flexible and opportunistic manner to drive long-term shareholder value. Slide 12, please. Now let's turn to our fiscal year 2023 guidance. As is our practice, we undertake a bottoms-up, program-by-program forecast, build our expectations for new business by specific opportunity, and track risk and opportunities. We incorporate known market dynamics and external conditions as we finalize the plan and develop guidance ranges. For fiscal year 2023, we expect revenue to grow between 4.5% and 7.5%, with growth in both expertise and technology. Around $180 million of inorganic revenue is included in the guidance range.
We expect adjusted net income to be between $420 million and $440 million, inclusive of $56 million of after-tax intangible amortization expense. Adjusted EBITDA margin is expected to be in the mid- to high-10% range. We are providing this range to reflect the dynamics of our business. Slide 13, please. To assist with modeling, here are some of our key planning assumptions. Indirect costs and selling expense are expected to increase around 6.5%, driven by fringe on direct labor in the recent acquisitions, which have a more commercial type cost structure. Remaining expenses are increasing at a modest 1%, reflecting our continued efforts to drive operational efficiencies. Depreciation and amortization are expected to be approximately $150 million.
Net interest expense should be around $61 million, up from $42 million in FY 2022 due to higher interest rates. About 50% of our debt is fixed, so while we have some exposure to increasing interest rates, it is tempered. We are expecting a full-year effective tax rate of 23.5%, up from 19% in FY 2022, which benefited from additional R&D and state tax credits. Yet we expect typical quarterly sequential increases in revenue and profitability through the year, but I will remind you that certain factors can skew quarterly trends, such as the timing of material purchases and delivery of higher-margin technology. Slide 14, please.
In FY 2023, we are expecting operating cash flow, excluding our AR facility, to be at least $495 million and capital expenditures to be approximately $80 million, resulting in free cash flow of at least $415 million. A few other items to note regarding FY 2023 cash flow. We will make the final payment of $47 million in the second quarter to repay deferred payroll taxes under the CARES Act, but that will not result in any year-over-year variance since we made a similar payment last year. We expect to receive the $40 million tax refund from the method change that we did not receive in fiscal year 2022. We expect incremental cash payments of $65 million as part of the method change we adopted in FY 2021.
We expected net use of cash of approximately $60 million, driven by increased net income more than offset by increases in working capital as the company grows. We are assuming the repeal or deferral of Section 174 of the tax code relating to R&D expense. If this does not occur, our operating cash flow would be around $95 million lower. Slide 15, please. Turning to our forward indicators, prospects remain strong. For fiscal year 2023, we expect 83% of our revenue to come from existing programs, 11% from recompetes, and around 6% for new business. We have $12 billion of submitted bids under evaluation, over 80% of which is for new business to CACI. We expect to submit another $17 billion over the next two quarters, with over 90% of that for new business.
In summary, we expect solid financial performance in FY 2023 with healthy growth, margin expansion, and strong cash flow. With that, I will turn the call back over to John.
Thank you, Tom. Let's please go to slide 16. I'm pleased that CACI was able to again deliver growth, healthy margins, and strong cash flow, and free cash flow per share in fiscal 2022. In addition, with strong awards, robust huge backlog and pipeline, and investments in differentiated technology, well-aligned with national security priorities, we have positioned CACI for strong financial performance in fiscal 2023 and beyond. As is always the case, we achieved our success because of our employees' talent, innovation, and commitment to customer missions, our company, and each other. I'm extremely proud of the CACI team for what you do for this company and our nation each and every day. I'm also very proud that you voted CACI a top workplace for the eighth consecutive year. Thank you all.
Before we open the call for questions, I'd like to mention the release of our inaugural corporate responsibility report, which we issued yesterday on our corporate website. The report outlines information that is important to us as a company and our many stakeholders, and includes topics that are impactful from an environmental, social, and governance perspective. We're proud of our heritage, and we are delighted to highlight our many accomplishments in the communities where we live and work. We look forward to an ongoing dialogue around the positive impacts we have made, and the stewardship we intend to continue to demonstrate in the future. With that, Nadia, let's open the call for questions.
Thank you. If you would like to ask a question today, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypads. If you choose to withdraw your question, please press star followed by two. When preparing to ask your question, please ensure your phone is unmuted locally. Please note we will take one question and one follow-up. Our first question today comes from Bert Subin of Stifel. Bert, please go ahead. Your line is open.
Hey, good morning.
Morning, Bert.
John Mengucci, you talked a little bit about mission technology. I know that's been something that's come up a little bit in recent quarters. Can you just say, you know, why are mission technology sales delayed, and what do you think leads them to pick up? I imagine this is a big portion of whether you guys end the year at 10.9% or 10.4% EBITDA margin. Just curious if you have any visibility on the sales or the process for RFPs there.
Yeah, sure, Bert. Hey, thank you very much for that question. Look, that's all folded into how we've set up guidance for this year, and one of the visible changes that we have made is, you know, talking about EBIT, EBITDA margin, you know, mid- to high tens. You've actually hit right on that reason. You know, it does not take a large dollar value award to disrupt our EBITDA margin by even 10 basis points. You know, to your specific questions, there's a bunch of mission tech and other material purchases that have pushed into our fiscal year 2023, and there's some that did not, but our guidance does address both of those different cases.
You know, what we're most focused on is that we've been on this long-term drive to really establish a different looking company that would depend on both expertise and on technology for us to not only talk about bottom-line growth, but also top-line growth as well. You know, I don't have a very specific as to, you know, the, you know, two-three awards that had gotten delayed, and do they come forward, or do they go away? You know, what we are confident is that our FY 2023 guidance does a good job of putting lower and upper ends around our guidance that's focused on the issue that you correctly brought up.
You know, on the low end, we'll have lower recovery, some of those mission tech and those material buys. On the upper end, we're going to recover all of those that slipped out of our fiscal year 2022. All in all, you know, we are proud of the way we came out of fiscal year 2022 as an overall year measure. Looking forward to continue this multiyear growth pattern on our bottom line, EBIT, EBITDA margins, very much driven by our entire technology portfolio. Not just mission tech, but on our enterprise tech as well.
Thanks for that, John, and maybe just to follow up on that, it seems like, you know, I'm trying to sort of delineate between your exposure set, which you highlighted, you know, a handful of items, cyber, C4I, ISR, enterprise tech. A lot of these things are, you know, seemingly growing a lot. Then we have budgets which, at least for the DoD, started at 4% for 2023 and are clearly moving higher based on sort of what we're seeing in the process. Yet your organic growth for FY 2023 is just sort of low to mid single digits. Would put it a little below that level. How should we think about, you know, why that's the case, and does that lead to a more significant ramp-up, perhaps, in the second half of the year into FY 2024?
Yeah. I'll answer the first part of that. I'll let Tom talk about how our, you know, quarter to quarter looks like. Look, our guidance is at, as it has in other years. It reflects a lot of different assumptions, Bert, and different scenarios in terms of how a multitude of those factors play out. If I were to look back at FY 2022, some of the things that we knew about coming in was that there was gonna be a 100% Afghanistan withdrawal. Things we were still questioning, "Hey, is COVID in or out? How does the government go in and out of COVID? Is the CR gonna be short or long term?" Clearly, nobody anticipated a you know, peaceful country invasion by the Russians.
That was not anticipated. We look at the Omicron, and we look at the contracting officer challenge and how does the government move between counterterrorism, as well as near peer threats in the middle of a government fiscal year. You know, those were all items that some of those we actually saw coming and tried to provide guidance around, other ones did not. As we look at fiscal year 2023, we're looking at supply chain COVID funding, which is something that we didn't expect to. You know, we wouldn't sit here using some of your numbers, you know, we've got a growing defense budget, but for some reason, unknown to many of us on all of the reasons why we're not seeing funding come out to the level that, you know, the FY 2022 budget grew.
We still have concerns as to how the KO shortage is going to play out as we look to FY 2023 challenge. You know, we're looking at a number of factors. You know, the labor market and inflation as well. There's so many variables that are out there that I'd love to be able to say, "If it was only for a $12 million mission type order, we'd be a, you know, much better, you know, stable business." We are a very stable business. We continue to grow. We finished 2022 within our stated range. We more than plan on completing FY 2023 within our guidance range, having to balance a lot of those different areas that I earlier spoke on. Tom.
Yeah. Bert, I think you talked about, you know, kind of momentum going into FY 2024, you know, in terms of growth. Right now we're obviously hyper-focused on FY 2023. You know, I will say that we expect, you know, kind of sequential increase, you know, in revenue Q1, Q2, Q3, and Q4. That's what we're expecting today. There are some fluctuations, as we mentioned, vis-a-vis either pass-through materials, which are high revenue, low margin or some of the mission tech sales. There may be some variations associated with that. As a result of that, we're guiding for a full year, you know, trend. Better to look at the company on a trailing 12-month basis level than any, you know, any particular quarter.
I think we're positioned well this year, and we'll see the momentum going into FY 2024.
Thank you, John. Thank you, Tom.
Yeah, thanks.
Sure.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Peter Arment of Baird. Peter, please go ahead. Your line is open.
Yeah, thanks. Good morning, John and Tom.
Morning, Peter.
John, regarding the budgets and just looking at just maybe the intel market specifically for 2023, it looks like the budgets are gonna be up high single digits%, and that's roughly maybe 30% of your revenue. How quickly should we think about that converting? Just maybe related to that, as regarding the funding delays, what maybe changes the pace of activity there? Thanks.
Yeah, Peter. I guess, you know, first off, budgets in general, the world's a really dangerous place, and it's nice that we continue to see bipartisan support for national security spending. You know, I do think that Ukraine is a wake-up call, but I believe that China and other near peers, as well as lingering counterterrorism are still going to be out there. We like the overall budget laydown. It's much more constructive today than it is in the past. I'm talking about purely on budget versus funding, clearly. Look, we like the increased defense funding. The $54 billion Ukraine budget, it really doesn't involve CACI at this time. As non-kinetic technology becomes more and more required, we will be in those discussions.
We started to have some late fiscal year 2022 discussions around some of our capabilities, and I would assume that those would continue to go forward in FY 2023. Look, clearly, you know, 30% of our revenue is roughly being within the intelligence community. We've got a wide range of advanced cyber and intel and analytical technology, as well as expertise. We like what those budget numbers look like. It's why we have spent the last seven-eight years positioning so that we can be talking about our addressable market and, you know, how we address our intelligence community needs. We're also pretty excited about the increase in spending within DHS and across the government as it impacts IT modernization, the space domain.
What we've sort of set the stage for is we have an outstanding budget, right? What we have to work our way through is how is that going to be funded, how is that funding going to be released. Whether it's in the intelligence community, where we've seen about a 30%-35% reduction in contracting officers. We attended a conference last week. About 30% of the DoD contracting officers have moved on from just fiscal year 2022. I think there's other factors beyond budget we're gonna have to continue to watch, and we think we set the right prudent guidance for that. Tom.
Yeah. You know, Peter, on the kind of last call, you know, we cited some, you know, funding being lower than the prior year, and that was one of the reasons for guiding downward in the last call. You know, since then, in the last four months, we've seen a pickup in funding. I'm looking at the April through July period. We are close to closing the gap. Funded backlog at the end of June was down around 3% versus, you know, the prior year. You know, a decline, but not as, you know, severe as we saw at the end of the third quarter. We're monitoring this carefully. You know, as John mentioned, there are some issues, kind of well known, the government contracting offices being short-staffed. We are comfortable that we'll have sufficient funding to perform within our guidance range.
We're controlling it, monitoring it carefully and kind of making sure that we do have the funding to execute kind of within the guidance.
Appreciate the color. I'll jump back in the queue. Thanks.
Thanks, Peter.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Robert Spingarn of Melius Research. Robert, please go ahead. Your line is open.
Hi. Good morning.
Morning, Rob.
Tom, this touches on what Bert was asking about. I wanted to ask a math question, if I could, about the FY 2022 sales and the mission technology sales that got pushed to the right. Is our math correct that these higher margin sales that went to the right were about $22 million, and the EBITDA associated with that was about $15 million?
To be clear on, you know, kind of Rob, we didn't say specifically they were pushed to the right. We said that it did not materialize. Some of them, you know, could have been pushed to the right. Some of them, there was changing kind of government, you know, priorities. You know, kind of a mixed bag. I would not take a one-for-one movement from the fourth quarter, you know, to the first quarter.
Well, Tom, I guess I shouldn't have phrased it that way, but, you know, the sales that didn't materialize or moved or whatever, the math still applies. You know, the $22 million and the $15 million. What I'm getting at is the margins.
Yeah. Okay. Yeah. But it was, you know, kind of margin impactful. You know, John mentioned the kind of leverage associated with some of the kind of mission, you know, technology sales. You know, our EBITDA, approximately, you know, $700 million. In some of the mission technology sales, high margins are gonna generate, you know, $5, $10, $15 million of kind of contribution. One or two sales shifting or disappearing or recurring, you know, it is impactful on margins. I think your arithmetic is generally, you know, correct. We were guiding to 10.5% EBITDA margins. You know, it became less than that, and, you know, that's really what the numbers are.
Okay. It just highlights the fact that some of this mission technology work is very profitable. That's really where
So ab-
Where I'm going with this.
Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely.
Okay.
In fact, we spoke about that in the past when we spoke about the ABT and Mastodon acquisitions. You know, some of the margins, the EBITDA margins of these companies were, you know, 35%-45% kind of EBITDA margin range, you know, quite profitable.
Yeah
material impact on any one particular month or quarter.
Just as a follow-up, and this one's for John. Sticking with this discussion on mission technology versus expertise, so to speak. You know, you and Leidos and a number of the peers are all going in this direction. What is the optimal mix of these two types of business? How do you compare the growth? For example, in the guidance for 2023, what is the contemplated growth for these two areas?
Yeah, Rob, I guess at a macro level, you know, optimal to me, and I have been very transparent on this. You know, there are quarters where, you know, we get asked, you know, "Your technology part of your business grew at 10% and, you know, your expertise shrunk by 3%." You know, we must be elated. No, I'm never elated. Right? I love both to be growing at, you know, 10%. Look, I don't think there's an optimal dial, Rob.
When we set this course a number of years back, you know, we're a $2.5 billion revenue company, and we're at 8.8% margins, and how do we, you know, look at where the government budgets are going to go next, and how do we position this company for the next 60 years of growth? What we knew it wasn't, was getting involved in, you know, low rate shootouts for selling expertise to enterprise customer, where there's thousands of, you know, folks out there, when Better Buying Power 2.0 took away past performance, right? You know, anything that's gonna soon be a commodity is nowhere where CACI wanted to be.
We embarked on how do we get involved in another part of this market that is, one, stickier, two, you know, maybe at times not perfectly predictable, but over the long term, we're gonna grow a much better-looking company and a much more differentiated company going forward. I can't tell you what the Leidos strategy or the Booz Allen strategy. You know, frankly, with all due respect, I don't watch what their strategy is. I can impact ours. Ours is about making sure we have the right mix of expertise and technology, so that expertise is informing the technology that we can create, differentiate on, and get a leg up on maybe some of the major primes or other people who are looking at more non-kinetic type solutions.
Making certain that our technology can be used to drive expertise work, where we're no longer dependent on solely finding people at a specific labor rate. You know, we don't adjust EBITDA for a number of people sitting on the bench and number of people that we wish could have been employed. We want to have a very clean, you know, quarterly report. Having said all that, you know, optimally, 50/50 works for us. You know, I would love to have a little more push towards technology than expertise. You know, some of these companies, we bought a mere four years back. That's pretty early in that overall nine-inning game of being able to move this company forward.
It's why when I see, you know, in 2017, we went from 8.8% to 8.5%, you know. And then the following year, we were greater than that. The long-term trend line we're trying to generate here is where we are, you know, driving a higher quality of earnings business, and by doing that over a long period of time, we'll be a much better, solid company. Because whether it's top line growth or bottom line growth, or whether we buy shares back or we buy outstanding companies, we're gonna drive free cash flow per share, and that's what we're, you know, absolutely focused on. There are some years, you know, a 10.5% is gonna be a 10.3%. There's some years a 10.7% is gonna be a, you know, 10.9%.
Overall trend line, you know, over a number of years, we positioned this company in a much better position, which is why we enjoy, to Peter's question, a great defense spending. We've got a very strong defense business, a very, you know, strong intel business, and we're willing to put that business up against anybody else's. Over time, we're gonna continue to grow both top and bottom.
Yeah. Yeah.
Okay.
Kind of Rob.
Go ahead.
No, well, all I was gonna say, Tom, to John was just in the current environment, is there any way to characterize the relative growth in those two areas, even if we're just looking at a snapshot of now?
Yep. Sure.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Absolutely, Rob.
Yeah. In our FY 2023, you know, guidance, we're assuming that both technology and expertise grow, with technology growing at a higher rate, but they're both positive growth. You know, there's a kind of variation there. If you assume, you know, expertise is growing kind of 1%-2%, then to get to the guidance range, technology has to grow kind of greater than that. two other observations. One is, you know, as we said in the past, technology margins are on average higher than, kinda expertise margins, and that continues to hold. And I will say from our acquisition strategy, it's more likely than not, you know, further acquisitions would be in technology, kind of not exclusively, we'll look at all opportunities, but that over time would tend to increase technology at a faster rate.
Okay. Makes sense. Thank you both.
Thanks, Rob.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Gavin Parsons of Goldman Sachs. Gavin, please go ahead. Your line is open.
Hey, good morning.
Morning, Gavin.
Guys, I just wanted to go through the cash flow bridge and maybe try to understand kinda normalized cash flow a little bit better. Maybe if you could give us a little bit more detail on the methodology change, but I think that looks like, you know, the $40 and the $65 almost offset each other this year. If we add back the $50 CARES reversal and then maybe the $25 from that net methodology change, is that about the normalized cash flow starting point, or how should we think about that?
Yeah. Gavin, there's a few numbers that you're quoting here. The CARES Act reversal, we had an outflow in both 2022 and 2023, repaying that deferred payroll tax of $47 million. On a year-over-year basis, that's a wash. That really doesn't go into the bridge. The method change was a tax planning strategy we embarked upon in FY 2021, generating approximately $60 million benefit to CACI. That benefit was going to be realized over four years, such that in the first year we would have a cash outflow, a very large inflow in the second year, which is our FY 2022, and then some outflows in the third and fourth year, FY 2023 and 2024.
That, adjusting for that, you'll see that kind of walk down bridge on slide 14 in terms of the, you know, the cash flow. The last piece, you know, deals with you know, combination of kind of working capital and other. You know, as the company gets kind of more profitable, we should be generating more, you know, operating cash flow, kind of which is the case. But that's being offset this year by some expected increases in working capital. Let me give you some color on that. You know, kind of generally speaking, larger companies when you're growing consume working capital, and so we're seeing some of that impact. Inventory. You know, as we deliver more mission technology products, we are increasing our inventory levels on a year-over-year basis.
In some cases, we're planning to buy ahead of need, you know, critical components, you know, supply chain related, you know, protecting against inflation. That's another use of working capital. Payments, people who look at our balance sheet will notice that we had an increase in payables, you know, at the end of June versus last year. We expect to have a, you know, abnormal outflow of payments, kind of get to a more normalized, you know, AP level. That's dealing with some cash tax payments and some other kind of vendor payables. And lastly, kind of DSO. Kind of we ended the year at DSO with 55 days. We got as low as 52 days at the end of our first quarter. Right now we're assuming DSO should be somewhat flat for FY 2023.
We've seen some delays in payment offices. You know, there's discussion about, you know, short staffing in various government agencies, and the payment offices are part of that. Although we are planning flat DSO, we'll do everything in our power to drive that lower and hopefully be able to kinda minimize, you know, some of that impact of, you know, higher working capital.
Okay. If I strip out anything abnormal this year, and it doesn't sound like working cap falls in that category, approximately what is free cash flow or a conversion ratio?
the free cash flow, you know, $495 million of, you know, operating cash flow, which I think is on a more kind of normalized basis, less $80 million of CapEx gives you $415 of free cash flow. I think that's a pretty, you know, I guess I could add, you know, a few of those payable tax deferral issues in it to come up with a quote, normalized level. The conversion is simply dividing that by net income.
Got it. Okay, thanks. Maybe just on the long-term growth outlook, wanted to ask if you updated your kinda rolling forward view of the addressable market growth rate and, you know, thoughts on to what extent you could outgrow that?
Yeah, sure. Sure, Gavin. Look, when we look at the addressable market, you know, five-year CAGR, it's about 4.5%, this year, unlike any other year, frankly. We've been reviewing the addressable market.
Really had to look at some of those factors that are now here that haven't been there in the past, things like inflation. You know, what the impact of the Ukraine budget was gonna be on us, at least in our fiscal year 2023, not over the five-year period. You know, customer contracting officer constraints and some of the things we've already spoken on. You know, we actually see our addressable market pretty much where we've pegged it at when we were coming out of FY 2022. You know, it's north of $240 billion.
The way I see it at the macro level, you know, $6 billion company with a $240 billion addressable market, you know, growing at about 6% in 2023, that sort of feels right to us.
Got it. Okay. Thank you very much.
Yeah, thanks, Gavin.
Thank you. Our next question goes to Matthew Akers of Wells Fargo. Matt, please go ahead, your line is open.
Hi. Thank you. Good morning. I wonder if you could talk on kinda capital deployment and especially kind of share repurchases in general. You know, if you go back to when you guys did the ASR a little over a year ago, I think it was, it sounded like that could maybe be a bigger part of capital deployment. Is that still the right way to think about it, or are you more kind of focused on M&A at this point?
Yeah, Matt. Thanks, John. Look, we are still on that path, right? As we mentioned during fiscal year 2022, we were about 50-50 as to how we deploy capital between four M&As we did and our ASR. You know, that's over the last 12 months-18 months. We're sitting here at a leverage around 2.5 x. You know, we're going to continue to assess those type of gaps that we want to fill quickly, and as well as looking at valuations of our stock and many other factors that go into us deciding to do an ASR. Both of those receive the equivalent amount of discussions, frankly.
You know, you should expect to, you know, see us be very flexible as we continue during fiscal year 2023, as this year plays out. I mean, there's a lot of things that are known that we can control. There's a lot of other unknown items and, you know, part of that is, you know, the status of what our M&A pipeline looks like, and to the extent that we need to fill additional gaps. I would say that you know, we are still there. We're going to monitor all our options, and we're gonna deploy capital in 2023 that does the best job of driving free cash flow per share.
Okay, great. Then I guess just one more, kind of at a high level. I mean, there's been a lot of delays, and you've talked about some of the procurement delays and stuff with COVID and budget issues over the last couple of years. You know, to what extent is there like a catch-up? Like, is there a sort of pent-up demand that maybe, you know, once we sort of normalize things to grow kind of above that long-term market growth? Or to what extent is that where it's just sort of kind of a lost opportunity at this point?
Yeah. Matt, thanks for that question because that's really at the crux of, you know, what we're trying to walk folks through today, right? This is so much about what we can control and what we can't control. We can look at budgets, and we can, you know. If we only looked at the budgets and not look at funding every other year up to 2023, that was a simple thing. The budgets went up. That's great. We didn't talk about 30% of contract contracting officers, things we cannot control. The level of funding or the priority order when you have 30% less employees, what's, where's that priority sit? It doesn't mean that not everything is a priority. It wouldn't have been in the budget if it wasn't.
You know, when, Matt, when things normalize back to we have a budget, we pretty much are a wide sector who understands how to play within that CR world unless we get a complete anomaly like we had in FY 2022. You know, we're all pretty competent to understand how to balance what our expectations are there. Look, what we're doing, we're gonna focus on continuing to run our business. We're gonna focus on our operational efficiencies. We're gonna continue to invest in the right areas. You know, tomorrow afternoon at 3:30 P.M., space is not gonna be a priority, whether you know, those funding awards come out in July or whether they come out next January.
Our job of being a, you know, major company within this space is to make certain that we are positioned in the right markets. We're not positioned in markets that are going away, but we're actually positioned in markets that, over the long term, are going to continue to grow. I'd love to tell you that all those things that we can't control are gonna get, you know, resolved when we get to October first, you know, the next government fiscal year. Chances are they aren't, and a lot of those very fluid areas are what goes into our guidance that we have for fiscal year 2023. Yes, mission technology plays higher on our margins.
Every dollar revenue plays heavy on our top line growth, and our job is to be as prudent as we can be, make certain that we're putting that right range in place that shows you what the volatility is, but also the fact that we're in a growing marketplace where a customer pays on time. There are a lot of concerns that we do not have. I like the hand we have. I like the strategy we have that we've been playing over the next number of years. The fact that we got through fiscal year 2022 showing top-line growth, driving free cash flow, we're in the right areas. We just need a few things to get straightened out.
Thanks for that question, Matt.
Yep, that's great. Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Seth Seifman of JP Morgan. Seth, please go ahead. Your line is open.
Thanks very much, and morning. Just to follow up a little bit on that question, and you know, you talked about some of the mission technology work this year. You know, perhaps some of it has slipped out, which you know is something that we see kind of across the sector, and some of it just may not materialize. With regard to the stuff that just may not materialize, like how do we think about how that happens, whether there are any implications for your market share? What gives you the confidence that it actually is going to materialize in the future, given the plans to you know build up working capital and kind of buy ahead of need going into fiscal 2023?
Yeah. Thanks. At a macro level, the strategy of this company is to derive revenue from both expertise and from technology, both in the enterprise side as well as the mission side. That strategy is playing out extremely well. We have enjoyed a well-positioned top-line growth, where the quality of that revenue has continued to improve over the last seven-eight years. We've had a lot of things that have come in in the last eight years and things that have not. Normalized net, we're in the right places as a federal government spend. We're in C4ISR, we're in AI, we're in cyber. 30% of our annual revenue is in the intelligence community, and that continues to be a priority for national security and what we deliver to them.
Cyber continues to be well-funded. We have come out of other areas that have not been as well-funded or that have been commoditized. Over the last 10 years, we're on this journey to reposition this company, and all I can tell you is it is a long-term model. We are in a much better positioned company than we have been in the past. There are gonna be awards that, you know, come in and do not come in. We've talked about awards being lumpy. You know, at the end of the day, this gets us to a 6% midpoint top-line growth, albeit some is acquired and some is organic. Even the acquired revenue needs to have funding come in.
We need to win awards and the like, and we believe we have the right prudent guidance, which is our job sitting here today to make certain that we're able to provide the right prudent guidance that allows you all to determine where this company goes in this upcoming fiscal year.
Great. Thanks. Thank you. Then, just as a follow-up, you know, we see the effort at the Department of Justice to block the Booz Allen acquisition of EverWatch. I don't really expect you to comment on their M&A, but you know, it's not an isolated incident in terms of what we see from the Justice Department and the FTC and this administration with regard to the approach to M&A. Does that enter into your thinking at all about your M&A strategy?
Yeah. Thanks. Look, yeah, short answer is no. Look, ours is still a, from the way I see it's a large, competitive, relatively fragmented market. Government small business programs are, you know, constantly enabling new business creation. At the level of acquisitions that we're looking for, no. You know, there's no different path that we're going to take on an M&A front. Over the number of years, 30-40 years, you know, we're a strategy-based company. Strategy is where we come from. We're always gonna be looking for gaps, and some of those we've learned to fill through internal investments or through partnerships. No, there isn't anything on that question specifically, Seth, that's gonna change how we handle our M&A program.
Thank you for that.
Great. Thanks very much.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Sheila Kahyaoglu of Jefferies. Sheila, please go ahead. Your line is open.
Hey. Good morning, guys. John, maybe another big picture one for you as you continue to shift the strategy and move towards technology and mission. How are you doing that with your bid pipeline? Like, you know, are you deciding to bid on certain contracts? Are you hiring people that focus on that more? Can you expand a little upon your strategy? I know it's been ongoing for several years, but, you know, how you're continuing to focus on it into fiscal 2023.
Yeah. Sheila, thanks. Terrific question. Look, you know, what I would tell you is, historically, we were part of what I would now call more commoditized work. Today, you're seeing the evolution in our business approach, you know, to tech and expertise, where expertise is informing tech. You know, longer term, what we expect is us to further differentiate ourselves within the overall federal market. So on a tactical level, you know, as we have recompete bids come up in what we've historically had, you know, predominantly in our expertise area, we are taking really hard looks at those, right? Every dollar of investment is a dollar of investment that we wanna make certain that we are making the absolute best call there.
There have been some businesses, and I have, you know, shared this, there have been some specific programs, if not customer sets, that it just didn't make business sense and national security sense, frankly, for us to bid on work that eighteen months from now we'd have the honor of bidding it again to generate lower margins. Yes, that has taken a historical longer-term hit on our top line growth number. I will make that decision a hundred times out of a hundred, because at the end of the day, we need to continue to position this company away from that, from that work. You know what I think the largest travesty would be, that if we have to at least grow at this amount top line, so we hang on to some of that work.
Because what it does to the organization, it becomes very distracting. You know, we are gonna make some of these calls right in the right ear, and some of them they're not gonna be as right. You know, they're not major bets, but they're a series of smaller bets. Over time, what we're looking to do is sort of turn this ship to a you know, day where we're not talking about number of people we've hired and, you know, what our direct labor is and what our, you know, pass-through material bids are. You know, they're all very judicious decisions. And over time, we've already seen the results of those decisions, right? We have driven top line growth to a level that we're comfortable with. Would we love to have it greater? Absolutely so. Those margins, right?
That don't go away, we like the job that we have done there. Tom?
Yeah. The other kind of enabler with some of the increased technologies is some of the R&D activities we've been doing, you know, in investing a significant amount of money ahead of need to make sure we have the right kind of technologies to sell to customers. We've hired a number of people, you know, both in our, you know, technology area, our business development area, who have a lot of expertise understanding the market, client executives, kind of making those investments to propel, you know, that particular growth. Those are enablers to kind of get us there. Partners with some, you know, top-notch, you know, technology companies as well. They all go into the mix to allow us to go after more technology content in bids and be successful winning those.
No, that helps. Thank you both. Tom, maybe one more follow-up for you. In terms of slide 14, it's been hyped up a lot, but you know, do we think about working capital as a continued usage going forward for the business, or is it just a fiscal 2023 anomaly given you know, supply chain shortages?
Yeah, I think you know good question. Perhaps a bit of anomaly in FY 2023. What we saw you know over the last several years is working capital being a source of operating cash flow. You know, our DSO four years ago was 65 days. Now it's down to 55-60 days. And so that was adding to operating cash flow. We're getting to a level where it's gonna be hard to make material improvements to cut a DSO. You know, some inventory pressures growing companies will require working capital. We'll try to keep working capital somewhat neutral kind of going forward vis-à-vis operating cash flow 2023, 2024, 2025.
This year there is a bit of a headwind, and we're gonna do all we can to kind of minimize that headwind.
Okay, great. Thank you.
Thanks, Sheila.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Tobey Sommer of Truist Securities. Toby, please go ahead. Your line is open.
Thank you. Could you give us some commentary on particularly the optical part of your business in space? Maybe talk about the competitive positioning, any kind of lead you have in having a sort of a viable commercial product or not? Maybe in the context of that describe what success looks like from your perspective, you know, three or four years out.
Yeah. Toby, thanks. Look, we're really happy, frankly with where we are in the photonics and the laser communications area. As I mentioned in my prepared remarks, we have production units in space, and we're involved in several missions, you know, many that we can't talk about here. Toby, I look at our market in two different areas, right? The first step into optical communications was with our LGS acquisition. Very bespoke. Think about GEO and interplanetary communications. We have laser terminals on satellites, and we'll be heading to the moon as part of the Artemis mission. We also have units transmitting on airborne assets for very specialized missions, but they've been going on in a timeline measured in years.
On the higher volume where we start talking about proliferated LEOs, you know, we are still building manufacturing scale, and we believe we have the right capabilities in place to produce high volume, small form factor devices. Part of the thesis on picking up SA Photonics was to take some of the exquisite technology, you know, read algorithms that we have on our bespoke solutions and sort of give those to the high volume, small form factor device world so that we make sure that we can close links in a much more assured manner without adding additional costs. We've already have production units in space. We have connected links. We've been transferring data at, you know, rates of around 1 Gbps, if not higher.
We've got some great programs in both DARPA and the SDA. You know, our photonics business to us is real. It's very tangible. It's operating in multiple domains, both in space and in air. You know what denotes success? Success through FY 2023 is making the requisite investments that we talked about when we bought them last December. That meaning SA Photonics to make sure that we are positioning them as best as we can to make sure that they're ready to take on not only the defense proliferated, you know, LEO market through other satellite primes, but also in the commercial side. You know, this is gonna be one of those markets that I mentioned.
You know, we're looking at an FY 2024 where we really see material revenues, and based on the successes we've had in some of the earlier testing, and getting down to some of those price points that are very much of a challenge for us to take a large, you know, real millions of dollars bespoke solution and get them to hundreds of K, you know, high volume. I like where we are on that path. Success is that in 2024 we start talking about the increased revenue that we see from that market, and we should see additional movement of our bottom line numbers as volumes go north. Hopefully that gives you a pretty good cover of where we think.
Certainly does. From a capital deployment standpoint, could you just comment what higher interest rates mean to you? You're at 2.5 x. Are you less aggressive in share repurchase and acquisitions as a result of the interest rate environment and your variable exposure there?
Yeah. You know, kind of last year in FY 2022, kind of LIBOR you know averaged around 35 basis points. You know, today it's you know 2.4%. We've seen an increase, you know, kind of, you know, 2 percentage points, let's say. In the grand scheme, you know, that's not material. You know, share repurchases will still be driving incremental free cash flow per share, albeit at slower levels. We'll have to pay some kind of, you know, interest expense, but it's not going to have a material impact.
You know, similar to buying or borrowing additional debt to fund acquisitions, you know, whether we're borrowing at, you know, kind of 2.5% or 4.5%, you know, that should not materially, you know, impact, you know, our decisions to make those investments.
I can assume that you have embedded in your guidance continued rise in LIBOR at least for you know the next several months.
Yeah. You know, absolutely. What we have embedded in the guidance is an expectation that LIBOR will get to approximately 3.5% in June of 2023. You know, we shall say that seems to me a kind of middle of the road, you know, path, somewhat consistent with, you know, various economic forecasts and yield curves and, forward curves and the like. We'll see how we do.
Thank you very much.
Yeah, thanks.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Colin Canfield of Barclays. Colin, please go ahead. Your line is open.
Hey, thanks for getting me in. Can we talk a little bit about potential growth and EBIT impact on TSA, the TSA impact contract and what you're assuming with respect to the guidance?
Yeah, Colin, you know, that job is under protest. We have some amount of revenue in our FY 2023 plan, and pretty much all we're going to say until we see what the government's outcome is. You know, the way we have it laid out now, we believe that we have that program sufficiently covered in our FY 2023 guidance.
Got it. Maybe if you can talk a little bit about the multi-year margin environment. Is 11% still possible considering the level of underbidding that we're seeing on both the expertise and technology end? I think on the expertise end, we saw TSA impact. It was, you know, kind of 1%-2% margin below your implied bid. On the technology side, a lot of the SDA constellation bids are coming in at kind of, you know, low to no margin. You mentioned in your feedback kind of the exquisite optical link pricing, you know, needing to come down. Maybe you can talk about that margin framework versus your 11% visibility.
Yeah, look, we're on a, you know, continued path to grow top and bottom line. You know, I don't think 11% is a magic number. I just think that right now, given what our FY 2023 guide looks like, we believe that 10.5%-10.9% or so is a, you know, prudent guide, as we start this fiscal year off. It is not dependent on any one specific item. Yes, it is true that there's some expertise work that is, you know, continually bidding down. That's predominantly why seven years ago we went on a different path, making certain that we were not going to be part of a, you know, commoditized, business.
The last seven years has proved that we've done a pretty darn good exquisite job of moving away from the commodity work, given that our margins have gone from 8.8% to, you know, 10.7% or so, if you take the midpoint of this year's guide. There's been some ups and downs based on winning programs, losing programs, making some, you know, decisions that worked, making some decisions that didn't. You sort of can't erase the fact that we're a much different looking company. As markets like optical comms over the next decade continue to proliferate, you know, nothing brings pricing down better than volume. We also do believe that we've got a head start on that because we do have products out in space.
We understand what some of those correction items are, and we've got a long history, longer than, you know, where we've been tracking, you know, what we're doing on the higher volume work of understanding the dynamics of space, which is why we are on a number of, you know, prime satellite builders teams throughout the SDA and in the DARPA world. I would never on a call like this talk about margins that those are at because we have targeted margins that are gonna drive, you know, a decade worth of growth. Just not third quarter of FY 2023.
Got it. Thanks for the color.
Yeah. Thanks, Colin.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Mariana Perez Mora of Bank of America. Mariana, please go ahead. Your line is open.
Good morning, everyone. My question-
Good morning, Mariana.
Is to follow up on M&A. Good morning. That's gonna be biased towards technology. However, we have heard that space technology, for example, is getting quite pricey. Could you please give us some color around your M&A pipeline and the M&A environment?
Yeah, sure. Look, it's what we've seen is our pipeline has sort of flattened, you know, off of 2021 levels over the past six months. There are some opportunities that are available out there. You know, I wouldn't characterize the market as robust, but the way we go about strategically picking where we want to go, it doesn't always have to be robust. There just have to be quality assets out there, you know, at the right price with the right cultural mix that allows us to, you know, continue to build out either our expertise or our technology portfolio. We're gonna continue, as Tom mentioned, we're gonna continue to focus on SIGINT EW and cyber and AI and analytics and, you know, anything that helps us do a more cost-effective IT modernization.
You know, our strategy does consider areas that would be additive to our customer presence and our past performance. Those are also areas that an acquisition could potentially position us differently with a, you know, within a current customer set, but a different PEO that we believe will be very crucial to continue to drive us in our top line and bottom line growth. Look, you know, PEs are very active. There's a lot of startups out there just to provide a little more color on what we see. You know, some of the valuation expectations, as you mentioned, do remain high. That's in general, and we're not gonna, you know, compromise our well-founded 20-year discipline is how we bring those M&As in.
You know, is it a frothy market? No. Does it have to be? No. Are we gonna continue to be very, very select? You know, yes. Is the fact that, you know, recent government aversion around M&As, is that gonna play a, you know, major factor in us deciding, continuing to grow this company in a manner? You know, absolutely not. Did that provide some additional color?
Yes. Perfect. Probably a different one on FY 2023 guidance. I would like to understand where this conservatism comes from. You have a robust pipeline, $12 billion of submitted bids, additional 17 that you expect to submit soon, and with high content of new work. However, you're only expecting, like, 6% contribution to your growth from new work. Where is this conservatism coming from? Is it, like, the war environment? It's your win rates? It's the protest environment? Could you please give me some color on where is that coming from?
Sure. Mariana, thanks for that. Look, I would tell you that probably the best way to answer this, look at the low end of our guide and the high end of our guide, just talk about some of the, you know, different variables. I'll start off with the majority of this guide as it has every year comes from a completely detailed bottoms up. Then at each level, we're looking at a lot of the things that we can control and then also these things that we can't or they're unknowns, right? It's the unknown unknowns that can really, you know, throw this guide off. You know, at the low end, we're looking at funding recovery being slow and uneven. At the higher end that it improves completely, right?
That the contracting officers and all the things that myself and other fellow CEOs don't understand and why funding has been so delayed, those resolve themselves. You know, we talked about timing of some of our tech awards in the mission tech world that we talked a lot about. You know, do those recover quickly, you know, all the way up to that they grow higher than what we would see. You know, one potential area is in the Ukraine conflict as that moves potentially from a little less on kinetic to more non-kinetic, is there room for counter-UAS systems? Is there room for, you know, other things there? In the future, if that is the, you know, case, how do we drive that across the international?
The pace of new awards and contract expansions we've been talking about, that has been, you know, materially delayed. If it ramps up slower, we'll be on the lower end of the guide. If you know, we can see some things come in faster, you know, it's a big difference between bids to be submitted, bids to be adjudicated that run late and then ramp up. There's a lot of different factors. Again, I'm gonna restate, it's our job to do the right prudent examination of all these variables to make certain that we are doing our absolute best to guide. KO resources are gonna be another element. You know, wage inflation.
We haven't talked at all on this call around inflation. You know what those potential impacts are, at least through FY 2023. Wage inflation is real. 60% of our business is cost plus. That means 40% of our business is not. You know how we go about covering down on higher wage increases, which is the right long-term business prudent thing for us to do. How do we handle that in a difference between 2022 and 2023. You know, is that a potential margin hit to us? Yes. Do we have that factored in our guidance? Absolutely so.
There's a lot of things that in the macroeconomic and geopolitical, you know, noise, for lack of a better term, that is going to continue to, you know, want to play with funding. You know, we do try to assess all of those items. You know, a 4.5 guide or a 7.5% guide in the year that we're looking at, the kind of business that we're looking to go after. You know, we're comfortable with that guide because again, our job is to make certain we're doing the absolute best that we can to sort of tell you where those, you know, narrow deep holes are. Tom?
Yeah. Mariana, the other point to observe is while we have a healthy pipeline in respect to kind of when our, you know, a good amount of that activity, as John mentioned, is going to ramp up over time, you know, and the like. The other factor is, at any point in time, some of our work is coming to end of useful life. We have a natural falloff in revenue. We like to win 100% of our recompetes. Unfortunately, we don't. There is also a gap to fill. Some of that new business win is going to kind of fill the gap of either some lost recompetes or natural program life cycle falloff. I think that piece will help you with your arithmetic.
Amazing. Great follow-up. Thank you.
Thanks, Mara. Thank you very, very much, Mariana.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Josh Sullivan of The Benchmark Company. Josh, please go ahead. Your line is open.
Hey, good morning.
Good morning, Josh.
You mentioned counter-UAS there. You know, you guys were early to the game with SkyTracker, tactical environment, Ukraine highlighting the threat. Can you talk about, you know, how that market's evolving, how you get to stay up front, you know, a lot of increasing competition in the market, and then just how big of an opportunity you see that.
Yeah, Josh, thanks. Counter-UAS is, you know, one of the very first areas we talked about as we were moving more towards tech. That all started with the acquisition of Six3 Systems, actually. We've been following some of the recent counter-UAS legislation which has been out there, which, you know, I truly applaud because it's really trying to zero in to who has the authorization, who has the right leadership for where counter-UAS goes. You know, we do call ourselves a leader in counter-UAS. To share some information with you, Josh, we got a large operational footprint. Frankly, over 1,200 systems have been deployed globally, protecting some of the most critical federal assets.
We've got the largest library of signals of interest because we've got 20 years within this domain. We have capabilities that, you know, go from tracking and geolocating all the way from Group One, which are those smaller commercial UASs up to the large nation-state ones that are at Group Five. The draft legislation is a step in the right direction. We continually upgrade and modify many of those 1,200 systems. If you look at the legislation as it's written, we're also looking at critical infrastructure owners. Think about power plants and water sources and the like. Those will now be potential addressable markets as we go forward.
We do see, you know, increased volume there, as we continue to build out our, you know, over 1,200 systems that we have deployed globally.
Got it. Thank you for that detail. Just a follow-up on the photonic strategy as well. You know, as you work with that commercial pricing environment, is there any thought of offering a usage model or just to get more dynamic to penetrate the commercial opportunity?
Yeah, I mean, yeah. We are, Josh. We have a number of models that we're, you know, contemplating today. Some of those models will work, and frankly, some won't. You know, but they're all gonna be based on volume, right? We believe we have the right technical solution. We believe we have the right hardware and software solution. You know, but at the end of the day, what gets you from X to half of X, to some of the earlier questions, is going to be volume. You know, we believe we have the right pricing model in place. We know we're not at the most exquisite price point. We're always going to protect margins as well.
I would tell you in that nine-inning game, we're sort of at inning two. What I wanted to make certain of is before we took a deep step into this marketplace, which is a decade-long market that's completely new to us, you know, picking up market share at a rate that we can achieve that makes sense for us and that we're partnered with the right folks, is gonna be, you know, how we're gonna move forward on the commercial side. I can tell you on the more bespoke side, we've been doing this work for quite a long time. We are in the only
Ladies and gentlemen, we've lost connection with our speaker line. Please stand by as I reconnect them.
Okay, folks. Are we back live?
Yes, you are back live.
Operator, this is the speaker line here with CACI, John Mengucci and Tom Mutryn. We were at our last call. Or our last question. Can you hear us?
Yes, we can hear you.
Okay. Thank you. I'm gonna turn the call back over to John Mengucci for a quick wrap up to end the call.
Okay. Well, thanks, Nadia, and thank you for your help on today's call. We'd like to thank everyone who dialed in or listened to the webcast for their participation. We know that many of you will have follow questions. Tom Mutryn, Dan Leckburg, and George Price are available after today's call. Please stay healthy, and all my best to you and your families. This concludes our call. Thank you, and have a good day.
Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. This concludes today's call. Thank you all for joining. You may now disconnect your lines.