Gentlemen, welcome to the Ducommun Virtual Investor Day. My name is Maxine, and I'll be coordinating the call today. If you would like to ask a question during the presentation, you may do so via the Questions tab on the top right corner of your screen. I will now hand you over to your host, Chris Wampler. Chief Financial Officer, Controller, and Treasurer, to begin. Chris, please go ahead when you're ready.
Thanks, Maxine. Welcome, and thank you for joining us for our Ducommun Investor Day. Our last Investor Day was in November 2018. In the two and a half years since that meeting, the DCO team has been executing on our strategic plan that was presented. Over much of that same period, the world and the A&D industry have and continue to deal with the impacts resulting from some unprecedented events. We are proud of how our team has worked together with safety and our customer focus top of mind. Today, we will update you on the progress of our journey, as well as provide insight into where we are headed over the next several years. As Maxine mentioned, at the end of the prepared presentations, we will hold a question- and- answer session.
To submit a question, you must utilize the Q&A tab of the NetRoadshow application. There is not a mechanism for a verbal question to be asked today. You must utilize the NetRoadshow application. A replay link to the Investor Day will be posted later today on our website. Please note the disclosures on slide two related to forward-looking statements, industry and customer information, non-GAAP financial measures, and others. Today, we will cover an agenda that includes a Ducommun overview from Stephen Oswald, updates on our Electronic Systems and Structural Systems businesses from Dave Wilmot and Jerry Redondo, respectively, our mergers and acquisition strategy from Suman Mookerji. I will provide our financial outlook, Stephen will share some closing remarks. With that, I will turn the program over to Stephen Oswald, our Chairman, President, and CEO. Steve?
Okay. Chris, thank you very much, and welcome everybody. Very glad to have you. We're certainly hoping for the next time we meet, we'll be in person. Again, thanks for your time as we get into this. We're gonna try to move it along fairly quickly 'cause we have a lot to cover. If we go Please go to page five. Okay. First, just a little overview of our company. A lot of you know this already, top left, you know, we had a bit of a step back year, as we know, with the pandemic, as everybody did. We came in at $629 million. We had, I think a good year in EBITDA margins and margins in general.
You can see our backlog is, was fairly good despite all the challenges in commercial aerospace. Going down the left-hand part of the slide there, you see, we really leaned into our military and space business, which certainly served us well. We have a lot of proprietary content, and we wanna talk to you about that today, where we'll get more into it as we go forward in the presentation. We feel we're fairly strong in many areas of A&D. You can see our commercial aerospace, we're in great shape on narrow-body. As we move forward, we think that's a big part of the game, as you all do, as we move forward in time, and hopefully, wide-bodies at some point in the future.
Top right, you can see our many platforms. We're proud of all our accomplishments. You can see military aircraft, commercial aircraft. We have a great share. We'll talk more about that. Our missiles program is really, I think, industry-leading in lots of ways. We've made a lot of great progress in space and UAVs, so we're obviously very you know, proud of that, and we'll talk more about that. You can see the broad range of customers we have here. You know, as we've talked about in the past, I mean, we're really a tier one. We'll get into that, of complex electronics and structural systems.
We wanna do things that are difficult to make, that are hard, that provide great value, so we can go to the industry in that posture. I think we're continuing to do that better and better all the time. Page six, please. I listed these. I think it's important that we have a little conversation about where we see the company right now and where we're going through 2025. You can see at the top here, we are a Tier 1 industry player, in my opinion. We get up every day to focus on A&D. We're not thinking about industrial products or other platforms. That's where we spend all our time. I think our defense business is a real great story, and it's growing.
I think despite some concern in changing budget environment, which will happen, we still feel great about our position and where we're going. The reopening trade and commercial aero is only gonna benefit Ducommun and its shareholders. We got a high share in narrow- body, we're in great shape there. We do have an expanding portfolio of proprietary capabilities. We'll talk more about that. One of the things we wanna highlight is we're the worldwide leader in titanium for A&D. That's something we've worked on for many years. Kind of what put us over the top is our Airbus business. We're doing lots for Airbus, we're proud of that, being a small cap and being a leader in titanium, and that's hot form and superplastic forming processes.
We do have an aftermarket. We don't really talk about it a lot, but we have an aftermarket franchise. It's gaining momentum. I'll get more into that. We also have an operation excellence system we put in place. This is a lot from our backgrounds for some of the executives at United Technologies and other places. You know, we think we have really good margin improvement runway, and we've seen a lot of that already. We do have, I think, a very good function, M&A function, and execution track record at Ducommun. We'll talk more about that. You know, we're doing, I think, a good job on ESG, which everybody is obviously concerned about, and we are.
To the right there, as I see it right now, I think we have a lot of good growth and shareholder value upcoming through 2025. We'll get into that a little bit more. Next slide, please. Okay, just a minute about what does tier one mean to Ducommun? What does it mean to our shareholders and our analysts? Top left here, I mentioned this already about we're involved in lots of complexity. That's what we like. That's where the margins are. That's where there's less competition. That's pretty much where we spend our time. Top left, you can see the breakdown for 2020. I went over that already.
The top right, I think is an important one, is that, this is really, we have relationships with all these companies, either through the, you know, chief executive officer, vice president, program directors. So we're involved directly with all these companies, and we're getting up every day thinking about how we can provide value to them. So we're pretty proud of that. I think it's important for investors and for our analysts to, you know, fully understand. We do some Tier 2, which we're happy about as well. We have a great relationship with Spirit, and we also do work with AVIC in China for the A220. We're mostly going Tier 1, and that brings a lot of strength, and I think it's gonna help us in the years ahead. Next slide, please.
As I mentioned, in my opening remarks, in the first slide here, I think we got lots of great things going on different platforms. Top left, we're gonna talk more about Raytheon as we move forward in the presentation. We did have a supplier agreement signed in July 2019, by myself and their leader in procurement. It's really kind of paid off. Obviously, with Raytheon, that was legacy Raytheon, and then combining with United Technologies, things, you know, obviously needed to shake out a bit. We've seen a lot of good progress. You can see the bottom there. We talk about the TOW missile, but we're also on the Patriot.
The Tomahawk is a long-term program for us, and we just got work on the SM-2 for the dorsal fin. You know, that's that's something, as I've been talking about on my calls, that, you know, we're driving structural business, new business and defense, either offloading from the OEM or share shift from a supplier. I think all that's coming together nicely. You can see it in the P&L. The top right, you can see some other things that's happening with defense majors. We've talked about GA before. Again, that was a major share shift from an incumbent supplier. Again, for everybody on the call, you know, we're really just focusing on value and can we provide value to the customer. We're not interested in just winning on price 'cause that's not for us.
That's not for Ducommun. If we're gonna, you know, help a customer, especially if it's something that's already with another supplier, we need to be able to We believe we need to be able to bring a couple of, you know, very significant things to the table. That certainly happened with the, with the TOW missile case. Better quality, better delivery, higher volumes. We got a great start with on the TOW and also on this wonderful program with GA. You also see on Northrop, we've got a lot of activity with Northrop Grumman. Not so much in the past, that's another great story for us, where Northrop now is a top three customer. You know, we're doing our part in space. We do work with Aerojet.
You can see us there on the RS-25 engine. Lots of good things there. I mentioned this in the past that we have 52 defense programs. This is in 2020, up from 34. It moves around a bit, but generally that's the, that's where these things are heading. We're leaning in and driving more. I think all that's very positive for shareholders. That's for investment, criteria number two. Next slide, please. Just a moment on some new- generation platforms for those interested. We're obviously engaged with GA, but we're working with Kratos and Raytheon and Northrop Grumman, as I mentioned earlier, on UAVs. Lots of good things ahead there. We're also involved in hypersonics.
I can't say too much about it, but we're involved in several programs, and we're gonna be there for the long term. We also, you know, we're pretty strong in rotorcraft, and we're very involved with Lockheed Sikorsky on their FARA for the competition for the Scout. We think it's a great offering, and we're looking forward to hopefully them coming out as the winner in the next few years. We also think we have some great things happening in these next-gen platforms. Next slide, please. Okay, let's talk a little bit about commercial aero. Defense, we just covered here. We all know the hope and the plans here for the situation.
I won't get too much into it, but the middle part I think is important for us. Again, you know, we have a very good position in MAX. MAX used to be a $100 million program for Ducommun at the highest level in 2019. That gives you a sense of, you know, the runway ahead for us. We feel good about that. It's gonna take a while, as we know. The Airbus business has been, I think, great for shareholders, great for our company. The A320 is here to stay. It's gonna certainly be at 60 before we know it, I'm sure. That's a real strength for us. Again, that's something we didn't have in the company five years ago.
That's important for investors and analysts to note that's really helping us and broadening our strength. We feel great about that. You know, we have on the right there, we know about the fleet renewals and things like that. Well, I think we're in great shape for commercial aero. It might take a little bit longer or maybe a little bit slower than we'd hope, but this thing is gonna come, and we're gonna be ready. We have the capital, we have the people, we have facilities, and we have the know-how. I think that, along with Airbus, I think great things ahead for the company. Okay, next slide. I also think it's important to talk about these proprietary capabilities.
You can see the left, top left there, we have the trends, and I won't get too much into that 'cause we know all that is happening. The middle, I think, is important. The platforms that we're on for these capabilities, you know, we have a very good position in the A220, and through AVIC. I think that's something we don't talk about very much, but it's another area where, you know, we're doing some very nice things for that plane, and we think it's gonna be a great volume increase, have great volume increase in the near future. We're sole sourced on a lot of these things. I talked about our titanium business. We're number one in the world. We do have the VersaCore composites.
We right now, we're mostly focused in on na celles, but we're just getting started on that. That's gonna be very positive. We're working through Airbus and Safran and Middle River on our program right now. Good things ahead. We make a lot of things that are ruggedized, and we make proprietary air switches and panels. We are trusted. We have a very, very strong domestic footprint, and we do things such as value engineering design, rapid prototyping. We do a lot of things that customers value. You know, at the end of the day, one of the biggest things we've I think on this journey we've been on the last few years, is our service levels are now very high, and they're gonna stay that way.
Customers, you know, that's a very, very important piece, as you know. Our value proposition on the top right there, we do have innovative products and solutions. We do have niche capabilities, such as the trade secrets around our titanium business. We're focused, obviously, and we're gonna be number one versus the competition in service. That's just that's just our commitment. Next slide. Okay, let's go to aftermarket. I just wanna talk about this for a minute 'cause something I felt was more appropriate for Investor Day than on a call for our quarterly earnings. You can see at the top where the business has come from, percentage of revenue. We went from 7% to 10%.
In the past, this was just something where, I think in the past, just basically, you know, we had good margins on it, and it wasn't really focused on very much, unfortunately. When I came in, we did some nice things with this business. We exited some relationships with a distributor. We're now with a much better distributor for some of our products. Our acquisitions are driving the growth up to 10%, and we're doing some Apache rotor blade repairs, which we never did before. So, 7% to 10% is a nice, I think, for a couple years, pretty nice number. We're gonna be doing more of that once we continue to leverage our recent acquisitions, and we're gonna grow share through M&A.
Not certainly like it at 20%, but, you know, from 7% to 10%, we like, and we think it's gonna, you know, go higher from there. Next slide. Let me just, I wanted to put this slide in here. I know folks have covered Ducommun for a long time and know us, and we have long-term investors, and again, we thank you for your support over the years. I put this slide together just to kinda set the table as I go into my last section here, sort of, what we are not, post 2018. First, top left, we're much more than a build-to-print supplier.
I think hopefully you get a sense for that with our titanium business, our M&A, our proprietary products, some of our trade secrets around how we do things. I'm hoping that we can move past that finally. We do have a competitive advantage. There are certain things that we can make in the world that most people can't. We're proud of that. We have a much bigger business than maybe in the past, where there's a lot of commercial aerospace structures business, and I understand why that was there, 'cause it was the truth. Now we've, as you know, we've really changed the company. I think we're much stronger. We're not interested in low margins and commoditized products. You know, we just, you know, we don't do machining.
We don't do a lot of things that, where there's 100 competitors. We're just not interested in that. I put, sometimes or at least once, we're considered a forging castings supplier. We're not, as you all know that. We don't really get involved in wings and in large fuselages. We used to have a little bit of that in the past, we're just not interested. That's not for us. That's not for Ducommun. We do have aftermarket, which I just talked about. We do have pricing power. We certainly want to provide value and be competitive, and we will be. We do use that. We're also, in the past, we've had certainly lost positions in products and break even. We have a lot less of that now. That was not true in the past.
We're moving forward on that. We're a lot more than just Boeing and Raytheon. I can understand that for years and years and years, those were our top customers, and I understand that, we value them very much. We're much broader now. I think all that on the slide, I think is bodes well for our investors and for our future, for our company, employees and all our stakeholders. Next slide, please. I'm gonna wrap up here. I just wanna talk about a few more slides here, I'll turn it over to the team. We put this in here just to give you a sense from where we sit now on May 26, what we see ahead in 2025.
Certainly, this is a high level look and certainly, this is our best effort at this point. We'll have to, you know, come back to you next year and update it. I see a significant value creation at the company through 2025. Next slide, please. Okay, we're gonna, you know, come in. We'll see how the rest of the year goes. That's really where analysts have us in that range for 2021. The breakdown, you can see the mix on the left. You know, we think, we see the company growing at least 30% over the next few years. Again, this is where we are right now in 2021. We'll update it as we go through the years.
You know, if we didn't have the MAX and the pandemic, obviously that's a big, you know, it was a big change here. You know, certainly we would be hopefully heading to $1 billion. that's gonna be a little further out. you know, that's our long term, obviously, goal is to build scale and build a bigger player in A&D. And 7%-8% CAGR is I think is pretty good. We'll again, we'll talk more about it. Let me just get to the next slide here on just some of the key tenets here. it's pretty simple to us, you know. We just need to be an industry-leading partner by providing technology.
Technology could be all our proprietary products, could be our trade secrets with titanium. It could be our card business, where we do, I think provide a lot of value. You know, be the best in the market at service. Okay. It's not that hard to us, you know. We're gonna, you know, do M&A, we're gonna do a lot of other things. At the end of the day, that's what we're driving. I think our defense business in the Vision 2025 is gonna be $500+ million . We'll have to see where this goes. We're pretty confident about defense 'cause we're doing new things regardless of the budget. I think that's gonna be very good.
Commercial aero, we certainly want it to come sooner than later, but we do have leadership there in titanium worldwide. We put a $275 million-$300 million for now. Acquisition placeholder is $75 million. We'll have to see how that goes. Certainly wanna drive that higher, but we feel at this point that's a good number to start. Our business mix. We're gonna be more of a defense business. I know it's hard to believe, but that's really been a nice business for us. I know commercial's been much bigger for Ducommun in the past, but that's probably maybe 60/40, we'll have to see. I think we're gonna do very well on our EBITDA margins. At this point, we're gonna put them out at 18%. Again, my thanks for listening.
I'm gonna now take it, turn it over to, Dave Wilmot.
Thank you, Steve. Good morning, good afternoon, everybody. Thanks for joining our meeting today. As Steve said, I'm Dave Wilmot, Vice President of Electronics and Engineered Products, and look forward to giving you an insight into Electronic Systems. Electronic Systems key products. We have seven key product lines today that all add value to the A&D supply chain. We support complex defense programs across air, sea, and land, and you'll see that as we go through this presentation. The good thing is the portfolio we have today is a good mix of legacy, share gain, and new program wins. You know, we've got a lot of what's come from the past.
We've got share gain that we've taken from our competitors, we've got new opportunities that customers, through our performance and quality and delivery, have given us the opportunity to bid and secure new programs. Just running down there, I mean, we have complex ruggedized interconnects out of two of our facilities, Joplin, Missouri, Berryville, Arkansas. Complex circuit card assemblies and some step-up builds from there in our Appleton, Wisconsin and Tulsa, Oklahoma plants. Integrated electronic box builds in Huntsville, Arkansas, and they are some complex units, and we'll touch on that as we move on. Cockpit avionics switches and panels, which you know is our legacy HMI product line out of Carson in California. Lightning protection s ystems out of Huntington Beach, which was the first acquisition under Steve's leadership in 2017. Complex motors and resolvers and custom RF components.
Again, both of those product lines come out of Carson. You know, we've got seven distinct product lines. We also have some sort of adjacent products to that, but they're the key focus for us right now, as we gain traction, certainly in the defense market and waiting for the commercial market to come back to us. Next slide, please. Who are we? If you look at it, we're a leader in highly specialized mission-critical defense electronics for harsh environments. You know, there's a lot of people out there doing interconnects, there's a lot of people doing circuit card assemblies, but, you know, as Steve said, we got out of the business that was more built to print, lower technology, lower cost, where it was all just won on price.
What we look for is, you know, opportunities with customers where the connects are, you know, more complex. The boxes themselves have a lot of integration and test in them. You know, we look into where we compete with a much smaller supply base, and we've been very successful at doing that. You know, what we do isn't easy and that's where a lot of our proprietary processes come in because, you know, we have to build interconnects, we have to build boxes that, you know, have to be fit and forget on aircraft, land vehicles, sea vessels that, you know, see a lot of, a lot of thermal extremes, a lot of vibration, and that's where we really focus.
We have a lower cost, trusted domestic manufacturing footprint, most of our core electronic manufacturing businesses are in the Midwest, where there's a good pool of talent. We can get great people, but we can also have a competitive cost base, when we bid the projects that we do. Long-term and high-growth defense platforms, that's where we've been very successful. If you look at the electronic systems, our backlog growth from 2017 through 2020 has been 55%. Our backlog went from $304,000 to $470,000. That grew at 55%, whereas our revenues have still been healthy growth, 24%, growing from revenues in 2017, $317 million to $393 million in 2020.
In terms of our book-to-bill, we've been very successful on the electronic systems side in, you know, our backlog has outpaced our revenue by almost 2x. We have great success there, which is a testament to the direction we're going in, the leadership that we have, and then also within the Electronic Systems group, we have a dedicated BD team we continue to add talent to, that generates the relationships and the opportunities, you know, with the Tier 1s and the various subprimes that we work with. Sole source proprietary positions. A lot of our positions there are sole source. A lot of them are sole source with proprietary technology and processes, especially within our Engineered Products Group from the Carson and Huntington Beach businesses, but more so on growing in the interconnect business and the box build business too.
We've got seven scalable performance centers. Three have cleared facilities from a military standpoint, so, you know, they are all set and we are, you know, working classified programs there, and they've all got scale for growth. All seven centers today are well positioned for growth in the future. If we look at our end market breakdown, the bottom left pie chart there. You know, 78% in military is based on 2020 revenues. You can see very strong defense play, which is, you know, really, you know, really good for us with what happened in 2020. Yeah, 12% was commercial aerospace, 10% industrial and other. If you look at the customer breakout, that continues. You know, Raytheon continues to be our number one customer.
Northrop Grumman is now our number three customer in the electronic side, 13% of our 2020 revenues. You know, we've got Lockheed Martin, Parker, Viasat and others. We've got a lot of runway for growth. You know, continue to grow our Raytheon business but a lot of runway with the Northrop Grummans, Lockheeds, General Dynamics, and other players in the market that, you know, we're working with right now. In terms of our platform breakdown, 28% in the missiles section, 12% in commercial aerospace. If you look there, the 13% other military fixed wing, most of that is either transport, special missions or early warning systems.
A lot of our fixed wing work goes into, you know, systems that go in for special mission aircraft, especially around the early warning and surveillance. Got a good footprint on the F-35, on the JSF, 8% of our 2020 revenues, and that continues to grow. And 4% in military helicopters, and then we do have a good footprint on F-15 and F/A-18, and that's mainly through our Raytheon business with the family of systems with what was the Raytheon SAS, where we provide the radar boxes for the F-15, F/A-18 platforms, and then all others, the remaining 25%-29%. That's kind of the who we are. And next slide, please. Our key sectors and applications.
This is a busy slide, so I'll try and break it down. Take the far left block first in terms of our missiles. As Steve said, you know, we have a very good presence on the TOW missile, which is more recent following the, you know, the signature of the agreement Steve signed in 2019. That's enabled us to look at, you know, integrated systems where we actually look at our offerings and technology from our structures and our electronic side, combine them together. To TOW missile, that means we ended up making the integrated launch case with the interconnects and harnesses built in. You know, we supply the next level assembly into Raytheon as our customer.
The Tomahawk, we've, you know, been an incumbent on that for many, many years, but our, you know, our share gain has grown and continues to grow. Five of our performance centers are involved in the Tomahawk, and with the Block V update, you know, there's more opportunity for us there, as has been so as that, you know, the Tomahawk gets upgraded and more platforms are built. That's gonna be very healthy in the future from that missile program there. We actually, Steve did attend the Block V handover ceremony in recognition of our contribution to that program. Obviously, we've already mentioned Patriot. Steve mentioned the SM-2, but we also have a lot of content on the SM-3 and SM-6 with our, you know, circuit cards, interconnects, actuation control units.
More recently, again, new wins with Raytheon is we do, you know, we've got involved with wing deploy and controlled actuation system motors out of our Engineered Products Group in Carson. As mentioned with General Atomics on the Reaper and the Predator, you know, they've been great programs for us. General Atomics had a problem back in 2019 with their supply base and getting to rate. They came to us, you know, we could answer their problem in terms of getting up and running very quickly and offering them quality and value at the same time. That's been great for us, and there's a lot more to come there.
On the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program, that's a great program for the Electronic Systems business, from circuit card assemblies to interconnects and box builds. We have a significant ship set content on the F-35 today, and that continues to grow both as the rate grows and share gain because we, again, we continue to open new opportunities there. The F/A-18 fighter is a great example of electronic systems. If you recall my first slide, we had seven distinct product lines. Six of those product lines are actually on the F/A-18. The circuit card assemblies, interconnects, box builds, lightning protection, the HMI switches and panels, RF components. The only thing that's not of our entire electronics portfolio that's not on the F/A-18 is RF motors and resolvers.
Again, that's a growing market for us, and we know we continue to see success there. On the naval side, again, right across the board of our electronic systems, we have a lot of product on the Virginia-class submarine in terms of interconnect, very ruggedized components, have to withstand the extreme pressures, between pressurized and unpressurized bulkheads and such like, and so we're supported by the Virginia class and the Columbia class there. On the ship side, on the DDG-51 series of ships, you know, they've been around for a long time, but they're also there for the future as well.
They've got a lot of new advanced radar and defense systems incorporating new ships coming forward, and we're well-positioned there, and we've already secured some contracts for circuit card assemblies for advanced naval radar systems on that platform as it goes forward, so great. Then, you know, in the top corner there, the AN/BLQ-10, which has been a longstanding successful program for us on the Virginia and Columbia submarines. Again, that's been through various upgrades, so, you know, good content on the naval side. Space and communications. Starting with communications, well, we've got a good footprint with Viasat for modem and server electronic boxes for in-flight entertainment systems on the commercial aircraft fleets across the globe.
Viasat's probably the supplier of choice for airlines today, so there's a lot of activity there, both on new aircraft build and retrofit of existing fleets. Again, a lot more to come there. On the space side, we've got interconnect products for solid fuel boosters, and we'll touch on that on a case study that we'll go onto in the following slide. We do a lot of, again, for communications, lightning protection for IFE radomes, right across the gamut of the supply base there for both Boeing and Airbus aircraft, as well as the large business aviation platforms that have similar systems incorporated. We have resolvers, DC resolvers on the Mars rover or the Mars Perseverance. It's good to see that that's been working in action.
That's used on the articulating arm that's collecting soil samples from Mars as we speak. We've got other satellite high-power RF switch units for both commercial and military satellite applications. Lastly, moving over to the commercial and business aviation side of things, which is more our We do some CCAs out of our legacy electronics business for commercial for customers including Parker. Most of this is the engineered products side of things. We do, you know, the HMI, the cockpit switches and panels that include the engine start switch, in particular for the 737 MAX, and it goes back to all of the legacy programs. We do time delays and other cockpit panels and switches for the commercial aerospace sector. We do lightning protection for nose, fuselage tail.
Lightning protection both on the inside of the aircraft and the outside. This particular business segment has a strong legacy aftermarket. When Steve talks about the franchises growing for aftermarket, you know, we've got a big focus there, in both, not just the commercial side, but the military side as well, on the F/A-18, F-15, F-16 and other such programs. You know, real focus on that, and that brings pricing value to the table. Next slide, please. Raytheon case study. Steve touched on it, but just to add a little bit more color there. You can see, you know, we signed, and we were the first supplier to sign, the cooperation agreement with Raytheon.
We signed it back in July of 2019, between Steve and Eugene Jaramillo. We've achieved a significant amount of success since we did that, as you can see on the right-hand side. These are our revenues. This, just for note, this is kind of the legacy Raytheon business before the merger. This is really what was the Raytheon Missile Systems and what was the Space and Airborne Systems. Space and Airborne Systems is now intelligence and space, and the RMS is now Missiles & Defense. You can see our revenues, you know, have grown over the past few years.
2021's gonna be a great year for us, and that's as a result of an increase in our volume on the share shift on the TOW missile program, other missile programs and the family of systems, radar boxes that we do on with the Space and Airborne Systems part of Raytheon on the F/A-18 and F-15. 2021 will be a great year for us in terms of revenue. You know, you can see the growth there for yourselves. You know, in future years, we anticipate that that will continue to grow. Next slide, please. Electronic Systems share gain and defense, you know. With defense majors, General Atomics has been great. As we said, they came to us with a problem, we had the answers, we stepped up very quickly.
We put the necessary investment in place in both capital equipment and human capital, specifically in our Joplin plant to get this up and running, and it's been a great success. We met our customers' expectations and, you know, more work has come. Northrop Grumman, we've had new wins on the Triton UAV program. Coupled with the General Atomics above, you know, top three defense customers for Ducommun have been driven by significant new product sales as well as share gain and platform growth. Which is a testament to, I think, you know, our performance on programs and the efforts of our BD team and all of the performance centers that support the customers. Aerojet Rocketdyne on the RS-25 engine, again, that was a new win for a propulsion system.
We do a large selection of electronic assemblies and interconnects for that engine. Again, that was a share gain because the prior supplier had some problems with moisture ingress into those interconnect assemblies. We worked with the customer, came up with a solution, and we now have just over 400 discrete Ducommun part numbers on that rocket engine system. That's mainly for the Artemis program that's, you know, gonna be upcoming soon. NASA were actually testing the fourth engine test on May 22nd of this year. That program's moving forward, and we continue to support Aerojet on that program. Then we've got the other opportunities that we're pushing to penetrate the new programs, including the Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent and hypersonics, you know, more to come on that as we have future investor days.
You know, touching back on Steve's comment where we've got 52 defense programs with more than $1 million in net revenues, just to break that down a bit deeper, 37 of those 52 are now over $2 million, and 18 of those 52 are actually over $5 million. You know, a huge improvement on where we were in 2017. Next slide, please. In terms of the highlights for electronic systems, you know, we're a growing-based business. We've got very good relationship with the Tier 1 suppliers. We're winning share gain, we're winning new programs, and they're good programs, and, you know, specifically along the defense line today. Our aftermarket franchise is gaining momentum. We understand the value of the aftermarket now.
We're getting the pricing value, and we're, you know, we're pushing that down through all of our performance centers, for both, you know, domestic and, you know, on the defense side, for both the domestic through the DLA and for foreign military sales. On the commercial side, as Steve mentioned, you know, we changed our distribution channels, we consolidated with one, and that's seen great success since we kicked that off in 2019. We're building scale at all of our performance centers. We now have three of the seven electronic systems performance centers, you know, getting very close to $100 million in annual revenue, and now they're set to exceed that.
We have plans in place to support the growth beyond that, in terms of both physical capacity and, you know, the manning that we need to support that. As I previously said, we're in areas where, you know, we can get good labor, and we can get it cost-effectively. We've got good sole source proprietary positions in these segments, and that's what we continue to focus on, you know, where we can, either with the proprietary processes, or, you know, or having a unique sole source position. As I said, we, you know, we're focusing on the more complex components and the more complex opportunities that bring value to both Ducommun and our customers. You know, I touched on the strong book-to-bill, 50% backlog growth for 2017 to 2020 compared to 24% revenue growth.
I mean, both of those are good. If you look at CAGRs, the revenues are just over 5%, and the backlogs are, you know, around 12. You know, we've been very successful there and that sets us very well for the future. With that, I'd now like to hand over to Jerry Redondo.
Hello, everyone. Appreciate the opportunity to share the highlights of our structures business today. Next slide, please. Key products. As shared, we have a broad array of high- complexity products that are focused on both defense and commercial. The array of products includes engines, fuselage, missile, flight controls, through acquisition, ammunition handling systems, as well as extruded plastics. The key differentiating position that we've had with these products is our ability to produce the very most complex products, repeated basis. We're performing at the highest quality and delivery levels, and also our value engineering. You know, we're working closely with all of our customers on products such as these noted on affordability, which comes from improved designs, innovative processes, and as a result, we're providing greater value to our customers and performance.
The core focus here is on high technology, high- demand products, high complexity. As you can see, we're on engines, fuselage, flight control surfaces, rotary blades, and these combine a mix of processes that include titanium, stretch forming, composites, and thermoplastics. Next slide, please. Who we are. Ducommun is the number one provider of titanium forming end products to our customers. That includes SPF and hot forming. Again, we're the number one provider, the market leader in this space. We're very well positioned in commercial and defense. The narrow- body is the key focus on the commercial. Our defense business is growing exponentially.
We've grown about 40% between 2019 and 2020. Our outlook today is about 20% growth in 2021. We're doing this through six scalable performance centers. We're actually re-establishing our manufacturing operation in Mexico as well. We'll have that up and running by the end of this year, 2021. Next slide, please. Key processes. As shared, we have key focus is titanium, and that's both super plastic and hot forming of detailed parts. The core niche there is the highest complexity. We have a great capability for scale and size of parts as well.
Key value add there, again, is the value engineering. Our customers are continuing to come to us more for that capability. I shared composites, metal bond. This also includes our VersaCore composite technology, which we continue to move forward with. Stretch forming of large fuselage skins. As an example, we have most of the fuselage, entire fuselage on the A220. The extruded thermoplastics on the commercial aero side and interiors. Rotorcraft, ground missiles, defense, together. Metal bond, abrasion strips on the rotorcraft. We have all the tail rotors. Since the inception of the program on Apache, we've been providing the tail rotors. We have a large presence on exhaust ducts, various titanium structural components, door surrounds, bulkheads, again, ammunition handling.
As Steve shared previously, we are a government-approved repair depot, and we repair the main rotor blade and the tail rotor blade for the Apache today. On the missiles, the greatest growth that we've seen here recently has been through our missile cases, and that's a single solution we're able to provide back to our customer, Raytheon, and it includes integrated electronics into the case itself, and that's provided by two of our performance centers, and we've extended that program to be quite really a great program for us. Dorsal fins, titanium dorsal fins, again, the ammunition handling systems.
All of these points here on the missiles and the ground vehicles were greatly enabled through our value engineering and our ability to work with our customers, work on the product design itself, and provide a much greater value, affordability, and a better product for both them and one that was more producible. We have a good presence on the key platforms with business jets. Both superplastic forming, hot forming of titanium, and stretch formed structures. Next slide, please. I shared we are the world leader in titanium. You know, Ducommun carries that, we're the top provider to Tier 1, Tier 2s. We've continued and will continue to make investment in our technology and our capabilities.
Over the past four years, we've invested about $35 million in technology, CapEx, and our capabilities to remain and to continue to grow and extend our market position today. That comes from 40+ years of experience with titanium. We have a long pedigree of knowledge, lessons learned, and we continue to transfer through our workforce and again, further technology, we can extend our position even more. Key for us today, you know, with Airbus, Boeing, Sikorsky, Raytheon, is our ability to take a product in its current state and perform value engineering to determine improvements in that design or revisions in that design that are acceptable, meet form, fit, function, but also provide greater value, greater affordability and producibility.
As you can see, there's a significant growth path, 8% CAGR, through up to 2026. About 25%-30% of that is stated to be around the titanium sheet fabrication market. We have a significantly strong position there. We believe we continue to strengthen that even further, and we're well-positioned to take full advantage of the growth and be the top provider in this space. Next slide, please. Two key customers, two OEMs, Airbus and Boeing. Airbus specifically, our relationship began really about five years ago.
Through the work and the partnership and the collaboration we have really on a daily basis with Airbus, we've grown to become a true trusted partner and a scale provider of, again, the complex titanium structures that are used across the airframe and the nacelles. We're very proud to say that we've been 100% on time to Airbus over the past two years, that will be sustained going forward. That puts us in a position of providing the top technology, top products of complexity, as well as performance to ensure parts are there when the customer needs them. Our IP technology again is proven. We continue to work to develop that even further. With that, we're a key provider to Airbus in all the narrow body and wide body platforms.
For Boeing, we've been with Boeing, long legacy since 1965. We provide SPF hot forming and metal bond composite solutions to support airframe nacelles, in-flight control services on all the leading platforms, both commercial and on defense, the Apache and the F/A-18 programs. As shared, we're the sole provider of the tail rotors for Apache. We've done that since the beginning of the program, and we're also a government repair depot for both the tail and main rotor blades. With that, you know, we were included and awarded, and we're a participant in the premier bidding program with Boeing, and so we're proud of that. We look forward to opportunities in front of us that will come from our participation there. Next slide, please.
In defense, our defense growth, it's been quite a good story for us since 2016 up through 2020. We've more than doubled our revenue. We've gone from $52 million to $114 million. Again, for 2021, we have a very strong trajectory to add another 20% over the course of this year. Growth drivers, again, titanium components, the complexity, the SPF, the HF, the value engineering that goes with that, and then assemblies for rotorcraft, composite and metal bond, and as well as our ammunition handling systems. It's just recognition of the team's performance and the value provided back to our customer. An example, Sikorsky, we received the Black Hawk Supplier of the Year award for our Coxsackie, N.Y. operation.
We're quite proud of that. That performance, the innovation, the value engineering, has resulted in a significant scale for us to participate in initial FARA program, FARA awards, where we're doing value engineering and prototyping. Next slide, please. In summary, the highlights. We're ensuring rate readiness to execute growth and growth with defense, commercial, targeted additionally with share gain over the course of the rate rebound. We continue to focus on exemplary 100% on-time delivery. We do that to serve and support our customers to be the best choice, but we also need and want to outperform our competitors and increase our market share. Expanding our number one titanium market position, again, doing that through leveraging our titanium total value proposition, differentiating performance, really focused around the HF and SPF. Growth in defense.
Again, significant growth targeted, using the TOW missile case as a blueprint of success, where we went in and there was a product in place at the time. We performed extensive value engineering with our customer, and we did that very quickly, as well as setting up an extensive line along with the capital and the people to produce TOW missile cases at rate successfully. It's a good model and we continue to focus on replicating that. For VersaCore, we're in a strong position here. We'll be introducing a product late in the year into production, and we continue to seek additional applications where affordability and product performance are a key focus.
We feel we have a real niche here and an opportunity to continue to grow VersaCore, and we're very excited about that. Those are highlights of our structures business. Again, appreciate the audience. With that, I'll introduce Suman Mookerji.
Thank you, Jerry. Good morning and good afternoon, everyone. I'm Suman Mookerji. I'm the Vice President of Strategy, Acquisitions, and Integration at Ducommun. As Steve mentioned earlier, M&A is an important component of our growth plan. I would like to take you through our strategy for acquisitions in some more detail. I would also like to highlight our track record to date, as well as our methodology to manage post-acquisition integration to ensure that we are executing on our plans for the deal and deriving maximum value. To start with, our vision is to build a portfolio of industry-leading niche businesses that set themselves apart from the competition with their unique process capabilities or with the unique intellectual property in the design of their products. Products that lead in innovation and continuously exceed customer expectations.
In addition, we look to identify businesses where we, as Ducommun, can make a difference and create an inflection point in the EBITDA trajectory of the business. To this effect, we look to acquire businesses that meet this profile, then with our programmatic integration approach, we drive on our profit expansion plan. Next page, please. Next page. We have acquired three businesses since my joining the company. Through the end of 2020, all three of them are ahead of the cumulative EBITDA projections we had set for them in our deal model. Each one of them had unique attributes that distinguished them from their competition, created barriers to entry, and presented an opportunity for Ducommun to add value.
Our first acquisition, which Dave Wilmot also talked about, Lightning Diversion Systems, is a world leader in the design and manufacture of lightning diversion systems, used to protect radomes on military and commercial aircraft from lightning strike, ensuring that the underlying electronics remain protected and can continue to operate even after such a lightning strike event. With the continuing increase in the need for connectivity on both commercial and military aircraft, the need for such components and systems has been growing and will continue to grow for the foreseeable future. The business also, as Dave mentioned, has a significant aftermarket as the radomes are periodically refurbished and the underlying electronics are upgraded. Our second acquisition was that of Certified Thermoplastics, which is amongst a handful of companies globally that are capable of producing aerospace-grade extruded thermoplastics for use inside commercial aircraft.
These extrusions are made with complex resins that meet aerospace standards, as a result, are very difficult to manufacture. With the continued focus on lightweighting aircraft, we expect the market for such thermoplastics to continue to grow. Through our investment in capacity and in sales and marketing, we expect to maintain the growth momentum in this business. Our third acquisition was Nobles Worldwide, which is the world leader in the design and manufacture of ammunition chutes. Almost the entire fleet of the U.S. fixed-wing fighter and attack aircraft use these ammunition chutes. In addition, their product is used on leading rotorcraft platforms. In the past few years, they have also been expanding their position in the ground vehicle segment. Their ammunition chutes are known for being best in class in the world.
They are capable of handling the toughest environments and designed to meet the most demanding specifications around size and weight. Each chute is custom-designed to fit and operate in the contours of the available space within an aircraft or ground vehicle, which, as you know, it can be very limited. All this while still functioning flawlessly and without jamming. Since the acquisition, we have been able to continue to grow this business and improve the operations to drive higher profitability. Next page. Our success with these acquisitions is driven in part by our programmatic approach to integration. Each deal is based on a strategy to drive growth in revenue and profitability. This strategy is broken down into actionable plans with milestones that are tracked regularly to drive execution and accountability. This programmatic approach drives results, and ensures things don't slip through the cracks.
We use this approach to drive both revenue and cost synergy plans for each deal, as well as all the functional integration, which includes our financial processes and our legal compliance requirements. We work hard to strike a balance between preserving the culture that has made a business successful while also incorporating the Ducommun values. Our team has had extensive experience in our prior lives at executing large acquisitions and successfully integrating them. We are able to bring this experience to work at Ducommun. Next page. Looking forward, we are optimistic about our ability to close on acquisitions. We have seen a resurgence in deal activity since last fall, but especially in the past several weeks, we have seen a further uptick in deal activity. More sellers are taking the step forward to sell for various reasons. Most of the activity is still focused on the defense side.
Our pipeline is looking good, and we expect to be able to resume our cadence of one or more transactions every year. M&A is an important part of Steve's Vision 2025, and it will play a more significant role going forward in our business. With that, I would like to pass it on to Chris Wampler.
Thanks, Suman. We'll jump into the financial outlook. If we can go to the next slide. Let's start with total shareholder return, and this is looking out over the last three-year period. You know, the key here is you can certainly see the dark blue line, which is Ducommun performance against the benchmarks with the Russell, our peer group, the Dow, the New York Stock Exchange composite. We're certainly proud of our performance. The fact that over the three-year period between 2018 and 2020, you know, we were in the 86th percentile, you know, ranking 235 out of 2,000 companies in the Russell 2000 Index during that stretch.
That really aligns up well with, you know, sort of the energy that came about when Steve joined in 2017 and the path that we were on from there. Next slide. In the following slides, you know, we'll basically lay out and demonstrate how we've come such a long way here in the last few years. When you look at this slide here and you look at the market capitalization, enterprise value and some of the financial metrics, and you look at the type of change that has happened, you can see where, you know, a 121% increase in market cap, 98% in enterprise value, along with the revenues. The revenue and adjusted EBITDA combination, only a 14% increase in revenues.
Based on, you know, a lot of the commentary you've heard so far, certainly a step back in 2020 with the, with the situations. Yet yielding a 58% increase in adjusted EBITDA percentage. About a 400 basis-point improvement. You know, with that, you know, again, Steve arrived in January of 17, you know, brought a renewed energy to the group. Some great work that's happened, the results really are significant value creation, and that's what you see highlighted here on this slide. Let's go to the next slide. Just to baseline some of the historical financial data. If you look at the top line, as I mentioned, you know, on a nice growth trajectory from 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019.
Then certainly the MAX situation combined with all of the commercial aerospace impacts of the pandemic, you know, bringing us back to the $629 million. Nice growth trajectory through 2019. Now we're sort of reset and ready to go again there. On the adjusted EBITDA, again, even with the step back there, able to demonstrate, you know, the continued margin expansion on the EBITDA percentage as we went from 10% up toward 14%. Then on the debt, you can see the debt and the leverage that essentially that journey includes the three acquisitions that Suman talked about in 2017 with LDS, bumping the debt up and then paying some down, and then CTP in 2018 and Nobles in 2019.
Leaving us at the end of 2020 with a net debt leverage ratio of 3.0. Next slide. If we look at the segments, you can see, basically this will help. You know, what sets the table for this is, again, going back to sort of the inflection point in the 2016 timeframe, and that's why we have those, you know, on there. There were some things headed from a top-line perspective, if we look at electronic revenue as well as structure revenue, where we were taking a step back and sort of figuring out where the business was headed. Then to turn that around and to get on the trajectory that we've been on, you know, the last four years, has been good work.
When you look at Electronics, which is mainly defense business, huge focus on the BD and how we went about, you know, interfacing and revving up the business with other customers beyond Raytheon. Certainly, Raytheon being, you know, the key one in that sector and others now, you know, sort of ramping up as well. With, you know, with the work that we have going on on the defense side. That's very helpful there. What does that yield? Well, if you look now at the adjusted EBITDA, you know, you can see that path as well, in terms of not just dollars, but also, you know, strong performance on the EBITDA margins.
Structural side, again, mainly a commercial business, and you can see there, nice trajectory on the revenue, 2017, 2018, 2019. There's a step back certainly in 2020. Yet again, on the EBITDA percentage, being able to keep a strong performance there has been critical for us. Next slide. A few other metrics on the highlight here, just as we walk through the margin progression. We talk on a lot of our calls about our margin expansion journey, and you'll see that highlighted here. As we came through with sort of a systematic 19%-22% range, as we build up the margin, expanded margins from 2017-2020.
Then on the adjusted EBITDA percentage, the same thing, starting at 10%, working its way up to 14%. Then on the adjusted operating income, starting at 5% and working up to 8%. You know, when you think about the drivers of that, you know, what helped us get there, certainly, improved product mix, and heavily in 2020, certainly leaning on the diversification of the business to keep things, to keep the performance where we, where we were able to have it. The pricing strategy, the focus on value. When you think about our performance, our overall better operating performance, that includes the performance center, focused factory approach, and really having that line of sight into what's happening at each of the performance centers.
Pay- for- performance culture, which has been embraced, and it includes all DCO employees. The cost reductions and investment decisions, along with the reduced layers of management, certainly have yielded cost savings. There's less bureaucracy and more trust in which equates to more speed. That's what has really helped been the driver of getting those improved performance metrics. Next slide. You know, this is a key part of the story, especially when you think about what we did in 2020, you look at this last three to four years. I mentioned the defense business, you look at this backlog, we ended 2020 with an all-time record on defense backlog.
Driven, you know, certainly by Raytheon, along with progress with Northrop and Lockheed, as along with others. That's really been very helpful, as again, overall backlog on a nice trajectory through 2019. Certainly, the backlog in 2020 with the commercial aerospace impacts, having an impact, and the defense work helping offset that and leading us to where we're at there as we came into 2021. Next slide. You know, all that backdrop sort of takes us to back to where Steve was at with the Vision 2025.
As he highlighted, you know, our plan is, we expect to be growing to $850 million- $880 million of revenue as we go from now to the point in Vision 2025. As a point of reference, our all-time high revenue is $742 million. You know, we expect on that journey that we will see that number and pass it by here during the early part of that journey. As we do that, you know, what else do we expect? We expect to expand EBITDA margins. As you can see, going from 14% up towards 18%, which is about a 350 to 450 basis- point improvement.
You can also see we're looking to expand the OI margins from 8% up toward 12%, which is, you know, it's a 50% increase over the 8% baseline. You know, certainly that's what we're looking to do and, you know, how are we gonna get there, and why is that gonna happen? Couple things. You know, one is just the scale from the commercial aerospace recovery and the defense growth that has been, you know, discussed by everybody on the meeting so far. The strategic acquisitions that Suman went through, the pricing strategy, and the focus on value, and the continued evolution of our approach on the cost reductions and the investment decisions.
That's what's gonna help us, you know, thrive to that place. Next slide. Just as we, you know, we think about putting a bow on what we're expecting with Vision 2025, we do expect the net revenues to grow at 7%-8% CAGR. Certainly, defense momentum and commercial recovery baked in there. Expand margins 350 to 450 basis points, leveraging available scale across the performance centers, the value-added pricing, cost reductions. Certainly, we're gonna continue to invest. And 2020 was a tough year. I mean, everybody had to, I think, grind out what we needed to do to get through 2020.
As you look forward and think about the long term, long-term performance of the business and creating value, there's investments that need to happen in terms of the acquisitions, in terms of a lot of cybersecurity requirements, along with other technology to keep us, you know, in the market positions that we wanna be. That, along with just sort of the sustaining and nominal, you know, growth, capital, will give us about a 2.5% of revenue run rate. At the end of the day, we'll do all that, expand the margins, and generate more than 100% of net income to free cash flow. With that, I'll go back to Steve for closing remarks.
Okay. Thank you very much. Appreciate it, Chris, and thanks to the whole team. Thank you for everybody joining us today and hanging in there. I know it's a lot of material. It's posted on our website, so please feel free to get all the information there. Let's go to the next slide. As mentioned, I think it's a good time, as we come out of this terrible situation, it's a good time to kind of relook at Ducommun. I put these in here just because, I think it's, you know, I think it's a good opportunity for all of us to kind of see the next few years and to look at some of the highlights for investors.
Again, I won't go through all these, but you can see them all. I think we hit on them properly. We see a lot of value creation through 2025, like I mentioned. Let's go to the next slide. Just to wrap it up here, where we are, we feel good about these numbers. Again, you know, we will update them as we go forward. You know, we're very, you know, confident that we've got many good years ahead, a lot of it organic. Also, as Suman mentioned, we feel great about our M&A function and what we're doing there.
We're looking forward to many great years for the company, for our customers, and obviously for our shareholders. We'll close and go to Q&A.
All right. Hello, my name is Raj Tata. I will be serving as your moderator for today's question- and- answer session. First question we have is for Mr. Oswald. Where do you see the risk in your portfolio in the 2023/2025 period relative to the flat to down defense budget?
Okay. Well, thank you for that question. You know, obviously, there's concerns about the budget. You know, from a Ducommun perspective, we have so many things that are new to the company. I mean, our UAV business is going from, like, 0 to 100. You know, we have so much activity now in UAVs, where two years ago we had very little. You know? I feel great about that. I feel great about our structures business is driving defense. Also, we won't go too far into it, you know, there is offloading going on with primes.
You know, because of our service levels, because of the value we add, because of our U.S. footprint, we're seeing great opportunities there. I understand the nervousness about the budget. But as far as Ducommun for the next three or four years, even if we have some challenges in defense budget with some programs, we feel great about everything else that's gonna augment it. You know, this half a billion, we feel very confident, I feel very confident about.
Thank you. As a follow-up, how does the M&A pipeline look, and are you more optimistic about future activity in either commercial or defense markets?
Yeah, I'll take that again. Suman mentioned it. You know, we're obviously, we're optimistic about both. We certainly, I think, can lean more into the defense market. You know, we look at commercial opportunities, and we will continue to do that. We see a lot of activity in defense, where we can, like a Nobles, we can buy a worldwide leader with configuration control and aftermarket. We're much more interested in that as far as our M&A strategy. We also look at commercial too, where there's an opportunity, especially if there's some proprietary product in some type of structure application. We lean more towards defense, and we will continue to do that.
Yes. Thank you. Maybe one for Mr. Wampler. How does the 2025 approximately 12% adjusted operating margin break out by Structures and Electronics? What are the assumptions in each segment?
Thanks, Raj. While not providing specific guidance on at the segment level on the margins or on the operating income margins, I would say this, that, you know, both are expected to contribute significantly. You know, they're both in different places at the moment, but if you look at where, you know, we talk about them a lot in terms of a range, a couple of percentage point range. When you look at where structures was, back in the 2019 timeframe, we certainly would anticipate, you know, that that's getting back there as we move through this part of the process is part of the formula. Then with also with electronics, you know, we're at a good jump off point with where we've been in 2020 with them.
Both will, you know, get the benefit of scale as we go through here. It depends a little bit too on where the acquisitions, you know, where do they do land and, you know, where they help out as well. The answer really is that, you know, both of them would be expected to be, you know, contributing significantly versus, you know, what you have seen in the last couple of years.
Thank you. Could you elaborate on the revenue target in 2025 of $865 million at the midpoint? The company was at $720 million pre-pandemic, so this bogey seems light, especially with the MAX recovering to 40+ a month or more possibly by then.
Thanks, Raj. I'll take that as well. I would say, you know, thanks for the question. You know, we certainly are trying to be careful in terms of, you know, what we, how quickly we assume things are going to, you know, come back. You know, this on just the normal business, you know, major items with the Max still coming through all approvals worldwide, including China, as well as how that does end up translating through back to the supply chain to us with all the production, along with the rest of the commercial aero recovery. That is a key, you know, factor that has a lot of impact here.
As well, just on the defense side, you know, I think being careful over, you know, where we're at in terms of the programs, and what the budget impacts may mean. Again, we don't have. Our defense programs are very, you know, one of our benefits there is we don't have, you know, huge singular programs that drive a lot of the risk, you know, and/or the reward. We have a lot of programs. You know, we're looking to continue, you know, progressing there, but at the same time, you know, just trying to be a little careful on what we have out there.
Hey, Raj, let me also make a few remarks on that. On the commercial aerospace, look, we agree that it is conservative, you know, certainly one of the big questions we have is China. As everybody knows, China has not approved the MAX. Last time I checked that their domestic flight activity is like 100%, all their MAXs are on the ground. With our geopolitical situation and everything else, we'll have to see. We certainly wish for great things for Dave Calhoun and Boeing, and we're gonna be right next to them as far as making things happen. You know, we like to see where the next six months goes.
As I mentioned in my opening remarks and when I first talked about this Vision 2025, is, we're gonna update it yearly. We certainly, I hope, and I'm planning on hoping to have a better number out there. I think it's appropriate that, we're gonna, take our time a bit, come back to everybody on the phone with, maybe a new outlook, we hope, and a higher one, next year.
Similarly, are we seeing or anticipating any defense budget changes that will have a material effect, positive or negative, on your business?
Yeah, let me handle that. I think, you know, look, we're in a competition, a global competition with China and probably less to a degree, Russia. There's gonna be a competition. Unfortunately, it's gonna be decades, it's not gonna be three years. I understand, again, the nervousness around the defense budget. I'm fairly close to certain aspects of the government and defense conversations. You know, we are gonna see some things here and there. From a Ducommun perspective, again, I'm very optimistic about the next three or four years.
We not only are on great programs, which I think will continue, and even if they're a bit flattish, we have many, many other programs that are coming in over the next few years, which are gonna be, you know, tens of millions of dollars of revenue in UAVs and other things that, you know, we're still working on, but we're highly confident are gonna come through. Again, I understand about the question and the concerns, but from a Ducommun perspective and, you know, where we are, we think $500+ million is a great number, and it's very, very achievable from my perspective and the team's perspective.
Thank you. Switching gears a little bit, help us understand the M&A aspirations. $75 million cumulative revenue through 2025 seems a little conservative given more qualitative comments around significantly increasing resources for M&A since you joined, since Steve joined. Is the deal pipeline progressing slower than expected, or are there underappreciated considerations to think about that may be governing the pace and magnitude of M&A?
Yeah, Raj, Chris, I'll take that. You know, it's a placeholder, okay? It's tough for us sometimes because you know that you know, acquisitions are, first of all, very hard, but they're also opportunistic. I would just tell everybody on the phone that certainly we have higher aspirations, but we did put a placeholder in there for now. As I've mentioned, as we go through the years, we'll update that. We're certainly, you know, we're coming out of a pandemic and coming out of a tough year, so we're gonna have to really get things going this year, and I think we will. I think there's great things ahead in 2022 and 2023. We'll have more borrowing power.
We'll have, you know, we certainly have the team in place. I mean, we have folks that are working on deals that worked on $2 billion deals at UTC and other things. Everybody should take heart that, you know, we know what we're doing. We bought three companies that are all, you know, just fantastic for us, really accelerated margins and helped us get into new customers. You know, we're thrilled with what we're doing. Obviously, last year was a tough year for everybody, there was no action. We're working on stuff now. Again, I would just more take this as a placeholder. We certainly wanna, you know, walk before we run on certain things, and that's what we're doing. We're very optimistic.
You know, we have the team to make it happen. That's the first thing, and that's the most important thing. We can worry about other things as we go forward. We're very, how can I say? Very interested in M&A, again, more to come on that. I'll leave it there.
As a follow-up, how does the $75 million M&A placeholder factor into the $850 million-$880 million revenue level targeted for 2025?
Well, it's in there. You know, it's part of the plan. Certainly, again, we felt like I know some companies might not put in M&A and just put in the organic, okay, fine. For a company our size and some of the, you know, some of our aspirations, we felt we should put in a placeholder, and that's what it is. Could it be higher than that? Absolutely. That's what we're driving towards. You know, at this point in 2021, May 26, we felt like, okay, let's just put this in there for now. We certainly have, again, higher aspirations, and, you know, we feel very good, and we'll be continuing to update as we go forward.
Thank you. Final question for Mr. Wampler. Can you share any goals you have regarding working capital intensity or any modeling assumptions for what level of working capital investment might be appropriate for the levels of multi-year organic growth you're anticipating?
Thanks, Raj. Yeah, I think it's an interesting situation. Steve mentioned this sort of as we sit here, May 26, 2021. Our working capital amount investment right now is certainly higher than we would like historically or that we would have historically for a lot of reasons. mainly being certainly the very unusual flow of the supply chain and the transition into the pandemic, and then as we work through it. With that being said, I mean, we're working off of a working capital percent of sales in the low 40% as we exited the year.
Certainly, you know, acquisitions aside, we would like to work that down through this Vision 2025 period, you know, back into where it was historically, which certainly is in the upper 20s, in the mid-upper 20s. In doing that, you know, that also encompasses us being able to take on, you know, acquisitions and do other things to invest, but still get back toward a more normalized rate. You know, over the course of this Vision 2025, I think you're gonna see just a steady improvement with where we're at from a working capital percent of sales.
Also then just from a capital structure nature, you know, certainly have the ability to spend the money where we need to help support the strategy.
Thank you. With that, I will then turn it back over to Mr. Oswald for some final comments.
Raj, thank you. We're just almost an hour and 25 minutes. I thank everybody again for hanging in there. I know it's a lot of information. I've just felt it was important that, you know, with our situation now coming out of the pandemic, that, you know, we went fairly deep on information for all our investors. We feel great about the next few years. I want to do say that as we move forward here. We'll certainly be back to update, you know, everybody as we go forward on this Vision 2025. I know there's a lot of questions on defense. We're very confident about that. We've got the team, we've got the executives.
I think we came out of 2020 certainly the best possible way we could, and that's due to our leadership and all our employees. I just want to thank them as we finish and obviously thank our shareholders for supporting us through a very difficult time. I think a lot of good things ahead. I'll leave it there. Again, wish you a good day and a safe one.