Live here. Okay. Just going to wait for the clock to start counting down. All right. Here we go. Good morning, everybody. I am Jason Gursky, Citigroup's aerospace and defense analyst. I want to be the first to say thank you all for attending, particularly those in the room at 7:10 A.M. We didn't anticipate, I think, as we set this all up, for there to be as much demand as there was and ended up having to create a 7:10 slot. So this was not by original design, but I certainly appreciate everybody turning up. And most importantly, I really appreciate Chris Kastner from Huntington Ingalls joining us and being willing and able to do this this early in the morning. Chris, I think I want to turn it over to you first and Safe Harbor is that right?
Yeah, normal Safe Harbor rules apply. It's not that early. As soon as my shift goes, they're probably working on their second shift right now. So they look pretty good, Gabe's here, and yeah, banking and investor relations.
Fair enough. I'm in the West Coast, so this is a little early. Yeah, yeah. But anyway, let me just kick it off with a few big picture questions to kind of get your take on the state of the world. Maybe starting with the presidential transition here over the last several weeks, as we're all aware. Maybe talk a little bit about how this one has been different than what you have experienced in the past, and talk a little bit about what the company might be doing differently as a result of that.
Yeah, interesting. We don't have a Secretary of the Navy yet. It hasn't gone through confirmation, and so it's an acting sort of role there, which means they're keeping the chair warm, and they're not making big decisions, just getting stuff done, and the next level down really hasn't been filled either, so for our Navy work, we're fortunate that the uniformed Navy is executing on their current staff, but a lot of strategic decisions aren't really being addressed or made. I will say in the administration, things are moving a lot faster. The speed in which things are being addressed from the administration is much faster than we've seen previously. You need to be agile. You need to be accessible. You have the phone calls from people, and I'll just tell you this. When you hear the phone calls from people, you never expect it, right?
As the CEO of an A&D company, you need to be ready to respond and to engage. So everything is moving a lot faster in the administration. And then we just need to fill out the leadership within the Pentagon in the Navy so those kind of large strategic decisions can be addressed.
Okay. So when you say things are moving faster, but the seats aren't filled, so are there decisions being made today that you think are going to impact the longer term, or are we waiting for all those seats to get filled?
No, I think we need to wait for those specific issues that are being addressed at very senior levels. And you referenced one of your questions about the SARs. That's being discussed at very senior levels within the administration. But I think the strategic Navy actions, they're kind of waiting for the new team to get put in place to execute those.
Okay. Great. Maybe just as a quick aside, have you heard anything about the timing of the fiscal 26 budget? Just kind of curious.
No, just no. We're in the same place you are. The timing of when 26 happens and what it's going to look like. I know there's a significant amount of iterations on budgets being done for 26, plus 10%, minus 10%, stuff like that. So the machine is working. There's just not a lot of direction on when it's going to come out.
Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Great. Let's see here. You mentioned SARs, and I do have a question I wanted to ask you about kind of industrial-based costs and the things that the industrial base might be able to do here independent of government action to help drive costs lower, right? This seems to be an administration that's very focused on cost. And I'm just wondering, particularly in light of what happened early in the last decade, where the industry seemed to get ahead of a lot of costs as we wound down the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. I'm wondering if there isn't a similar exercise or an opportunity here, recognizing, of course, we've gone through this big period of inflation, but are there things that the industrial base can and should be doing today and bring it down to HII from your perspective?
Yeah, so we're very focused on throughput. I said on earnings call, we're going to increase throughput 20% this year versus last year. And the most important thing we can do to control cost is meet our schedules. Because when you have 2,000-3,000 people on a ship, if you make schedule, there's just immediate cost returns related to that. So our specific story is throughput. We have some cost control measures as well, which are just the normal stuff you work on from an efficiency standpoint. But I think the real cost measures are going to play out over the next one to two to three years relative to AI. I think it's real.
I think AI technology being implemented in defense companies, not really in touch labor, but in support labor, in how you do engineering, how you do planning, how you do scheduling, how you do quality, all of that is going to be impacted by AI. It's just faster than humans are. I've got really great people that work in planning and scheduling and engineering where they take the burden of the boring kind of rote work that they do, and we're going to lead them up to do the kind of complicated stuff they should be doing. I think AI is actually going to impact shipbuilding significantly. We've got five or six pilots engaged both in Newport News and in Ingalls evaluating how it works. I think there's going to be returns there.
You think the biggest impact will be on schedule, do you think?
I think it's cost, efficiency, and schedule. I think you're going to be able to be more efficient in managing engineering and planners and quality people you have engaged. So it'll help schedule. It'll help cost on the specific programs. It'll help throughput.
Right. So better productivity among your labor force where you need fewer heads, that kind of the idea?
Fewer heads across the entire spectrum of planning, engineering, labor. Yes.
Okay. And you said you've got five pilots going now. How long are those pilots going to last? And when do you start to sort this out?
It would be throughout the year. We'll start to get returns on some of them. Quality is already. We have some really interesting results. You think about a shipyard, there's a lot of quality that's done by hand and on pieces of paper. So we digitized all of that, put it in an AI model, evaluate the root causes of a lot of the defects, and you can analyze where you're having issues and you can address them. So I think there's real opportunity. I think the Navy sees it as well, and there'll be supplemental funding to help us with that.
Right. And these are AI models that you're purchasing off the shelf because developing?
Off the shelf. We have very good partners. We have AWS involved that's also co-investing in these projects and other partners that we're evaluating to help us take the next step.
Okay. So we'll get updates from you on that, I guess, over the next 12-18 months. Are there any other big areas of either cost or performance that you guys are focused on?
It's throughput, right? We acquired W International down in South Carolina. That's 500 people, big shipbuilders that came into the company that'll help us improve within aircraft carriers and submarines right away. We're actually expanding the industrial base right now. It's not often understood that the shipbuilding industrial base is expanding and kind of rebuilding itself under our very noses, right? It's happening. We're expanding people that can build units, that can build up units. And what happens when shipbuilding expands, this happens, right? You get different new partners coming into the industry, and the shipyards become the integrate and delivery and test part. And then when it contracts, you start to bring everything back in. And maybe not the most efficient way to do business. You see that in the Korean yards when they do commercial shipbuilding, right? But a lot of that is outsourced.
They do the integrated delivery test at the end. That's happening right now across the industrial base and shipbuilding. It's just expansion of the companies that can actually develop above it.
Can you provide us a little bit of context? I have 500 employees, which you just acquired. What's the overall headcount of the company? How significant is this from your perspective?
Speaking about a million hours, it's a million hours, which could be 5%. I don't want to quote between 5% and 10% in one of our shipyards. Right? So it's significant. It's significant.
Yeah. Okay. Great. Maybe stepping back just for a minute and go to the DOGE question, I'd love to get your take on a couple of things. First and foremost, what kinds of recommendations would you, if you had the ear of Elon Musk and those that are running DOGE, what kinds of recommendations would you give? Then I'd love to get comment from you as well from some news over the weekend suggesting that President Trump is going to get together with the leaders of Russia and China and negotiate a halving or a 50% reduction in our defense spending going forward.
That's a harder question. The DOGE question, I think simplifying the Pentagon, everyone would be in favor of. Every person in my position, every CEO can recognize going into a Pentagon meeting and seeing a lot of chairs around the table with people in them that you're not sure what their job is. So simplifying the oversight of the Pentagon, I think, is something that would be positive. I think that's the initial focus. That's what I think their initial focus will be. They'll look at programs as well. I'm fortunate that our programs are well supported. And you think about the Pacific, I'm very comfortable with our programs. It really is just the efficiency of the Pentagon, I think, is really going to be looked at.
So that's fewer layers of management and bureaucracy inside the.
Fewer layers, different layers, metrics created for who knows what that you're being tasked to do, stuff like that.
Okay. What about some of your other than reducing bureaucracy? Are there any other recommendations you might have?
That relates to everything. It relates to programs being managed and oversight on programs. It relates to acquisition and how we do acquisition, how quickly acquisition happens, how quickly you can resolve issues that are more strategic in nature, all of that. I think they're going to take a hard look at it.
Okay. So just having better access to the decision-makers earlier on in the process.
I think there's going to be, you're going to find out who's empowered to make that decision very quickly, but right now, it's not really sure on some issues where an issue has to go to get approved.
Moving on to the question about having defense spending, if that were to come to pass, how does that get recognized from your perspective?
I don't know. I would love peace in the world. I'm all for a world peace. I think we all would be. I think the environment, it's not really realistic to assume that's going to happen. I know our programs are very well supported by the administration and shipbuilding budgets for shipbuilding are only going to increase and the demand's only going to increase, and the technologies we're working on, the Mission Technologies, the demand for those are only increasing, as you can see from our growth rate, Mission Technologies. So I don't see it unless peace breaks out somewhere.
Yeah. Okay. Well, speaking about the demand for your product, let me shift there really quickly and have you kind of walk us around the world. So we've got an administration that seemingly wants to de-emphasize our, I don't want to say commitment to Europe, but it's not as important to us as a country anymore, apparently. Over the weekend, we learned that. We are instead going to go focus on the Indo-Pacific and the homeland. So just talk a little bit about the mission sense either in Mission Technologies or in the shipyards that are going to support Europe today. So we kind of get an understanding of what might potentially get de-emphasized.
Then talk to us a little bit about some of the, and this is probably more Mission Technologies, but what you're doing to help secure the homeland, right, to speak, and then what's going on in the Asia-Pacific.
Yeah. So Europe really don't have a lot of exposure to Europe. We have some mission technology contracts where we're supporting some of the services in Europe for ISR missions, stuff like that. I don't know if it's going to be significantly impacted. I would doubt it. But we have some unmanned undersea technology that's deployed into Europe as well, which I think will continue. Specifically, obviously, shipbuilding in China, that's not only a submarine and aircraft carrier and amphib and destroyer play. The demand couldn't be greater for our products there. But it's also the kind of the technology play with Mission Technologies and integrated platforms and products and data we call Fight Tonight, which is what you deploy right now to help me in the Indo-Pacific.
That's been a benefit of Mission Technologies in the portfolio because we could bundle some of our products, get access, and develop in actual demonstrations in the Pacific some of the tools that we're developing. So that's not going to back up for the homeland. It's obviously mostly Mission Technologies, electronic warfare type of stuff. You mentioned Iron Dome. People don't think about us as a directed energy business, but we absolutely have a directed energy capability with world-class partners that we're working on contracts with kind of restricted customers to do that. And there's a lot of work to do to get that kind of ready for prime time. I don't think it's ready yet. But we have different Mission Technologies, cyber capability that we deploy within our Mission Technologies organization of a world-class.
We compete with all the kind of tech organizations that you referenced in some of your questions. So yeah, we do have a point for securing the homeland. It's not really shipbuilding other than the NSC, which we've delivered. So we expect that to be just fine in our Mission Technologies organization.
Right. You did a good job committing to memory some of the questions that I wrote ahead of this study. Maybe we just stick on the homeland for a minute and talk a little bit more about Iron Dome. But maybe first, do we have enough National Security Cutters if we're really going to be securing the homeland? Is there opportunity there for more of those sometime?
We would love to build more National Security Cutters. The program has stopped, and they're working on the OPCs, which is almost as large as a National Security Cutter. We'd love to build more. I'm not sure that there's an appetite for that. Right.
Okay. Sure. But let's go back to Iron Dome for a minute. And just maybe walk us from your perspective through the, I don't know, two, three, four key technologies that are going to be needed. Obviously, there's sensors and effectors, but what else is in and around the Iron Dome that we need any key unlocks here in order to recognize something like that?
I think the largest unlock for me is power and SMRs, right? The best power source for Iron Dome for us, the United States, is not a small area, right? There's a significant presence that would be required throughout the region, all the regions of the United States, but it's SMRs. If you can, that will enable from a power source the balance of the technologies to be implemented. For me, it's SMRs, and they're very close. We just have to build some. I believe that it's going to take the government to step in to actually take the risk to make the investment to build some SMRs. Now, there's some tech, obviously some tech companies that are potentially building with data centers. We'll see if those actually happen.
People are worried about the cost of developing a nuclear project, even though an SMR obviously would be less than AP1000, the way everything else did with the cost overruns down in Georgia. SMRs will unlock the ability to execute that technology for Iron Dome. It'll solve one of the biggest issues.
Okay. And from your perspective, do we need an Iron Dome? What's the threat?
I'm not a technologist. You see the success over in Israel of the Iron Dome. That's a fabulous technology. I think it ultimately gets there. I think it would be great to have it, but I think it's a ways away.
Yeah.
Directed energy is absolutely improving, and it's going to be more broadly utilized within the military, and Iron Dome is a next step beyond that.
Yeah. Right. So let's throw the ecosystem question at you now, but I want to maybe have you kind of bring into this question as well, the kind of drone warfare as well. Because a lot of these companies that are involved, so we've got some evolving companies out there, defense tech companies that are focused on drones and other technologies. I think they lead with drones today. So I guess the question is two-part. How do you see this new ecosystem and new drone warfare? And then you guys are obviously going to, I think, be involved in countermeasures to help protect the assets that you're still there. So the first question is, what's your take on this new ecosystem that is developing? How are you viewing these new companies that are competition partners?
And then maybe kind of wrap it up by talking about the utility of drones going forward and some of the countermeasures and whether these things will actually be all that effective given these countermeasures you're developing.
So I think these companies are very important. I think it's very positive. I think they need to stay in the industry because it's not the drones, it's the software that's controlling the drones is what's important. There are challenges still. You got to get them there, right? They need to be survivable so they can execute their mission. And so they're not there yet. But I think it's very important that these commercial tech companies are in the industry. They're partners of ours in some cases. They will be competitors of ours. There's a high-road mix that has to happen with platforms and you think about drones and technology and the integration of those two tied together with software. And that's where the magic is.
It's that software that ties it together with AI so you can make very quick decisions and affect the battlespace without a man in the loop, right? So that's where the value is going to come. I think it's a challenge going from DC to actually a publicly traded company that has national programs, sold programs to the military. And so that's an interesting transition. We'll see how they do in that. Some have been successful already in that. Others haven't gotten to that place. But I hope they stay in. They have to stay in. They're some of the best and brightest. And it's stretching us. It's stretching us. In our unmanned business, we have to participate and see what they're doing, and it's making us better. And if we can partner with them to make a product better, we'll do that. And in some cases, we're doing that.
Just a quick follow-up, and then I do want to go back to how effective these drones can be over time. I'm thinking back, and you can see the gray hair and lack of hair that I had to understand that I was following telecom companies and hardware companies and the telecom boom back in the day. It seemed to me that a lot of VCs invested in companies with an exit not being an IPO. The exit that they were aiming or shooting for was not going to be an IPO. It was going to be to sell to Cisco or whatever, Lucent or something like Nortel back in the day, right? They started these companies up with an eye towards just selling. You mentioned the difficulty of moving from VC to a publicly traded company.
Maybe talk a little bit about how you are viewing capital deployment. I don't know whether you all have a corporate venture arm or not.
We do not.
You do not. Okay.
We have invested in venture companies before, very limited, but we do not have a venture arm now.
Right. Right. But I mean, should we out here in the investor base begin thinking that a lot of these venture-backed companies are going to end up being acquired and used by the industrial base? I mean, you kind of rolled your eyes a little bit. Maybe it's because the valuations are so high.
It's just a valuation issue, and I don't know if they necessarily think, knowing the individuals involved, I don't know if that's necessarily a strategy, right, and the valuations are so high that it would definitely be a challenge. From our standpoint, we would have to go much smaller, and if there'd be, first of all, our capital allocation policy right now is we're investing in our shipyards. We're investing in our shipyards. We'll obviously continue to pay our dividend and increase our dividend annually, and if there's excess cash, we'll give it back to shareholders, right? That's essentially our strategy. Now, if there's an AI company that doesn't have a crazy valuation, which doesn't exist, right? We would buy resources to do AI, but we have partners that were there now, so we're investing back in our shipyard right now, and then we'll provide excess cash back to shareholders.
It should be very hard, I think, to do an acquisition in this space with the valuations that exist on some of those companies. Now, they could mature into them. I just don't see it happening right away. But our situation doesn't allow that.
Not driving towards that.
Understood. Going back to countermeasures on drones. You've got very valuable assets that sit out on the water and underneath it. How do we protect those assets from drone swarms and other things? Just kind of curious.
They have a number of countermeasures on the ship. The question becomes, are you going to shoot down a $100 drone with a million-dollar missile? I know there's frustration related to that. I think the risk. Let me put it this way. The most survivable airfield in the world is an aircraft carrier. Full stop. Right? In a conflict, right? The Navy is pretty good at protecting those ships. I have a lot of confidence. And you've seen their success in the Middle East. They're doing a great job at that. I know they're developing additional technologies to deal with that. Directed energy is an interesting technology that could be developed for that, which is much less expensive.
So, Directed energy. So if you can protect the ship, why can't you protect assets that are on shore? Is it just that you are trying to protect such a valuable asset that you're going to be willing to fire million-dollar missiles to take down a 10,000?
You can protect assets on shore as well, right? It's just, there's range issues. There's speed issues relative to the projectile coming at you, right? That's part of the technology that needs to be developed to deal with that. If you have a hypersonic weapon coming at you, it's different with a directed energy versus a missile interceptor. So all of those kind of go into calculation of what's the right technology.
Right. Right. Okay. Let's see here. I think we've already touched on one of these, but there's a standard question that we're going to ask every company throughout the conference. So not just A&D companies. I want to ask that of you now because I think I want to shift a little bit more to some of the near-term issues that the company is grappling with. And then I will open it up to the floor here in a few minutes as well for those that want to ask a question or two. But the question that we're asking all companies is just to talk about the top two or three innovations or structural changes that are affecting the company over the next five years. And I think you talked about AI.
That is the major structural change, and you don't have a choice. It's going to happen. You need to take advantage of it. Get the right partners. Don't think you can do it yourself, right, and it's going to make you more efficient. It's going to take advantage of it.
Yeah. And again, you mentioned earlier you thought over the next couple of three years we'd begin seeing some.
Probably before that. Two years.
Okay. So it's part of the 20% throughput that you talked about improvement.
That's not in there.
Not in there. Okay. So we're going to get into that a little bit better than that. Yeah. What's the key marker, key to success on that 20%?
On the 20%?
Yeah.
It's really split between increasing our labor force with additional wages that we're working on with our customer. We can't just do that ourselves because the fixed-price and cost-type contracts immediately impact them. So we need to work with them to get that done. Additional outsourcing, which will improve that. We're already doing significant outsourcing now, but it'll even further with existing partners. Insourcing, we're bringing people into the shipyards to actually do work. It usually isn't welding or fitting or electricians. That's usually painting and outfitting, stuff like that. And then the international is really going to help. So it's kind of a four-pronged approach to increasing that throughput.
Okay. Great. Let's see here. I'm going to ask two quick questions, and then I'm going to go open it up to the floor to see if there's anybody out on the floor who's got a question. But why don't we start with the margin of cash forecast for 2025 is dependent on getting some ships under contract. I guess 10 ships on Block 6 and on block.
Two on Block 5. Two on Block 5, the back end of Block 5, and then 10 on Block 6, and then the Columbia-class 1 and 2 .
Exactly. Right.
Thank you.
Yeah. Is there anything that the Congress explicitly needs to do to make this happen at this point? Where is the decision-making going on at this point? You mentioned some early on in our conversation as well. So maybe just kind of help us understand kind of what's in the numbers for '25's forecast and what the risks and opportunities might be.
There's no barriers to getting FY25 to close under contract. Congress did an anomaly, added funds, added investments for workforce development and capital and infrastructure investments. That has all been appropriated. We just are in negotiations with our customer to get that done. And I expect that to get done first part of this year. Block 6 and Columbia build-out are a bit more of a challenge. There's going to be funding challenges with getting those under contract. So there's more work that needs to be done in the Pentagon and with the administration relative to understanding what that cost is going to be. That's what I saw as such a beautiful project. It reduced costs, accelerated submarine production, immediately infused significant investment into the industrial base. And they did it by restructuring the contracts and really the acquisition approach.
I don't want to get into the details on how that works, but it just restructures the contracts that enables that. That makes it fit. That makes the budgets fit. Supports U.S. submarine production and AUKUS. It's a significant initiative. It's still in play. We need to get these FY24 two boats done, and then we'll pivot to that because that enables Block 6 and the Columbia Build 2.
Okay, so it's going to be a two-step process, it sounds like.
Maybe three. There were two Block 6 and Columbia Build 2 . Although we could negotiate those together, we may have to separate that.
Right. And you said first part of this year. So just definitionally, what does that mean to you?
Before June.
Before June. Okay. So first half of the year.
Yes.
First half. Yeah, yeah.
By the end of June.
Okay. Investors ask me, so I've got to ask you as well.
Okay.
Okay.
I'm not ready.
Jeremy, write that down. Yeah. Let's see here. Maybe switching gears over to Ingalls for a moment.
Sure.
Okay. Great. So probably there's been under consistent pressure, I guess, following positive EAC adjustments. How do those stabilize and begin to improve from your perspective? Maybe we'll just leave it there and see what you're thinking.
So Ingalls has had the same challenges as Newport News just to a lesser extent. They've executed very well over the last 10 years. There's really a wind down of a very successful program, the NSC program, which contributed to the positive results over the last 10 years. So there's a bit of a transition taking place in programs where DDGs are becoming more prominent. And then, as you know, they're competitively awarded. And then they were negotiated, a lot of those DDGs prior to COVID, right? So they're working through that. You saw a bit of a reset over Q3 and Q4 at Ingalls. I got a lot of confidence in that team. But I think they'll stabilize, and I expect them to be better this year than last.
Right. This is what you just described as a little bit of mix. It sounds like.
It's a mix. It's what we always talk about. You want to be the time to harvest profitability is when you're in a run rate program that's mature and you're more predictable. And that's what we had with the NSC program. That's what we have with the LPD program. It's a very successful program. And then not have a kind of a cataclysmic event like a Hurricane Katrina or COVID happened, which significantly disrupts your workforce. That's why I think there's such an opportunity with this $50 billion of work we're going to put under contract. But the key is getting to the other side on shipbuilding contracts. Getting through a challenge, having the demand for the products, and getting to the other side and making sure that those are fair contracts on the other side so you have a chance to execute and actually beat your projections.
That's where we are on that $50 billion. And I'm fortunate, and then Tom and I are both fortunate. We were able to see it. We actually did it. So it's not a mystery. There's not a magic involved in doing it. You have to have demand for the product. You have to be resolute in your negotiation. You have to make sure all your cost data reflects your current performance. You have to partner with your customer if you're doing better, if you can. But you need to protect yourself in your terms and conditions. So that $50 billion is going to form a real good basis, I think, for improvement over the next few years. It's going to be slow. I said it's going to be over the next 24 months, it's going to be incremental.
But beyond that, I think as we deliver ships, we have five in the next two years, and if we deliver those ships, not only the team's going to get better because they're delivering ships, nothing's better than delivering a ship for a team. And then the $50 billion is going to be more part of the backlog of the revenue, excuse me.
Right. Okay. I'm going to pause here and see if there isn't a question. We've got one over here.
Thanks, Jason and Chris. Chris, can you talk about the 20% throughput you are expecting this year? That is such a significant number, and obviously, the industry's had challenges, so maybe just address some of the blocking and tackling you're doing. How much of that's in your shipyard? How much of that's in your supply base as you expand the industrial base again?
Yeah. We need more of a long way to lend. So that's why we have really four different initiatives. If we hit them all out of the park, it'll be better. We're fortunate that we've been outsourcing. We have really good partners. We'll have that Newport News out of Ingalls to send some of this work out. And that's an immediate win. W International is an immediate win from a throughput standpoint. The challenge is, we all know, is labor. We've had a challenge with our attrition rates within the shipyards. We have high attrition rates and experience levels low. The throughput is impacted. Working very closely with our customer to deal with that from a wage standpoint.
So this is a combination of additional experienced labor in the workforce, reduced attrition, outsourcing, insourcing, which you're actually bringing companies in to do the work, which takes the load off of your labor, and then W, which is just a layup. So I'm not saying the 20% is a layup. I'm saying W, increasing capacity, is a layup. But if you hit them all out of the park, you'll be in a really good place. We need to make sure that we make that 20%.
Is there anybody else from the floor?
I'm trying to see with these lights.
Okay. I don't think so.
All I see is the lights.
Yeah.
Actually.
You mentioned earlier as well, I think it was related to the capital deployment question, cash and cash returns to shareholders. And we've already talked for a few minutes on cash flows. And maybe just help us understand the walk from 2024 cash flows into 2025, what the risks and opportunities are for cash flow. And then at one point, you guys had some kind of a five-year kind of cumulative number. And I guess the question would be, after you get these contracts signed, is there an opportunity for us to come back and have you kind of update us on what that looks like? And then you also have to skate into $700 million or so eventually of cash flow on an annual basis.
I'm guessing the question is going to be how that's still out there when we get the $30 billion of revenue, all that kind of good stuff. But just give me an idea.
Let me talk about cash. Let me talk about cash a little bit. So it's always been a challenge in shipbuilding to forecast cash. Not because we didn't think it was coming, but if a large invoice on an aircraft carrier slips to January 2nd, people think it's a significant issue in cash, but it's not. It's just we have key projects, large invoices, timing is hard. It's gotten harder because of these incentive-laden contracts where there's a greater percentage of our profitability and our cash is tied to incentives for all the right reasons, right? Incentivize performance, make investments, all those sort of things. So it's gotten to be more of a challenge. So $700 million is absolutely in the cards in the future. And I expect us to get there fairly quickly.
I wouldn't expect a five-year cash guide unless and until we stabilize, get the $50 billion under contract, have line of sight, and make sure we have a baseline of performance that we understand going forward, get some of these ships delivered, so I'm not ruling it out, but right now, we need to get through the next 24 months, meet our targets for this year, guide into 2026, meet our targets for 2026, and then we'll see how things go, but free cash, we have a great customer. They're going to pay us. They're going to pay us on time. Cash conversion over two or three years gets back to 1.0. It has to, so I'm confident that cash is going to recover.
Yeah. But underlying that assumption on returning to those levels that you've spoken about in the past, it's getting the shipyards back to historic profitability in that 9%-10% range. Is that a fair?
I don't think you necessarily need to get all the way back there. And we haven't given specific figures. But if you just run the income statement with Mission Technologies and the shipyards and understand the capital and the pension and the cash taxes, you can get down to north of 700 without getting back to 9%-10%.
Okay. Great. We've only got just a few seconds left on the clock on our side. So I think we'll leave it with that. I really appreciate you spending the time with us today.
Thank you.
Hope you get back home safely with the winter storm that's coming in.
Thank you. Thanks. Appreciate it.
All right. Awesome.