Okay. Good morning, everybody. Why don't we get started? I'm Doug Harnett, Bernstein's Global Aerospace and Defense Analyst, and I am thrilled to have with us again John Plant, Chairman and CEO of Howmet. And I don't know if you have any—
No, I don't have so much video, but—
Kinda done.
Yeah, I'm kinda done. I got a slight—
It's not my fault, Martine.
Yeah.
Okay.
We can do better next time.
Yeah, we'll work on it.
Yeah.
We'll work on it. Okay. Yeah, but, seriously, to start, I wanted you to just give us a little overview of where Howmet stands, how you're looking at the market for opportunity.
I think all the things I talked about on the recent earnings calls, you know, hold up in that I think, if anything, felt a little bit more confident in the narrowbody production, particularly from Boeing being a little bit better than I'd previously considered, or at the same time still being fairly cautious about it. The spares business has been running well, and if anything, we, you know, achieved our mark, probably a year earlier than, you know, we'd been talking about. You know, between content growth, the general, I will say, increase in share plus spares and pricing going, everything was working well for us.
Really the only, let's call it blot on the landscape was that, you know, my previous assumption around the wheels business for commercial truck was a little bit weaker as I saw it going into the second half of the year, essentially coming off a little bit of uncertainty and taking account of what we saw in the West Coast ports as a result of some of the tariff dialogue that's been going on. That's about it, really.
Yeah. Actually, just to get this out of the way, tariffs. Can you give us a little bit of an update on—it's obviously a moving target here—but how you're now seeing tariffs impacting Howmet?
We gave ranges, in terms of what the gross impact might be if the tariffs were also to snap back to previous level after the 90 days, and also then what the net effect was. Of course, it's almost as though as soon as you say, "This is it," then things change. So whatever I said then and what I'd say today might be a little bit different given that maybe now there is some possibility of rapprochement with China, although, you know, you read articles yesterday about the Kermet situation, you say, you know, what's happening here. But because we'd given the outer limits of what we thought, I think those still hold.
If anything, given the fact that we've probably got another quarter of probably slightly lower input costs, therefore slightly lower drag, as we seek to recover those input costs as a result of the tariffs, the net probably is a little bit, you know, lower than I'd said, even though it's, you know, I put an outer boundary of $15 million for it for the year, but it's probably, you know, trended better than that in the intervening period, both from actions we've taken and also the fact that, you know, 145% for China got rolled back to, was it 30%? And, you know, Europe's, you know, it's bounced around a bit this month, and, you know, like, what's the latest exemption? You know, it's difficult to, you know, I find it difficult to speak cogently about it each day.
Yeah. I mean, you've spoken before about mitigation strategies. There was that, you know, well-publicized force majeure, you know, that got out there.
Yeah.
I mean.
I thought you might bring that up.
How's that? How do you, maybe you can refresh us on your strategy there for mitigation?
We employed and have employed and do employ many different strategists, first of all, to address the gross effect for the company. Whether it is trade agreements, exemptions, what is the code you import things under, or indeed to some limited degree move a little bit of production, but again, that is fairly limited. It does not strike me as a sensible thing to have wholesale changes of manufacturing strategy, given the climate that we are in. We do all of that. You know, we were also very clear as we examined each one of our commercial agreements, which I thought and do think are pretty strong. Some of them did not call out the tariff language per se.
As an input, let's say materials cost, if you did not call it out, then I did not feel as though it was right to be exposed and felt that if we did have the emergency that was quoted as the reason for them, then it was justification to say, "This is clearly a force majeure situation." We were, you know, we, you cannot do that selectively. It either is or it is not. Therefore, we did issue a letter. Obviously, it was leaked, and I guess you and many others enjoyed reading it. You know, it did have quite a trending population of scrutiny for a while.
I thought it had quietened down, but, where it was necessary, I felt that, you know, we have, using I said there were two of our divisions that were a little bit more exposed, and one of them we used it effectively to get where we need to be to have full new agreements in place that covered us. You know, we would not risk that exposure for the company and our shareholders. The answer is yes, I did. Would I do it again? Absolutely.
Yeah. I, obviously, we're gonna see how this whole situation progresses, and it seems to change every day. If we just go to the engine products side right now, you know, Boeing. Boeing finally appears to be on somewhat of an upward path in terms of production rates on the MAX. Been waiting for that a long time. I would think, in principle, if we were in what was once a normal environment, you would be, say, delivering into CFM, GE at a rate that would allow them to deliver to Boeing to parallel the production rate, and all of those would sort of move together. Right now, we're in a situation where Boeing's got a lot of LEAP-1Bs sitting around.
GE is sort of producing at a rate that, all in total, is a little bit less than they had previously estimated, although they haven't broken that out between engine types. How do you think about your production now as it relates to Boeing, given that they're starting to come back?
At the highest level, and I'll try to break that down for you, if you look at our aggregate production of parts, and of course, we supply not only the turbine airfoils but also structural castings, you know, etc., if I look in aggregates, then we are producing today, as we were last year, well ahead of the industry. So the how many engines are produced, is, is not gated by Howmet. I mean, there's a choice, of course, on where parts are used, either in the, aftermarket or early production.
Right now, I, you know, I know that the comment I made, I think it was maybe, maybe it was November of last year where I said on the newly upgraded, for example, you know, the 1A, we were, you know, we already put 500 engine sets into inventory, and we've continued to build on that. And so.
I'm sorry. So 500 engine sets are with the new Maverick blades.
Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. I didn't use that term, but I understand, you know.
Oh.
I never used that word.
Okay.
The,
I did, and you could take it for whatever.
Yeah. I understand what you mean. As soon as we make them. But yeah, we've been in a good situation. If anything, given the production of the, you know, the total package of engines last quarter, which was, you know, closer to 300 than 400, I'll give you the exact number if you need it. But, you know, clearly, we've been running ahead, and I think we're in a really good situation. You get a bit more specific because, as you know, the 1B has not changed to the new configuration yet, and that's at a date yet to be determined. At the moment, I don't think that there's any shortage of engines available for Boeing production.
You know, I assume that the comments made by Boeing yesterday, which were obviously really good, in terms of their expectation of production for this month and next quarter and potentially after that, was, you know, that means there's a great availability of parts, and everything's good. You know, that gives me a lot of optimism.
Because, you know, historically, you know, you deliver a lot of, a lot of airfoils that are used in OE production. And right now, you know, we're not really, you don't really need to ramp up on that, I'm assuming, for Boeing right now. But is where is the point that you're looking at where you may have to take production up for those LEAP-1Bs if Boeing stays on a trajectory that they've described?
I think we're gonna have to take production up this year. My thought is that the trend of increase in spares that we saw on the 1A last year, which was clearly very positive, then we're gonna see some of that this year for the 1B. Therefore, that requires more parts. I think, notwithstanding the inventory of engines at Boeing, I do think the production rates have to come up. Indeed, one of the really good things is that if you achieve the increase in production of LEAP, let's say, plus 15%-20% to the 1,650-1,690 sort of area, or more, then clearly the rate of production's gotta increase substantially into the 400s or 450s or even more, to achieve that annual number.
Therefore, that means the vector is one of increase, increased requirements. If you, when you look at, you know, so what's occupying my mind at the moment is with all of the, let's say, hopeful build increases for narrowbody and maybe widebody as we go into next year, plus the spare situation, plus all the other things we're doing, for example, you know, IGT and both large turbines plus aero derivatives and, you know, new small turbines which are being brought into play. One of the things which is occupying my mind is really, you know, increasing overall production. What do I think about? I think at the moment I've gotta make more. I'm not saying we're not making enough. I'm just saying we need to make more.
You know, if you look at, you know, we've recently increased our capital expenditure, in guided numbers for 2025, and that's indicative of what we're looking at more.
Can you talk about, both for the LEAP and for the Geared Turbofan, as you've gone to, on each of them, new configurations for the HPT blades? Can you comment on your market share, how that's changing going to those new blades and the types of agreements you have, which, as you've said before, you've had these long-term, you've set up these long-term agreements on these narrowbody engines?
Answering the point you make about Geared TurboFan first, we, while the, the GTF advantage is certified, we all know that. But, you know, I know also that we are not yet in mass production of the newly improved parts. You know, yes, we're making them, and I can see that we're gonna have to make a lot more of them, particularly as we go through this year. Today, you know, in terms of the, you know, the grand scheme of, like, the total engine sets required plus, you know, providing parts to the service market, then, that, it's not yet at that point. In other words, if first off was the LEAP-1A, my view is the, the story for 2025 will be the release of mass production tools is occurring, but not yet there.
Yes, we're making so many engine sets a month, but that's yet to come. And then, you know, next year is gonna be, you know, another large increase of requirements. On market shares, we don't ever talk about them, so I don't feel as though it's appropriate to do so. If you look in aggregate of both where we are for turbine blades relative market share, then it's clearly been increasing, and I've been willing to say that. Particularly even more so in the hot section of the turbine. We're seeing all of those theses played out as the technology becomes more exacting. Indeed, some of the things we're doing, for example, just use GTF 'cause we're in the midst of getting ready to do mass production.
I mean, those are really sophisticated products taking some of the technologies that were used in some of the military applications, you know, to raise the thermal performance of the part so you could withstand the actual temperature seen in the engine. It is, you know, as long as we're saying, you know, we're good, happy, we've gotta produce more, but I'm shying away from just saying what the market share is.
When you look at producing these new configuration blades that are gonna ramp up over time, can you give us a sense of how you're still producing the, I guess I would call them the legacy ones and the traditional blades as well. How long should we see sort of two parallel lines running for the Leap and the Gear TurboFan?
I think it's gonna be longer than everybody expects in that, I mean, you've got a changeover occurring or has occurred in part on the 1A. I'm also clear that we'll still be producing legacy parts through this year and next year. It's also a feature of when an engine comes into an MRO shop, you know, the question is, do you replace all the turbine blades? Therefore, your choice is you go all the way to the new one. If the choice by the MRO shop or by the owner of the engine is, I can get away with replacing 25% of the blades or is it 50%, then you can't mix and match on the same disk. You have to have all of the same.
If you want to economize yourself, still got life left in the old blades. Therefore, you gotta put old blades on to do, even though then you have to have an economic equation about how long they'll last for, what's the overall, you know, when will it come back in for the next shop visit. You know, that is something which we do not determine. We just say we know we are gonna be supplying both old and new. It is a glide path over time, more and more of the new, less and less of the old. We will do the same thing for the GTF. Today it is mainly legacy production that we are doing, but maybe by the end of the year, we will have crossed over to the majority being new, you know.
It'll go on the same sort of path through 2026 into 2027. Then there's the 1B, which is, you know, date uncertain at this point in time, but expected end of this year, end of next year, sometime, you know, we don't determine that, you know, it's FAA and the engine maker.
When you look at this, one of the things that, you know, that's been significant to us when we look at Howmet is that because the LEAP, the Geared Turbofan, because you, you know, you've had shorter lifetimes for these early blade designs, there's an aftermarket demand as these come in and need to be replaced. Can you comment on when you go to these new designs, should we see, do you expect to see the life expectancy up comparable to what we've had on CFM56, on V2500s?
I think the question is probably best answered by the engine manufacturer 'cause they know the exact conditions that those turbine blades are gonna face, the effectiveness of the solutions being put into place, the effectiveness of, let's say, particulate or dust collection, I'll say mechanisms on the engine, and also indeed the robustness of the airflow and consistency. There is a lot of stuff to be worked through, which, you know, we can only provide margins of performance within a, you know, we can engineer to whatever you want by way of bandwidth. First of all, we accept that.
My thought is when I look at these, take narrowbody, 'cause I think that's really what you're referring to, then I think the current legacy blades will continue at a very high level and probably haven't peaked for another couple of years. Even then, it'll be a very gradual reduction for CFM56. I think that's currently still growing. Clearly, there's two effects going on with the new engine blades. The fundamental, I think, vector to talk about is whenever you run engines at a higher temperature, higher pressure, then the life expectancy of parts always tends to be a little bit less. It's no different to, like, a car engine in that if you pressurize it, then you will—it's not like extending the life of your oil. You're going to a mineral-based oil.
If you're putting in, let's say, sodium-filled valves, you're putting a lot more pressure in the engine, and, you know, higher temperatures, then generally speaking, the parts wear more. I think there's a long-term effect where it's difficult to see at the moment that the current generations will have the same numbers of cycles in the long term. My thought is the newer engines are going to see higher frequency of shop visits than the predecessor. I'm not saying that they won't be better than they are today because they're, you know, clearly improvements are being made. I refer to it as a long-term trajectory of increase of service parts.
I think that we will see increases in the numbers of parts for delivery that will go into engine overhaul, every year for the next decade, long-term trend upwards because of what I've talked about. Bearing in mind I said also the CFM hasn't quite peaked yet. You have one other effect, what I call the bubble effect, which is the here and now because the life experienced by the current engine blades was one of the reasons why we've gone from an improvement in fuel efficiency objective to more, you know, for these, this generation to more of a robustness solution. That's producing a very high demand for the next two, three, four years. You know, again, we don't determine that.
I think the only thing we are arguing, or will not argue, but see, is that the angle of increase will be, I think, a little bit higher in the short term. It'll continue to grow every year, but the angle of increase will, you know, begin to soften. You know, you can imagine if you were to graph it out, I draw a sharp slope in the near term and continue the slope upwards, but bend it down a bit. The angle would be slightly lower as the new improved blades come in, but still require higher frequency compared to the old, but not the high frequency because of the problems on the current one. So it's.
That's gonna be a that's not gonna be right away. That's gonna be a while.
Yeah. I mean, I'm just trying to get like, this is how I see it. At the best of the way I can describe it, I think themselves spares are gonna increase every year that I can see at the moment. You look at the buildout of MRO shops, it's being built out 'cause they know they're gonna come in for more services over the next decade or two. It's just the angle of increase with, I call, you know, maybe it's unfair to call it a bubble at the moment, but it's just that you know certain countries because of the blocking of holes, let's say, in combustors with particulates has produced engine temperatures way higher than was envisaged. Therefore, you know, they have to be replaced at far more frequent intervals than ever considered.
We're engineering to a higher thermal performance, even though, let's say, things are being done to prevent some of those blockages. Either way, those new things are gonna have higher content in them, greater performance.
Can you, I know when you deliver the blades A to G, you don't know if it's gonna go into aftermarket or OE, but can you give us a rough sense now of how large your aftermarket is on engine products?
Yes. We, we've, it's a percent of Howmet. We've said we've gone on this march from 2019, we were about 11% of our total revenues. We'd achieved, I think, 17% by the end of last year. I said, you know, doing 25%, 26%, gonna go to 20%, and heck, we got there in, in Q1.
That's an engine, engine product.
No, that's total Howmet.
Company.
If I then, of course, apply that percentage to engine products, then you've got a much higher percentage because, I mean, very approximately, if engine is probably around, I use loosely 50% of the revenue. And therefore, if it's 20% of the company, it's 40% of engine. That's about right. And I can always rely upon Ken who's in the audience to correct me if necessary. That breaks out 'cause I'm just giving you the totals for commercial aero, defense aero, IGT, oil and gas, the whole lump there. If you look at the situation which we described in 2019, which was $400 million for commercial, $400 million for the defense and industrial markets, then if you just think about 11%, 20%, that's essentially revenues grown as well. It's double. Yeah.
It's pretty much still the same mix, you know, not quite 50% commercial aero, you know, maybe just under 50%, maybe 48%, but very, very, you know, very loosely it's 50/50. Then it comes down to, you know, obviously there's fewer military jets at the same time. You know, they have higher duty cycles because of the performance required and therefore shop, but it's more frequent. And so you go into all of that.
you know, you've, you've been able to bring margins up over time, which we would assume is both a combination of pricing and operating leverage. can you comment at all on what's been driving your margin improvement and where you expect to go in engine products?
If we did a recent West Coast, we participated with someone to do like a West Coast tour. We took them to one of our plants, which is like a rings plant, an engine plant. And, you know, I didn't actually attend that one, but I did enjoy the summary of it, which was not only a great plant, let's say, so clean, so good, but those like top-level descriptors. The thing which I felt was really good was that we're producing more parts now in 2025 than we did in 2019, but with approximately half the people. The whole thrust that we've had by way of improving our processes, improving process control, you know, and therefore improving yields, the theme of automation, it has played out for us very well.
You know, you put with that the additional volume, so you've got volume leverage, you've got productivity, and you've got some price as well, then that's a good cocktail to have. You know, if I could use that as a poster child for every one of our operations, that'd be great. I'm not saying they're all that good, but they all, I hope they all will be.
It did seem that at the Whitehall facility when I was there, you've got automation that reduced dispersion of output and improved your yields. My assumption is that this is playing out at many of your facilities. Is that correct?
Yes. I really do believe that what we showed, maybe two years ago, by way of a visit, we only probably do it once a decade, showed a level of sophistication with automation, which, I believe is breathtaking, 'cause the one thing you notice is the lack of people. It is not per se, you know, a knock on the use of humans in the process, or it is not just for the economics of wages, but essentially it is for the absolute need for the control and tolerances and quality to achieve the throughputs and yields, particularly as we have gone to increased air passages through turbine blades, which gives you parts in all sections and the control of those, you know, both in high-volume production, but also, I will say all moving to, you know, the most sophisticated level of alloy you can use.
It takes a lot. To do that with manual processes, I just don't think it's possible to have it economically viable. That's part of what we do. Just now, in that same site, we've just built a new plant, the roof's on. Some equipment has arrived. We recruited, you know, we're on our way to recruiting a few hundred people this year. I mean, today it's just, there's like, say, bits and pieces of equipment in it. If you visit with one there today, then you'd see, you know, you'd see a few, let's say, transfer presses. You'd see some early core production, but nothing where all the processes are joined up yet. All we're producing is scrap.
We do not just train on it. We chop it up and then make sure nobody can see what it is we have done, 'cause we try to protect the IP. And, you know, that really will not come on stream to back end of this year into next year. As the requirements have gone up, we are actually having to make further increases in investment in that facility. That will be at a level above in terms of, again, automation, that we envisaged to do. We are really determined to take it to a level above what you saw a couple of years ago. The theme goes throughout the company.
If I'd looked at it, it's one of our fastener plants as an example, you know, we've got, let's say, 10 processes to produce something, then, you know, with use of latest equipment capabilities or making sure we use all the capabilities of existing equipment, you know, if we can delete four or five process steps and still produce the part to a, you know, the highest quality, that's what we're doing.
You know, talking about fasteners.
By the way, I did get quite carried away on the, I think it is response to your question on the last earnings call. I, I think I was getting to the point where I was boring you about what we were doing on aircraft, aircraft wheel control. I thought, I think Doug's had enough of this already.
Okay. We'll switch topics. Fasteners were you just touched on. You know, we've been expecting this widebody ramp to occur on the 787 and the A350. It's been a little behind schedule in terms of production at Boeing and Airbus. Once that happened, our expectation was this is going to really help margins in your fastener business. Margins you just reported, you're up 400 basis points, and this effect hasn't kicked in yet. Can you talk about what is taking your margins up there and how we should look at this over the next couple of years?
We could have got a little bit carried away with ourselves, you know, last quarter. That is possible. I hope not. It did turn out, I think, as good as we could have imagined. That is probably code for saying maybe better than we thought. That is good, you know, 'cause we always try to achieve at least our own expectations, if not yours. I do think the majority of that has been achieved without the benefit of fundamental mix, you know, emanating from the widebody and composite aircraft. That is yet to play. You know, it is an unusual situation because most of our plants are multi-product, multi-purpose, and, you know, customer agnostic. It makes for much more even production.
In the case of the fasteners for the composite aircraft, they are concentrated in a couple of plants, and therefore they're still, what I think, underloaded. Therefore, theoretically, should volumes ever increase and, you know, 'cause, you know, the order book is so high for widebody demand, it is so, you know, he thinks it's gotta increase at some point. There will be a 787 that goes to 7% a month from the last several years of 1% to 5%. Now I think, you know, moving on to 5% or the A350 at probably 5.5% a month this year or something. I'm expecting that the problems to get more production will be solved, and therefore it will play out into our production maybe 2026, 2027.
Therefore, again, it should be positive for us, particularly 'cause we say we're slightly unbalanced at the moment between, I'll call it metallic and com, you know, fasteners go to a metallic type of aircraft to composites. Therefore, I keep thinking good things. We'd never happened yet, you know. I'm, you know, I, I, you know, but it's gonna happen.
One other thing in here on fasteners, can you give us any kind of an update on this SPS fire and the impact that it may have on you?
Yes. We, you know, looked at the situation, considered the revenue going through that plant, how much might be moved to existing PCC facilities. And, you know, it's difficult to get an exact number, but say if there was $150 million, possibly $200 million, but let's use $150 million coming out of plants. I think half gets redeployed to other PCC plants is my guess, you know, particularly into California. Then, you know, there's the balance. I, you know, we have quoted a lot of parts. We have now booked some healthy orders. I'm trying to remember the number I gave you on the last call.
I'll, you know, I don't quite remember it, but I'm thinking like $25 million, you know, $25 million-$30 million was that sort of area with the prospect of it going up further because we've still got hundreds of part numbers to quote. We've seen, you know, as you always get in this situation, some people move faster than others, probably according to their need and availability and what images they're carrying. For example, Boeing were fast out the gate on this one, and a pretty huge team had been pulled behind. And we've, you know, been in a supportive situation to do that and in one or two special applications to ensure that production continuity could occur, for example, on the 737. That, you know, we're doing that, working with them very well.
You know, it's less of an Airbus type of play from that plant, but the sum. You know, the rest is into both distribution and to the engine makers. We have lots more to bid. We've got three customers already where we have production orders for, you know, as soon as we can make them, you know, not this month.
Yeah.
You know, hopefully towards the back end of the year, into next year, we'll be making some more of these parts. And, you know, as I said, you know, as inventories dwindle, more and more orders, I guess. What the total is eventually, I don't know. Hopefully north of 30, you know, it can't be more than 70, you know. So it picks somewhere in between, you know, 40 or 50, who knows?
If we go back to another area, which is when you not too long ago said that now you're becoming an AI company as well.
No, I didn't say we were at an AI company. I just said that AI is giving us this extraordinary opportunity. I think if you throw AI into any engine's call, it's worth $10, you know. That's a joke just in case you, you know.
Oh, okay.
I'm not like that.
I will put that in.
I said it was, it was electricity demand for us.
Yes, yes, yes.
The AI, you know, if you do a, if you do a ChatGPT search, 10 times electricity to a Google search, so please use any form of those, you know, what are you, Grok or, you know, is it Perplexity or something? I can't keep up with all the names, but there's lots of them. Use that and then it's, you know, more electricity, more data centers, which are increasing anyway, and therefore more electricity and therefore AI is good.
Yeah. You talked about, I guess you've gotten an agreement in Japan now, on providing IGT related to this. I know you talked about discussions with some of the other big players, like Renova. Can you give us an update on how you expect that IGT trajectory to go? I believe IGT's about 10% of revenues.
A little bit less than that, but you're in the ballpark around $500 million-$600 million sort of area of revenue last year. I'm hoping fully it'll be more this year. Again, it's one where we're building capacity like crazy, to, you know, also to be able to meet what our customers want. You know, we are bottleneck breaking. We are addressing yields and, you know, there's also, particularly with some of the newer turbines, there's again the same trajectory of changeover from, you know, more solid blades to cored blades, which is again value. We're seeing both quantity increases and sophistication increase, therefore content. Yes, we, in fact, we in the, let's say, IGT network, and let's say we've got nearly three plants aimed at that, you know, that are supported by some other, you know, let's say core operations.
We're building a new one in Japan, but it's not just dedicated to Mitsubishi Heavy. It also supplies into other customers. We do supply all customers. We're also expanding in Europe. We've put capacity by way of additional machine tools into, or are being put into, our plant in the U.S., but we're not expanding footprint there. There are a lot of good things happening. Also, we made that small technology acquisition last year, which was also giving us a level of capability on tooling to produce these very large blades, which have extremes of where you're relieving the tension in the parts because of the length with the level of thermal energy we're putting into it during the casting process.
We're actually using tools with servo motors to adjust as we mold cores, and so it's a bit of a PR thing saying what a great technology.
Okay. Moving to engineered structures, this is another one where you took margins up a lot. Can you comment on, you know, you had 18.4% margins. I know you changed leadership there a little while back. I mean, a lot's been going on. I mean, what should we think of that business in terms of margins going forward?
If I look at that business, first of all, when I look at the allocation of my time, it was one where I probably paid more attention, if I look at over the last few years, you know, first of all to engine and to fasteners and wheels. And maybe did not pay as much attention. Or maybe it is like most things I do, I think myself, where do you have the most impact? You know, focus where you can be really, really good. Also, in that business, it was more one of triage because, you know, we had the COVID downdraft, 40% volume disappeared. You had widebody. With titanium, which is inside that business, that is more of a widebody play than a narrowbody play.
Add to that the fact that, I say our customer for big structural parts, so think bulkheads for F-35s as an example, in Lockheed underbuilt over several years during, let's say, COVID and beyond and had not really achieved the, I'll say, 150 rate that was talked about. There is a large inventory of those parts to burn off as well. A lot of things which were going on but were still being done and improved, you know, everything we did was just holding, holding where we were, let's say, a 14% margin business, which in a structures context, you know, is not bad. In fact, you know, sometimes that business is better than, you know, some other core companies. It is, you know, our dog, if you want to call it that, you know, well, you know, some sort of BCG analysis was, was still pretty good.
I always felt that with a bit more love, care, and attention, it could do a lot better. That is why I, you know, wildly went out and said, "I think this could be a high teens business." I do not often do that, 'cause I do not, I am not assuming that is really a margin prediction. It is just like, it is like a feeling. I felt this could be a high teens margin business. We did move up, and we have done a lot of really good things. Yes, we have done some change of leadership. Yes, we have spent more time and attention. Yes, for example, on that long-winded answer I gave you about aircraft wheels, which is also inside that business, I was telling you about process control improvements just because, you know, using that as a poster child for a lot of things we were doing there.
I could give you yields in melt shops and on titanium production and all the rest if you want to, on, you know, what weights we use in terms of the electrode production, things which would bore you, I'm sure.
No, we can do that. We can. I'm happy to do that.
Okay. Anytime you want to do it, we could spend the rest of our time today if you want to. There are a lot of things that have been happening. You know, I think the team have been doing great. We did the 18%. It was getting towards high teens. Then we went crazy and broke the 20% number. We did a few other things like got rid of a couple of bad businesses, sold one, closed one, you know, all within that. Yet you did not really notice it because revenue continued to climb, which is the best time. Let's, you know, deal with those things while revenue is going up and still be very laser focused on what you are really good at.
Increasingly, we're again spending time looking at what are we really good at in that business because we'd like to stay ideally, you know, with a two handle on the, on the number rather than, you know, my underachieving high teens. You know, it's only a quarter, but, you know, it's.
A good quarter. Good quarter.
A good quarter.
So,
I don't like going backwards.
Okay.
That's part of my DNA.
Okay. Okay. That's good. So in terms of going forwards, you know, free cash flow this year took guide to $1.15 billion. You know, when you look at that, what factors are out there that could take that higher or lower when you look at the variables involved?
It's going to come down to what's final cash tax bill, guessing at that. The first capital, as I said, is high. And then our ability to thrift production to be more working capital efficient. So those are the main things, you know, there could be a tiny bit issue, you know, in terms of, you know, we're always looking for opportunities to relieve our gross liability on pension. We always like find, can we do something there? But essentially, the main things which are going to be, I'll say the big drivers are between those three, working capital, fixed capital, and obviously profitability as well. I'm taking that for a given because we've told you what that number is, you know, guided to 2.1 something. Again, got quite carried away.
Can you give us a sense in this, just sort of the CapEx outlook? Because there is a lot, you know, I know you're thinking about a lot of potential investment needs here as you ramp up in different areas.
You know, the best deployment of capital for us is organic growth. You know, if you look at the return profile of the company, it's really good and superior to buying our shares back. It doesn't mean to say you shouldn't buy your shares back. I'm just saying that, you know, there is a return on capital of that marginal dollar, then I'd prefer to put in fixed capital. At the same time, you know, I also think you have to respect things like conversion ratios. So, you know, I don't think, you know, even though I think stuff could be spent more, yes. But, you know, I do think it's, you know, a high quality company should be converting their net income. I mean, I've used 90% as the long term metric for us.
You know, we had some years above 100, you know, probably in the, I'll say just after COVID. We've had several years now at like 88, 89, but we've blended out at somewhere in 90-100%, probably 100%. I just think myself, you know, maybe we'll end up, you know, around that 90%. With the first capital, you know, if I put another 10 or 20 or 30 into fixed capital, that might be a really good thing. I also don't want to go too far because I do think, again, good companies convert, you know, net income into a high conversion ratio. It's part of what you should do.
I think we've got to wrap up here, but, John, I want to thank you for joining us today. This has been great.
Thank you.
We'll have that melt yield discussion at other times.
Okay. Thank.