Morning. I'm Doug Harned, Bernstein's Global Aerospace and Defense Analyst, and I'm thrilled to have back with us today, John Plant, the Chairman and CEO of Howmet, and with that, we're going to get started here. John, I think to start off here, maybe you can just give us a little bit of overview of where Howmet stands right now, and what some of the opportunities and challenges you're facing are.
Okay. First of all, good morning, everybody. Look forward to chatting with Doug today and giving you some insights to Howmet. We seem to be at a, how I'll say, a point where the opportunities do outweigh the challenges at the moment. Having said that, sometimes the opportunities themselves bring challenge in being able to step up to them. We're at this moment in time where in a commercial aerospace side of the business, the backlogs for commercial aircraft are extraordinarily high, and that gives us some feeling of security of improved volumes for the future, and with aircraft manufacturers predicting increase in rates. That's good and helpful to us in terms of the growth vector for the company.
Also in aerospace, the defense budget seemed to be solid, and given the use of aircraft, especially recently, then there appears to be the opportunity for additional spares coming up in the next two or three years. At the same time, given also the use of missiles and the potential for investment in the Golden Dome, then that also is producing another, say, growth opportunity for us. The aerospace part of our business seems to be well set and it then turns to the gas turbine part of the business where it appears to be a particularly hot topic these days, given the build-out of data centers and the required improvements in electricity supply to power them. I think as everybody knows, is that our position in supplying the turbine blades for the gas turbines as part of the electricity supply is very significant.
In fact, our market share is well over 50% globally and therefore, again, another significant opportunity for growth for us. Those are the, I'll say, the longer run opportunities facing the company. We probably have the more, I would say, tactical short run opportunity if some improvements or maybe bouncing off the bottom this year in terms of our commercial wheel business for commercial trucks, both in North America and to some degree, Europe. In terms of challenge, the growth of the company presents its challenge in terms of our ability to deploy all of the capital required to step up to these challenges.
At the same time, making sure that we not only deploy the capital, we do it in a very efficient way, introduce the products on time, and achieve the volume increases and, at the same time, produce a very healthy cash flow. There's always a little bit of strain between, I'm going to say, the commitment we have to deliver the cash flow conversion of the company, with our long-term metric of 90% of net income while meeting these growth challenges.
Well, I'd like to continue a little bit on that hot topic of IGT and power. Your revenues were up 39% in Q1. If I go back two years ago, we weren't even talking about this topic. We've got GE Vernova down the hall here. I'm trying to get a picture of how you see this growth rate going forward for Howmet, because you've talked about going from $1 billion in revenues up to, say, $2 billion in three to five years. If I started to look at what some of the companies involved in gas turbines are talking about, the growth rate looks higher than that. If you add on pricing and you add on, I think, maybe more market share, the $2 billion seems like a low number. How should I think about that?
Well, I think you have to break the current revenue down between that's required for OE build and that's required for spares. Just at the moment, both are, I'll say, firing on all cylinders in the fact that the existing fleet of turbines is working much harder than expected and therefore driving a very significant spares market for us. At the same time, as you say, everybody wants more in terms of gas turbine production. So I think it's fair to assume there's a little bit of caution in the way we're thinking about things, because there is much more required than just our turbine blades to produce the whole power generation setup. So, beyond the turbine, you have to have the power gen side of the, I say the equipment, the generation side of it.
I want to be cautious that to some degree, we ultimately move at the weakest link in that whole supply chain, but at the same time remaining hopeful that maybe the growth could be higher.
Well, I remember when we were here last year, at that point in time, you were talking about basically negotiations underway with four companies. Now you're up to, I think six and maybe a seventh. It seems like I'm trying to understand, all of those individual companies are expecting a lot of growth, and you seem to be expanding your presence across them as well.
It's been an extraordinary time in the gas turbine business. Maybe sometimes in life you get a little bit lucky. To some degree, this feels a little bit of good fortune because while we had expected an increase in our gas turbine business, if you went back maybe 18 months, two years ago, we were thinking more like going from a fairly cyclical business to maybe something growing in the mid-single digits to high single digits area at the best.
For the power side?
For the power side. Obviously that's not the case today. We're thinking much more boldly about the increases that are coming. Then as we began to think through where we were in terms of the customer set that we have, our anticipation was that we'd see a significant increase in requirements from the large gas turbine manufacturers. Think of that as GE Vernova, think of Siemens, think of Mitsubishi Heavy. That's where we'd see the most fundamental part of the demand. As it turns out, we now see that it's also the small and midsize gas turbine manufacturers as well that are requiring very significant increases in capacity, some of it driven because they can't get the large gas turbines. There's a supply shortage.
That's generating opportunities for banks of the small and midsize turbines, but also parts of the build-out of the liquid natural gas is also producing a significant demand there for, let's say, gas compression and liquefaction and driving of gas towards the LNG terminals. We're actually having, again, demand not just from data centers, but across the board. Because of that lack of capacity being brought to the market by the larger gas turbine manufacturers, it's given the opportunity for us to supply to the likes of the Solar Turbines of Caterpillar, or is it Baker Hughes, or is it even Doosan in Korea, and so on. There's a lot more opportunity which we hadn't originally thought about when we were conceiving of the demand pattern for the next two or three years.
It's a long way of saying, because again, we are probably the most significant supplier to each of these customers, then it's giving us a level of further opportunity we hadn't planned on.
Well, you're talking about the demand signal for the next two to three years. When you look at the investments that you need to make to do this, I imagine you have to think about what are we looking at in five years? Is this something that will plateau or is this something where You see headlines that almost imply infinite growth here, which I would always be skeptical of. How do you think about structuring deals so that you don't end up over-investing in capacity?
That's been the, I'll say, item which has been most forefront of mind for me in terms of determining to what degree should we capacitize for this opportunity. What's the duration of the growth part of the cycle? What do we see by way of requirements for, say, utilities, standalone data centers, data center clusters, and also into the oil and gas sector going forward? The derivatives for provision of turbines for ships, for example, in the defense industry. You've seen some of those announcements recently where, again, we supply the parts for turbines for that. There's a lot going on. The question is, to what degree should we invest? We also have to, as you know, be very cognizant of protecting shareholders' returns and therefore not over-investing.
We've also tried to think of it in terms of how do we structure the commercial arrangements with our customers such that we are confident in making those investments? Also what will be the demand pattern as we get to 2030 and beyond? What's the growth rate looking like both for data center clusters? Is it now in the provision of electricity to industrial complexes, and therefore the requirements for microgrids, et cetera? There's a lot of thought which has gone into how much we should invest, how should we protect ourselves? Indeed, since the part that we supply is the wearing part of the turbine, so there's a replacement requirement. I always think of turbine blades as like the brake pads of the turbine industry.
Assume that in the next five years that the fleet of turbines that are out there in the market, let's assume it's going to be a very significant increase in quantity, maybe almost doubling the existing fleet. Therefore, all of those turbines will producing the requirements for spare parts at the turn of the decade into the 2030s. In the scenario where maybe OE growth slows, or maybe we don't have any growth at all, then my thought is that Howmet should be able to continue to see growth because all of the fleet of turbines, the existing fleet and all the build out over the next few years, are all going to require replacement parts, which will give us another vector of growth, which will either compound what we have or substitute. Therefore, we should see continued growth.
Therefore, giving some comfort to the level of investment that we're considering.
I want to jump over to the aero part of Engine Products. Just in thinking about this, when you look at the growth, can you give us a sense of how large you expect the power portion of Engine Products to be as a percentage of your engine business in five years? I know that's hard because the aero side's growing rapidly as well.
Yeah. It's a bit like predicting how big our spares business will be relative to OE, because in recent times, you've actually seen the % increase in spares revenues increase at a higher rate than the OE production. The question is how will that continue? The answer is, it really depends upon the OE growth as well as the build of aircraft, the requirement for engines, the natural recycle of replacement parts, plus also what I call the bubble, which is the fitment of the fleet of engines which have been seeing early life failure for some of those parts. You compare and contrast that to the growth in gas turbines, the large gas turbines, which again, is going to be dictated by the weakest link in the chain, but then the requirement for spares parts.
It's really difficult to handicap each of these individual segments to say, what's the percentage increase in spares, in gas turbines versus OE versus spares in commercial aero, defense aero, and also the OE build. It may not sound the most sophisticated responses to you, but the answer is, maybe I don't sweat it too much because the only thing I know is it's more, and do I really care where the growth comes from? It feels as though it's passing out, am I going to go 20% in this or 25% in that? I don't need to work it out just now.
Well, on the OE aero side, if I go back a couple of years, and we've talked about this a number of times, Howmet used to be viewed primarily as an OE supplier on engines. Obviously, the aftermarket became much more important. Now, Boeing is now looking at going up to 47 a month on the MAX this summer. We'll hear from Kelly later. Where do you stand relative to Boeing in terms of, say, a burn-down in inventory and ultimately aligning with their rate of growth? Obviously, that funnels through GE Aerospace as well.
Yes. Right now, there's not a lot of inventory that's just lying around, either in completed engines nor in parts availability. Pretty much our customers will take everything that we can make in the support of their ramp. If not, then there's sufficient backlog through the MRO shops for spares requirements at the moment. Again, the thing which is not forefront of mind at all is there a demand issue?
With the assumption there's little inventory in the spares chain, there's little inventory in the OE chain, then there's nothing to worry about on engine parts on that side.
That's true for both Boeing and Airbus for LEAP-1A and LEAP-1B?
Yeah. Where we are at the moment is wide-body we expect to show signs of growth coming up hopefully this year, which has been a long time coming, and maybe into next year. Again, as you see, narrow-body is also requiring inputs of parts because Boeing want to produce more, and that'd be great. Airbus also want to produce more, have struggled a little bit recently. There's a well-publicized information regarding the supply of one of the engine manufacturers into Airbus. Again, parts supply. We all know that we're in this changeover period. Last year, we changed over on the LEAP range of engines to the improved, I'll say, generational improvement on the LEAP-1A.
Yeah.
We have yet to make that change and to see that change is coming through on the LEAP-1B. Of course, to date on the GTF Advantage, again, we're producing parts now, but none have yet made it to the outside market. Again, a lot of change and a lot of throughput is required as we bring those changes into being in 2026 and 2027.
Now, on these new blade designs, so how do you manage the timing of the ramp? As you said, sort of the next one that's right in play now is on the GTF Advantage. That ramp, I mean, they just got certification for the engine on the aircraft. When do you ramp up, and how do you manage the changeover from the prior blades to the new ones?
Yeah. It's difficult for us to give precise dates about when changeovers will occur. We saw on the 1A that we were prepared. I think you saw me quote at the end of 2024, we had put in place 500 engine sets of parts on the 1A changeover. If I start with 1B, we're in that build phase, we're producing tools for capacity. We're looking at the changeover dates for production, while also knowing that we're going to continue to provide and manufacture the existing technology. Just for your information, we're also still manufacturing the existing technology on the 1A as well.
Yeah.
As I think you know that when an engine comes in for overhaul, if all the blades are changed, then you can go to a new generation. If only certain of them are, then you can't mix and match.
Right
disc, therefore we supply both new generation and old generation, and the older generation is into the service market. We're going to go through that on the 1B this year. Then for the Advantage, we're going to be increasing production every quarter during the course of this year. When it actually makes its way to the market and where will the market see it first in the OE area or the aftermarket area?
that's not for us to determine. There won't be enough, I'll say, provision of parts to do both at the same time.
Yeah
is our view. I think we're actually going to see a far higher production in 2027 of the Advantage level of parts. Reaching much higher volumes in the second half of 2027, while still providing all of the existing current GTF Advantage parts all the way through.
Because this would also involve, I mean, they have this whole Hot Section Plus program too to do upgrades. You've sort of got normal MRO, that program, and OE.
Yes.
Right. All coming.
That is going to be a very significant increase in requirements for us as we go through this next, let's say, 18 months.
Is it fair to say that on each of these, when you go to the new generation blade, that you would have higher pricing, better margins, and more share?
I never really comment on-
I know you don't want to comment on that right.
on those things. I just loosely refer to it as a higher content-
Yes
because of increased sophistication. if we're going to produce turbine blades that can exist at fundamentally higher temperatures, so these are not extra 100 or 200 degrees Fahrenheit, we're talking about hundreds of degrees of improvement in thermal capabilities. to produce that level of part, it's another generation of sophistication. the way I like to think of it in the Advantage areas are some aspects of the technologies that we developed for the engines for the F-35, as an example. Some of those technologies are being deployed for the Advantage level of turbine.
Yeah.
again, to make sure that there is a significant buffer between what the temperatures the engine may see, because again, obviously a lot of testing has been done, but then there's the real-world application.
Now, I have heard some frustration from your customer universe that maybe because you guys are too good, but that you're sort of the main source here, and that they would love to have more options. We've seen Pratt, they have this whole effort in Asheville where they're working on doing some of their own blades. How do you view the potential threat of new entrants in this market or people insourcing like Pratt's trying to do? What impact, if any, does that have on your thinking?
Well, obviously we need to always think of what the competitor
Yeah
competitor might do. We do keep a fairly close eye on what the capabilities might be in those new areas of potential source. Without displaying the full level of our knowledge about the situation, as these things are not easy to make. If they were, then I guess that you'd have a lot of people doing them. I suspect that we could be sitting here a decade from now and still finding that people might be struggling to produce. The economics of the turbine blade essentially go to the question of yield. The difference between, let's say, getting a 70% yield and a 40% yield is all of the pricing and all of the profit that exists in a turbine blade application.
You've had very strong margin growth. Your EBITDA margins, you've been taking them up close to 300 basis points each year for the past couple years in Engine Products. What's enabling those increases? I think you were at 36% in Q1. Where can you go from here? Because it does seem like you have opportunities you've described that you're very well positioned for.
Well, it's always difficult to talk about where you're going to go, because it would be a forecast for the future. As you know, I've always been very reluctant to comment on what the future might hold by way of margins, because to some degree, to a large degree, things are outside of your direct control. We don't know what inflation rates will be in the second half of this year yet, and therefore, the degree of recovery, and therefore dampening effect that might have on margins, et cetera, or margin growth. I never want to assume a level of knowledge or prescience that could predict the future that accurately. You could say, well, some of it's because I don't feel like I need to do it, and secondly, I think it's a little bit foolish to do that.
I think the most important part of it is as we continue to strive for the improvements in our manufacturing space, and improve our yields, and drive through these improvements in technology, which are very significant in either improving the robustness of engines or if not producing the opportunity for further fuel efficiency, then those are very valuable to the industry. We just want to play a part in that and gain the appropriate value for that.
Well, also still within Engine Products, so defense has also been quite good for you and our assumption is F-35 is probably this biggest single driver there. If we look at F-35, the aftermarkets, the cycles on the F-35 drive a pretty strong aftermarket. Is it fair to think of growth there in some sense proportional to the fleet size in F-35 if we're trying to predict that? </edited_transcript
I actually think it's more than proportional to the fleet size. I hate to use the word exponential, but to some degree it does apply. If you went back and looked at the size of the fleet, let's say in 2021, and then looked at the spares level at that. Now, I don't mean spares packages provided with the OE sets to, let's say, to foreign governments, which that's a feature of it, but spares driven by usage. Our, I will say, loose prediction had been by 2025, that we would see the production of spares for the turbine to exceed the OE production, which is actually what did occur during 2025. When we look forward to, let's say, 2030, so you put another five years of production of 150, 160 F-35s into the market, and so you're looking at, let's say, another 800+ aircraft.
All of those obviously going to require spares and the existing fleet, which has been built from, let's say, the last five years, are going to require spares. My thought at the moment is, without going through exactly what our models predict, because obviously there's also numbers of flying hours, which is something which we don't control. </edited_transcript
Yeah.
Obviously, there's been a lot of flying hours recently given the conflicts that are there. The thought is maybe the spares demand will double again by 2030, and assuming this aircraft is in selling production through the 2030s. I think at the moment through, is it 2038 or '39? </edited_transcript
Yeah. Pretty much through there.
put another 10 years of 150, if it's flat production or who knows exactly what it'll be by 2035. Because we'll be hopefully doing the F-47 and whatever the Navy plane requirements are. all of that will be feeding in as well. my thought is the spares demand is going to continue to grow and be very significant as we go through the 2030s, 2040s, 2050s, 2060s.
Yeah, we don't model the 2060s.
You don't? Yeah, I thought you might. Things that might be beyond-
Yeah
You and I talking on this stage together.
You don't plan to be here on the 2060 conference?
I hadn't thought about it recently, let's say, but it's possible that it might not be the case.
Okay. Well, me too, we'll see.
Yeah.
switching over to fastening systems. you've had some really strong revenue growth, but we've sort of been waiting for this widebody ramp to occur, and it seems like you've had this growth even before we've seen the 787 and A350 growth really move up. What's driving your fasteners growth?
There's been multiple strands to that growth. First of all, we've probably incremented our share in various areas. It's been a little bit because of the SPS fire, which occurred with one of our competitors. There's been a little bit because when we renewed our contract with Airbus this year, again, we took a little bit of share. We're also trying to develop, I would say, new products that we bring through and look to put those on additional things on the aircraft.
When we put a level of technology, which may surprise you if you took us, let's say, without naming the platform exactly, where we've put a new range of fasteners on, let's say, the front part, let's call it the nose area of the aircraft, and then we're marching down each part of the fuselage, then that again is content and value increase to us. We've been trying to do that a lot in our fastener business and seeking to do more of it, and we've actually got many things in development right now.
Has that expansion you're talking about, has that been primarily on narrowbodies?
I would say more narrowbody than widebody. We have some developments for new things in the composite area where we're looking at widebodies today, but in particular for the next generation aircraft as well. We're trying to position ourselves and doing this year and the next couple of years such that to be the, I'll say, selections on anything that might occur in any form of narrowbody, I'll say, changes to come-
Yeah
new aircraft to come.
We're seeing that at Boeing right now, those production rates are starting to go up. A350, it's been a little slow recently, but that should go up rapidly if you look at what Airbus is projecting. That seems like, given that those are higher value fasteners for you, and the volumes are high, should we expect to see a kind of break upward as we see the ramps take off?
I've been thinking for two or three years that we might see, I'll say the widebody-
It's taken a long time
therefore there might be a mix effect. Here we are in 2026, and it hasn't happened to date. I'm not thinking particularly great things for 2026 either. We've seen a recent announcement that maybe the A350 might not increase as much as was thought because of some additional production problems. It's best not to get ahead of yourself, but come the day where Airbus is producing 12 A350s a month, or maybe come the day where Boeing is making in the teens again for the 787, then that will be positive for us. Now, how that growth is going to compare to narrowbody ultimately, who knows? Should they get there.
Yeah.
whatever you decide what the narrowbody production is, these 100, 120, 140 aircraft a month or whatever-
Yeah
numbers you choose, the percentage increase theoretically on widebody should be higher. it's a long time coming. </edited_transcript
Yeah. Boeing, they intend to be at 10 a month by the end of this year on the 787. That one, that growth path seems pretty real right now.
That's not our underlying assumption that we've given-
Okay
for our embedded revenues for this year. Should Boeing produce 10 a month, that'll be absolutely great, look forward to it. I think when we gave our guide for the end of this year, we were thinking maybe we get to, or they get to more like eight a month by the end of the year. Again, that's not something which we have anything. We're just able to respond and support them as they need. They won't be a problem in terms of rate of production coming from Howmet for those fasteners.
Should they be successful in getting there, you're able to support those higher rates?
Yes, I would like to.
Okay.
Yes.
Okay. That's good. again on your margins in Fastening Systems, they were, what, 31.8% in Q1. Again, these have gone steadily up. I know we don't want to predict inflation or anything like that, but what's been helping you take the margins up in Fastening Systems, and what are the things you're looking at that potentially could add to that?
Yeah. I think that one of the things I was most pleased with over the last year, so if you looked at 2025, was if you look at the revenue increase and the volume increase that underpin that, then we were able to essentially do all of that without adding any people whatsoever to the business. The level of throughput that we've been able to achieve has been extraordinary. Some of it's down to automation, some of it's down to introducing newer equipment that can, let's say, collapse the numbers of stages of production into, let's say, going from maybe 8 stages down to 4 stages, as an example. Therefore making that whole production system more efficient. Between, again, some content, some production efficiency, and some price, it's been beneficial.
Now, in terms of how the margin develops in the future, of course, as you know, we're bringing on an acquisition-
Yeah
which we closed on the 6th of April.
Yeah.
when we blend those two together, then obviously we're taking an entity which is more like in that, let's say, 20% margin range, to add that together. that will obviously dampen-
Yeah
those margins. our plan is obviously to bring that up and hopefully continue the improvement. that's what we're seeking to do over the next, let's say 18 months, two years.
On the CAM acquisition, can you talk a little bit about what attracted you to that, and how you expect to integrate it and improve it?
We've had the opportunity of looking at two or three fastener acquisitions in the last year. One we looked at and decided not to proceed. One we decided was not of great interest to us. CAM felt to us as though it was a better property altogether. It gave us the opportunity of not only further increasing and improving our fastener business, but also the adjacencies of fittings and couplings and things which we wanted to increase our revenues significantly in. Part of it, we also thought when we looked at inside their manufacturing operations, that compared to what else we'd seen, it seemed to be of a better order, a base that we could further improve from with some of the manufacturing techniques and investments that Howmet does. That was an opportunity.
Secondly, we wanted to also see what I believe to be the holy grail of doing an acquisition, which is to gain some revenue synergy. We thought that given the scale of the Howmet sales force and contact points in the industry, which is way beyond commercial aerospace, that would give us the opportunity of pulling through some of the CAM products to the customers for more than they were able to. We're optimistic about doing that. We're also optimistic that some of the CAM product that we'll be able to take through our distribution network that we've built. If you go back to something that we did in 2021, which was to create a separate distribution arm for Howmet, is that we've taken that from $50 million to 350 over that period of time.
The thought is that we'll be able to feed some of those CAM products through that distribution capability, whereby we know we have both the manufacturing and also the distribution side of it. That's what we think of, that we can gain the opportunity of selling more through our network and also through our distribution capabilities. Plus obviously, again, can we make further improvements in productivity in the CAM operations?
Now, switching over to Engineered Structures. This is one where I remember a couple years ago, it was one where you talked about that wasn't really your main focus of investment. The returns looked better on the other Engine Products, Fastening Systems. The performance there has steadily improved over the last couple years. Can you take us through the most important growth drivers for that business?
Yeah. I think first of all, I'd like to comment on the margin before I go to growth. Let's call it from 2019, where there'd been an oversupply situation for some of the structural parts into the Lockheed F-35 program. Plus post-COVID, some of the decline in wide body and international travel, it was a tough scenario for that business. I felt that we were doing reasonably well in that scenario demand destruction to hold onto 14% margins. I was quite bold in that I normally don't talk about, as you know, future margin, but I said, "I think this is conceptually a high teens business." As you saw, we broke through and achieved a two at the front of the margin profile for that business in 2025.
I said our mission was to try to hold that, hold onto it, and you've seen we've been able to do that in 2026, and in fact-
Even better than that.
slightly. We're just holding onto it, and feel in a good situation. Thematically, I've been more interested in driving the margin at the expense of revenue. There's been thrifting of product, withdrawal from certain segments, sale of a couple of entities. You've seen sale of a company we did in the U.K. called Wellen. One in the U.S. in March, which was Savannah. Also we've chosen selectively to move out of certainty. In the growing industry, my thought was we can still grow, and you have seen growth, but not at a pace that you would've thought, but it's been a margin focus.
now I feel as though we've done a lot of the heavy lifting towards that, and so we have a business which has a better underlying situation in that I think the growth rate has the opportunity to increase, the margin rate hold or further improve. we've taken this, let's say two or three years to reprofile where that business sits in the grand scheme of things. having a business now in the 20% margin profile and a better future growth pattern to it is one that I increasingly begin to like. it's been heavy lifting and taking some tough choices along the way.
We don't have a lot of time left here, but I wanted to touch on something you mentioned earlier and also on the earnings call. That is opportunities in the missiles area, which is clearly an area of high growth. Where do those fit into your thinking?
Previously, missiles had not been the highest focus area for us. We were probably more interested in, I'll say, the structural fastener part of drones. More recently, we've seen, I'll say, the long-run opportunity where some of the larger missile systems are requiring small turbines now. Certainly for the, I'll say, collaborative combat aircraft, the unmanned aircraft that will fly alongside an F-35 or an F-47, then clearly those are turbine based. We've spent time developing the parts for many of these small turbines that you've heard some engine manufacturers refer to, and trying to make sure that we have the ability to support the ones we choose to support. Far, of the three base engines that we understand which have been selected by the Department of Defense or Department of War, then I think those all feature Howmet parts on them.
it's not revenue for 2026 per se, some development prototypes, but positioning the company to support that segment, and I think it'll show significant growth in the next, let's say three, five, 10 years. I think it's an important thing that we do. More immediately in the missile area, of course, a lot of missiles have been used recently, and so whether it's now that we see an increased demand to replenish some of those, or whether it's for Golden Dome applications. If you think about missiles like the PAC-3 or the Patriot missile or whether it's the THAAD system, then each of those we are looking at significantly increased volume requirements and working that through at the moment. </edited_transcript
that's going to also produce a level of revenue improvement in not necessarily that much this year, but 2027, 2028, 2029 to produce, let's say, replenished stocks and also for Golden Dome. </edited_transcript
Well, to wrap up here, when you put all this together and you think of your guidance to free cash flow of $1.75 billion this year, how should we think about what could take that higher, what might be a risk on that, and how you plan to deploy it?
Well, I think the first order and first priority for us has been to make sure that we can invest for the future growth opportunities. You've seen us take CapEx up from the 300 million level through 400, 500 we're talking about for this year. I think 27 is going to be a higher number still. That really has been the most important thing we've been thinking about in terms of supporting that future organic growth of the company. Beyond that, we've looked at how much we should use by way for share buyback, how much for acquisition, and how do those interplay with each other? What's the relative returns for shareholders of them? At the moment, we feel as though we're able to take the opportunity because when an acquisition comes up, you don't get to choose when they come up.
Sure.
It's what the sellers are willing to sell. We've made two, as you know, the CAM acquisition, the Bruner acquisition, said we'll do those. At the same time, at this point of the year, we're still buying shares back at a higher rate than we did the previous year, so we're able to do that as well. Far we've not had to face any binary choices of one or the other. We were able to do both and both to an increasing extent. We're kicking up CapEx, we've been able to complete acquisitions, we're kicking up the share buyback opportunities, and still supporting a dividend. All of those things are being done. At the moment, we're not trading one off against the other. </edited_transcript
Yeah.
You could have some at the margin, but it's all good.
It's all good. Okay, well John, thank you very much. We'll end it here.
Thank you.
really great to see you.
Nice to see you too. Thank you.