Okay. Good morning. I'm Doug Harned, Bernstein Senior Global Aerospace and Defense Analyst, and really happy to have with us again, Chris Kubasik, Chairman and CEO of L3Harris. With us also is Ken Bedingfield, Chief Financial Officer. I think to start, Ken, you got a couple things you want to say, and then we'll go into fireside chat.
Yeah. Great. Thanks for having us, Doug. We're excited to be here, and I would just want to start and say that today's comments may include forward-looking statements, and those statements involve risks and uncertainties, and I would refer you to our SEC filings for more information on those risks and uncertainties. Thank you.
Great. Chris, if I go back, December 2023, you had, what I thought was a big event, your investor conference in Florida. Since that time, you know, right at that time, Ken joined as CFO. You had two new board members. You set new targets for the company. You were underway integrating Aerojet Rocketdyne. When you look back over the last 18 months, how do you see what's happened there? Has it met your expectations?
Yeah. Thanks. And thank you all for joining, either virtually or here in- person. No, I think as I look back over the past 18 months, I feel much more confident in our 2026 framework today than I did a year ago and 18 months ago. There were a lot of uncertainties, but we've made great progress. We laid out $23 billion of top-line revenue growth. We're on track to get that. I think when you look at some of the tailwinds, whether it's the skinny budget, as we call it, for $26 billion. The fact that there's $150 billion of reconciliation, the fact that Saudi laid out $142 billion, a lot of details to come forward, but there's clearly more tailwinds than headwinds on the revenue growth. I think our strategy and business model is unique.
We're the only company that has no problem being a prime, a sub, or a merchant supplier. I think that gives us a unique opportunity. We're also 20% commercial. You hear a lot about commercial business models. 20% of our business to the Department of Defense is in fact commercial. We can talk more about that. The margins, we've already increased our margins. We have industry leading margins approaching 16%. Said we'd get to 16% by 2026. We're now saying more than that. Ultimately, cash, we have a good pathway to $2.8 billion of free cash flow. So, everything seems to be coming together, rather nicely, in my opinion. LHX Next is the program we laid out to do two things. Number one, to streamline the organization and cut costs.
We set a goal of $1 billion by the end of 2026. As of today, we're right at about $1 billion, and we've committed to $1.2 billion. We're going to do $1.2 billion, maybe more in two years versus three. That is driving the efficiency. The second part is transforming the company to be much more digital, much more timely in getting data into our executives and program managers so they can make decisions.So, very pleased with it. A lot of this is a result of bringing in more and more talent. Of the leadership team of 12, there's only three of us, including me, from the merger, a couple internal promotes, and everybody else, segment presidents, the CTO, the CIO, the General Counsel, LHX NeXt, all came from outside.
So, I get a couple emails a day or a week, probably, to be honest, of people wanting to join L3Harris because they see what they're doing. I think it's one of the most exciting places to work in the industry. And we're getting the best talent we can, and that's contributing to our success.
When you look at that 2026 guide, you know, where do you see the potential for more upside, or where may you see some risk in that?
I'll let Ken do the upside, be cause that's fun and easy. I'd say the only risk that I see is the NASA budget. It's been put out there that NASA is going to be cut. It's a small part of our business, specifically the Artemis program where we have some propulsion. It's 1% or so of our revenue. But again, there isn't a lot of support in Congress to produce the NASA budget or that program specifically, but NASA is probably the only little headwind that we're watching. Everything else is looking pretty good. You want to get the highlights?
Sure. Yeah.
You know, we do get some questions, Doug, about the revenue target in particular. Let me just address that head-on and say, you know, in 2025, there were a few things that had kinda slid a little bit.So, o n F-35, the TR-3 development was ramping down, and the production levels did not quite offset the revenue decline that came out of the development. In 2026, that will kind of kick in, and we will see that getting back to growth. There were a couple of space opportunities that, given, I think, some budgetary issues with the customer, had kind of slid into 2026.
Now, with Golden Dome and the importance of space, we've seen a few of those slide back into 2025, and we see that give some growth to our space business in 2026. And then, quite frankly, I would say, Aerojet Rocketdyne is really off and starting to climb the ramp to hit the capacity levels that are needed. I think there's, you know, probably a decades-long run of tactical solid rocket motors that we need to deliver. You saw Aerojet Rocketdyne had 9% growth in the first quarter. That was a short 12-week quarter, as well. We see that continue to climb the ramp.
If you look at a large solid rocket motor market outside of the tactical, you know, there's probably a 20- to 30-year run for large solid rocket motors between Sentinel, Next Generation Interceptor, Glide Phase Interceptor, Nike-Zeus, and some classified work. I think there's significant growth that comes out of that business as well. You know, from an upside perspective, just at the end of the first quarter, we announced a significant classified award. There was an international ISR award. If we can get a couple opportunities within Golden Dome to hit, I think $23 billion becomes a number that's, you know, relatively easy for us to accomplish. I think we've got a number of levers to get there.
I know there's some questions of, you know, what's the growth rate in 2026. I would say, you know, we're busy working in 2025 to try to get, you know, ahead of midpoint of guidance from a revenue perspective to, you know, to buy down that growth rate a bit. My feeling is, you know, as I look at the $23 billion in revenue in 2026, I feel more confident about it today than I did yesterday. And I feel a heck of a lot more confident than I did at the end of 2024, and certainly when we set the target at investor day back in December of 2023. I think there's a number of upsides that give us opportunity.
You know, growth is exciting, but there's not a lot of companies that can grow the top line while expanding margins and while delivering free cash flow growth as well. You know, people often ask us about Golden Dome. How much investment is that gonna take? Well, It is, you know, great that we were investing to become a prime in space, and in particular, investing to become a prime in space in missile defense, missile tracking, and missile warning. A lot of those investments are already behind us. We've put $100 million into Fort Wayne, Indiana. You may have seen in the Oval Office announcement, Fort Wayne, our facility in Fort Wayne in particular was called out as a facility where much of this capability would be produced.
We have a final integration facility in Palm Bay, Florida, where we've invested in, you know, final assembly and final integration and test production lines there as well. We are largely ready to go, address the Golden Dome opportunity, especially at the space tracking layer. I think there are some acceleration and extension opportunities there at Aerojet Rocketdyne as well. I think it's exciting. I think we've got a number of levers and a number of opportunities to make sure that we hit that $23 billion, at least that $23 billion, and continue with our margin expansion. I think we've had, you know, seven or eight quarters of margin expansion, 10 quarters of growth, and, again, you know, continuing on that path of free cash flow growth as well.
I'll just chime in. I have two quick thoughts. International as well. We've always had, you know, 21%-22% of our business international. I think there's great opportunities there as well, especially in Europe and NATO, where they've been increasing their budget. I know they like to support their indigenous supply chain, which is fine, but there's more than enough work. We're seeing significant wins already this year in the tactical communications, software-defined radios networks. Billion-dollar win earlier this year in the Netherlands. They call it Netherlands Foxtrot $0.5 in Germany, believe it or not. I think we call that the DILBO. Does that stand for?
Dan, Digital Land Based Organization, I think.
In the checks recently, we have actually are winning there. I think a key indicator to look at will be the book-to-bill metric, you know, as the year progresses, because we have a continuing resolution. There are things that are happening in the Pentagon and you know, I'm not a big fan of looking at book-to-bill quarter to quarter, but I think second quarter will be a good indicator. We're trying to get to, you know, a 1.5, not 105, but 1.5 book-to-bill in Q2, which again gives us more backlog and confidence. Ultimately, it comes down to the portfolio. We've been very active over the last several years of trying to put the portfolio in place where the future of warfare is.
You know, it's easy to just kinda status quo, keep what you have, but we've divested about $3 billion of revenue where we thought these assets were non-core, there was a better owner. We purchased, amazingly, about $3 billion of revenue as well. These are in markets that are growing, that are the key to the future of warfare and aligned with the National Defense Strategy. You have to have the right portfolio to grow, and I believe we have the best portfolio in the industry aligned with the National Defense Strategy, current threats and the growth markets going forward.
You know, you mentioned Golden Dome, which obviously is a big, big topic these days, very complex, conceptually. When you think about it, and I think about other complex systems that have been done where you're looking at things like whether it's JADC2, there was Future Combat System, JITRs. There have been all kinds of architectures for how you do these. When you think of this, you know, you had sort of a company-led one with FCS. You've had national team leadership on JITRs, sort of had free-for-all on JADC2, I would say. You know, when you think about how this technical strategy should be architected and how the acquisition strategy should be done, what are your thoughts on that?
Yeah. First of all, I look at it as a portfolio of different programs and different products. So, you know, JADC2, we're probably gonna talk about that 'cause it's hard to actually understand what that was. You know, there never was that $1 billion RFP to JADC2 something, right? It was a concept connectivity. Golden Dome has actual tangible assets. There's a space side, which I'll talk about, and then there's an interceptor side that I'll ask Ken to talk about. You have these assets in space called sensors. There's the tracking layer. There's the transport layer to communicate. You know, they have something called the custody layer. Then you have the ability to shoot down incoming missiles or hypersonic missiles.So, I think when you look at this, you know, it's gonna be several different programs, many of which already technology exists.
We've been pretty outspoken, you know, relative to our capabilities. In the executive order that the President signed on Golden Dome, there were eight major streams. Seven said, "Develop, develop, develop," and one said, "Accelerate HBTSS," which is the Hypersonic Ballistic Tracking Space Sensor, which we have in orbit that works. I believe we've won this competition. The executive order says, "Accelerate it." We've been pretty forward-leaning in saying sooner we get a contract, say, like in the next month, we can actually build and launch 40 satellites while Trump is still President and provide coverage over the U.S. You know, this will be a couple billion-dollar opportunity.
You know, we've been pretty aggressive in pushing and saying, you know, "Give us, give us the contract," you know, or, "If you wanna put out an RFP, put out an RFP." If we wanna go fast and the threat is China, China, China, I think this is the perfect example to show, you know, what this administration is trying to do and going faster. You know, you'll hear more about the SDA's Tranche 3 contract where we're the only company to have won Tranche 0, Tranche 1, Tranche 2. Tranche 3 is about 18 or maybe more satellites. Again, about a $1 billion opportunity. We just turned in the proposal last week. That's another part of the architecture. I think, like anything, we just need to get these assets up. Ultimately, you gotta figure out how to communicate and the command and control piece.
I think there'll be a lot of different companies, each having specific roles. You know, they've appointed General Gutlein to lead this effort. He'll be a direct report right into the Deputy Secretary of Defense, Secretary Feinberg, which is very unusual. It's not gonna be caught down in the layers of bureaucracy. This shows the significance. The money's out there. You know, you keep talking about $25 billion this year, $175 billion over three years. It's gonna be there as part of the process. There's a requirement. There's presidential support. There's congressional support. We have the capability. That's just the space piece. On the interceptor, which is the next piece, you can see 'em. You can track 'em. You gotta shoot 'em down.
I think we're in really good position as a result of mainly Aerojet, but some other capabilities.
Yeah. From an interceptor perspective, you know, I would say we have not just propulsion capability, but , we've got, I would say, world-class technology and capability around divert and attitude control and how do you get an interceptor precisely where it needs to be essentially to hit a bullet with a bullet. In my view, we've kind run the tables on interceptor programs. You know, we're on THAAD. We're on Standard Missile. We're on PAC-3. We won significant position on Next Generation Interceptor and Glide Phase Interceptor. I think this does a number of things. One, it firms up the interceptor programs. I think it extends some. It adds volume to some. I think there's some request to potentially accelerate some of the development of Next Generation Interceptor and potentially even accelerate and add more volume to low-rate production.
You know, I again, I think we've got significant capability there. That's the ground-based interceptors. There's obviously in Golden Dome a concept of space-based interceptors as well. You know, as we look and evaluate that opportunity, I think between our space business, that is now a prime in, you know, space vehicles, and our Aerojet Rocketdyne business with Propulsion Divert and Attitude Control, and then, you know, throw in IMS and CS in terms of, you know, communications, the data links, things like that, I think we've got a real opportunity to really think about how we would play. Again, Chris mentioned, you know, we're the one company that can prime, that can sub, that can merge and supply. I think there's some wide open space for us to think about where we really fit into that space-based interceptor opportunity.
Chris, at the beginning, you mentioned the 20% commercial that you do. You know, certainly, you know, communication systems, you're able to get high margins using, basically on, on your own IP. You tend to, you've tended historically to invest more in R&D yourselves than anybody else, which has allowed you to do that. I guess two things here. You know, there's been a big emphasis, by the administration talking about using, more commercial-type processes. At the same time, you face this, so have others, when you go to fixed-price development contracts, many times those do not turn out very well. How do you think about navigating sort of between the advantages of fixed-price commercial contracting versus the risks on some of these development programs?
Great, great question. Yeah, I wanna emphasize this commercial business model is something we've been doing for 20 years. There's a lot of new entrants coming into this market. They talk about being commercial. You know, I've been, as well as the team, we've been pretty outspoken. If, you know, there's two ways to go. We have to have a level playing field. If we like commercial in the DoD, which I think makes perfect sense to go faster, you know, we should set a goal of 30%, 40%, 50% of the defense acquisitions should be commercial. You know, let's embrace this and go quickly. This deals with doing away with all these regulations and bureaucracy and, you know, there's cost accounting standards, which is a separate set of books. There's cost and pricing data.
If there are two companies bidding on something like night vision goggles, I mean, I honestly use this as a simple example. You know, we're working on lot four, which means this is like the fourth year. I don't understand how I can't get a one-page RFP that just says, "I want 10,000 night vision goggles," identical to last year, like the same thing. Don't change the color. Don't make it heavier. Don't change the Velcro. The same exact thing. Give me prices for $10,000, $9,000, $8,000, $7,000. The other guy will do the same. We can turn this in a day. Give us a week if you want. We turn in a two-page proposal. Here are the prices. I know what these cost. I know what I wanna sell them for.
You know, then in this case, the Army, you know, they always do a split buy, buy $6,000, $7,000, $8,000 of mine and $3,000, $4,000 of the other guys, and let's get started in two weeks. You know? I could be making 80% margin. I could be losing money. It's arguably none of your business. It's a commercial business model. It's competitive advantages. The price will be the price. The company that's more efficient and drives down their cost, whatever, you know, can make their own business decisions. That's what we need to get to. This should be a couple-week process. To your question, you know, on the fixed-price development, the nice thing also about commercial business models, say on the radios, is you design it and you define the capability.
You know, there's been studies going back decades and everybody like me comes up and talks about the requirement. There's just so many requirements. You know, there was a recent contract for a, I'll just say, a relatively simple thing. Trust me. It was simple and probably is gonna cost $7,000 or $8,000 to make. That's kinda simple. The proposal came out or the RFP 190 requirements. Like, I don't wanna get into details on this one yet 'cause it's still competitive. But how can you come up with 190 requirements for a $7,000? Like, it should weigh this much. It should go this fast or be this far. Like, you can come up with five. In a commercial business model, it's like, "Hey, I have this software-defined radio. Here it is. Do you wanna buy it?" Right? And they say, "Oh, can you do this?
Can you do that?" No. This is what I have. It takes the discipline. This is better than anything else in the world. It costs this much. Do you wanna buy it? Yes or no? You buy it. Next time, you know, we can spend our own R&D, upgrade it however we want, but we control the requirements. Right? You do not get an RFP on a commercial item necessarily. That is how we do it. The fixed-price contracts, I think where everybody has gotten in trouble, two things. You know, the entire industry, which is water under the bridge. We absorbed the whole impact of COVID, right, and the inflation and supply chain. Nobody got a penny from anyone in the government, notwithstanding prior administrations talking about it, you know, whatever they call this stuff, 36,10, all these. There was never any money.
Nobody got an adjustment. We just all, you know, took a hit as a result of it. Some took bigger hits. We took smaller hits. We still had our numbers. And then it's the options. That's where we've been pretty outspoken and say, "We are not gonna bid a fixed-price development program that wants me to price options." You know, we have the ability to calculate and do parametric modeling. You know, I can build this thing for $100 million. I'm not gonna give you a price for 100 of these in 2026 and 200 in 2027 and 300 in 2028. I haven't even built the thing. We're not gonna, we're not gonna, it's irresponsible for the government to ask for fixed-price options when something hasn't been developed. We are not gonna bid it.
More of industry is not gonna bid it. You know, that's how I think we control it. Look, we've been able to turn around our negative EACs. We have positive estimates to complete the last several quarters. Look, it's tough stuff that we're doing. We take $20 million-$30 million charges here and there, but we find a way to cover it. We find a way to hit our numbers. So far, knock on wood, we haven't had to deal with $100 million, $1 billion charges. You know, I think that's a result of the discipline and the process we have in place.
If we turn now to the center of a lot of your commercial contracts, communication systems. When you look at the outlook for radios, and we've talked about this before, can you describe when you're providing radios to U.S., to Army, Marines, you know, how far along are we in fully outfitting what's needed in those services?
Yeah. This is called the modernization, you know, mainly for the Army, the Marines to a lesser degree. As of, you know, a few weeks ago, it's about 40%. You know, we see pretty good visibility, at least through 2028 here in the U.S., to get these software-defined radios out there. The beauty is they're software-defined, which means as new threats have evolved, especially switching to Ukraine, we're able to identify those threats, find a countermeasure, if you will, and then update the software through the radio. This business has changed. You know, going back a decade, it was always focused on the hardware, radio, radio, radio. These are software-defined. The radio is just, you know, the installed base. The real secret sauce is in the software, the waveforms, and the ability to update it.
You know, we have the largest library of waveforms. You'll hear things, you know, everybody will say, "There's our resilient." When I was in the Pentagon recently, I said, you know, it'd be helpful if you guys could define what resilient is because everyone like me you're gonna meet with is gonna say they have a resilient system. This is a technical thing that's pretty significant. You do not want to emit RF, you do not want to be jammed. You want to be able to communicate in a secure environment. I think our technology has proven that we have the resilient networks, the resilient software-defined radio. So, 40% more to go for the U.S.
I mean, you've, on the handheld, you've been split with the European supplier as well. How do you view that competition? I'd also just throw in, you mentioned some of the European wins you've had with radios. Can you talk about sort of the buy European move today and if there are any implications for you on this?
Yeah. In the U.S., you know, and this is the beauty of the commercial business model, is there is an annual competition each and every year. I used the night vision goggle example earlier, which is a split buy. The same thing happens in the U.S. for radios, both handheld and manpack. Every year, you know, you get the opportunity to bid for a certain amount. You know, the winner sometimes gets 70%, 80%, 60%, you know, the quote loser, which is not really losing too bad, gets the other piece. Even though it is commercial, it is not a monopoly. It is not sole source. There is an annual competition between two companies. Or if someone else develops a radio, three companies. So far, it is generally two.
On the European side, what we're seeing is NATO is increasing their budgets, right? In many cases, the European countries are doubling their defense spending. Ultimately, you know, it's about interoperability, the importance of communication. You know, when you're trying to protect your country, you want the best technology available. I think this would show that L3Harris has the best technology when it comes to radios and networks. Otherwise, Netherlands and Germany and the Czechs and Poland and other countries would not be buying our stuff. It allows for interoperability. They have their own indigenous capabilities. Those countries, I think they're using that, you know, buying land vehicles and other things. If you double your budget, there's more than enough money to buy the best U.S. capability and support your own indigenous industrial base. That's what we're seeing.
These are orders that we booked. Not speculation. It's happening. There'll be more, between now and the end of the year.
When you think about this business, so you're describing 40% along outfitting the U.S. forces, and clearly have farther to go with opportunities in Europe. On top of it, you've talked about the ability to do software upgrades with new waveforms. How should we think about this in terms of growth over the next five years?
Yeah. I think at least at the top line, we're looking at mid-single-digit growth. We're looking at margin expansion, a lot of that driven by the waveforms. We changed our strategy a few years ago. A lot of the companies, including ourselves, would only have their waveforms on their own hardware. We've now taken the approach to sell to the military or international customers our waveforms that they could then use on other people's hardware. You know, the vision we have is, hey, we win 70% of the hardware with our waveforms. Someone else gets 30%, and then they license waveforms from us to put on those radios. You know, we're getting close to getting a couple of those across the line.
That would be a huge change in our strategy and drive even more margin, more cash, and more profitability.
Because that's one of the things that, you know, I think's particularly interesting here is you're doing 25% margins in this in CS right now. When you look at the opportunities you're talking about, reducing costs on commercially structured contracts, more international business, additional waveforms, can you give us a sense on where you could go beyond that 25%?
Yeah. Let me jump in on that, Doug, because, you know, it's important to think of the CS business beyond just tactical radios. I mean, TCOM is the biggest business within communication systems, but we also have BCS out in Salt Lake that's had some real significant wins. In particular, we were successful on the Next Gen Jammer program. And that's, you know, a three-year development program with the Navy. That development likely will be, you know, significantly below that 25% kind of segment margin, but it's very important work that we believe can lead to billions of dollars of production opportunity for jamming pods as we look out several years post that development into low rate and ultimately full rate production. We have, you know, a growing night vision business as well as a solid, you know, public safety radio business as well.
Yes, TCOM has opportunity to run, and I think the other businesses do as well. As much as anything, it'll likely be driven by mix across the segment. I do think there's opportunity for us to see continued margin expansion at CS. Even within TCOM, some of it is how many domestic radios versus international radios are we able to deliver. I think they've done a great job of making some investments in their production lines to provide some flexibility on what they're able to deliver from an international, a U.S. Army, Marine Corps, radio, to make sure that we're both hitting customer needs and milestones as well as able to kind of keep that margin profile as we see it. Clearly a growing business.
I think CS will be a solid grower as we look forward. I think there is certainly opportunity to maintain that and potentially expand that margin profile.
I'll say, I could see CS being a little, a little more lumpy. We're just trying to go fast and get these capabilities into the war fighter's hands. In some cases, we can get a contract, and because of our inventory and commercial business model, we could literally deliver in days or the same week. You know, again, historically, it was what it was. We probably had too many people, you know, trying to keep a smooth margin profile at a quarter-to-quarter basis, you know, and it'd be like, "Oh, we need to deliver more domestic radios last week of the quarter because we wanna tamp down the margin.
In the next quarter, when we do it, and I'm like, "Let's just get this stuff out the door." You know, some quarters we'll have, you know, 100 or 200 basis points higher, and the next quarter could be down. When you look at it over the year, we're gonna see margin growth. You know, we look at this as a long-cycle business, even though those are short-cycle. Let's just get the product out the door as quick as we can, get as much revenue, cash in the door. If there's a little bit of lumpiness quarter to quarter, I could care less, you know, as long as the yearly trend is positive, which it will be. That's the way we wanna run the business.
If we jump over to space and airborne. You talked a little bit about the op, particularly about Golden Dome opportunities. Also, yeah, you're on all three tranches of the tracking layer so far, with the SDA. When you look at the SDA work you're doing, I mean, how large can this become? I mean, that's one part of what's going on in space today. You know, how big is that?
Oh, I think, yeah, I mentioned these SDA contracts are about $1 billion each. You know, they tend to take, say, three years. So, you know, think of a $1 billion spread over three years. They're gonna buy 54 satellites right now. You know, the plan is to use three companies at 18 a piece is what they've done. You know, at some point, I think the DoD is gonna focus more and more on rewarding those contractors that are delivering, rewarding those contractors that are innovating. You know, if someone's performing and others aren't for whatever reason, we've had discussions as to, you know, maybe give someone 36 contracts or 36 satellites like us specifically. You know, 'cause again, we're performing. We're on schedule. It's nobody's, you know, others aren't. It is what it is.
I mean, we're not perfect, trust me. And there's things we don't do well. But when we're doing things well and you need it, why don't you give me 36 satellites? Give someone else 18, right? So that's kinda the mindset. I talked about this HBTSS, which is coming out of the Missile Defense Agency, you know, who ultimately gets it. But, you know, 40 satellites is, you know, $2 billion-$2.5 billion again over three or four years, right? Those are the types of things that can significantly, significantly move the needle. Once you have these constellations up, they have a certain life, you know, which is measured in single digits. Then you have to continually replenish those.
It's that type of business model that, you know, gives you a lot of visibility, a lot of annuity. At some point, when these things are up and running, you know, everybody kinda falls into their niche. You know, I think there'll just be less and less competition. There'll clearly be a leader in tracking. There'll be a leader in transport. You know, once you have that incumbency, an occasional competition will make sense. If you look at the major defense acquisition programs, last time I was looking at them, over 60% are sole source. You know, once we become known as the tracking layer company, then, you know, we should go through the normal process and continue to populate.
Maybe it turns out to be a split buy like the radios and night vision. There are two of us. They want 54 in 2026. You price them, and someone gets 30, someone gets 24, both guys get 27. It does not matter to me. That is where I think we need to go.
One of the things that I think is so interesting about this is that the replenishment point you make, if you're looking at sort of five-year lifetimes as opposed to, like, 20, and this becomes a production line, which, you know, I'm a senior one in Florida. This suggests that there's potential for higher margin here than we've gotten on traditional, more exquisite space programs. Is that, do you see it that way?
I absolutely see it that way. Again, I made the comment about having a strategy, having a portfolio. At the date of our merger, which was six years ago, and someday I'll stop talking about it, we had no satellites in orbit, right? This was a strategic decision to prime, you know, satellites because we saw that we had the payload, right? There is a payload in the bus. Payload is the value. We should be priming. We are bus- agnostic. We will use different people's buses. They are all out there. Depending on the mission, we, you know, we use different companies' buses. Now you see a multi-billion-dollar space business where we are doing more and more prime work. Admittedly, those first couple programs for SDA were not very profitable, low single digits.
You know, we're building it up and investing. Yeah, we'll be double-digit margin as we should be for all these satellite programs.
At the same time, you've got a, you've had a couple fixed-price classified programs in space that you've taken negative adjustments on. Can you talk about that? Are we, literally like?
Absolutely. That sounds like a great, great question for our CFO. I mean,
Okay.
I kinda take the positive EACs and Ken books the negative EACs.
Right.
What are you doing?
I don't know. You gave him some positive stuff earlier, so.
Yeah. So look, you know, we take on challenging work, for sure. And we do have a couple programs on the classified side that are, you know, technically challenging, but they're very important, not just for our customer, but I think also for the future opportunity that we see to continue to produce these units down the road. We're working through some technical challenges. We have seen a few, you know, negative EACs. I mean, they're, you know, not hugely material, $10 million here, $50 million there on a couple of programs. You know, we manage it. We offset. We find ways to drive positive EACs in other areas. We meet our commitments. That's what we've been focused on since investor day is, you know, laying out what we're gonna do and go off and do it.
You know, in a complex business where we're solving hard challenges, you're gonna run into some issues. You know, having been in the classified spaces and understanding what we're working on is very important. I think we now know, you know, what has to happen. I think we're probably dealing with a manageable risk as we look forward, some number of months of schedule risk largely at this point in time. I think we kinda understand what the risk is. We've got it bound. We've got it, I think, into our forecast and guidance, and we'll be able to move forward. Maybe more importantly, I think we've got a very meaningful franchise as we look forward to future production levels. You know, we deal with challenges.
We work through them. We have great engineers. We have great teams that support them in getting through, getting through it. I think it's exciting. You know, we're largely managing it, I think, successfully.
Yeah. Some of these go back seven or eight years, right? It's the whole legacy issue, the cost of the supply chain, COVID. The reality is it's a change in culture and mindset. This industry was generally a cost-plus space mindset. The customer was cost-plus. Everybody wakes up and says, "Let's go fixed price." Sounds easy, but it takes a behavioral change both from the customer and from industry. All these have different industry players on it, you know, and you just have to get used to that, right? You have a fixed-price contract. You don't actually get to make changes.
You make changes, you pay more money, you know, and you just kind have to get that in the, in the DNA. It sounds easy and obvious, but, you know, having been in the industry a long time, it's amazing how many people agree to make changes without getting paid or change the schedule, more importantly, right? There's gonna be more and more focus on a sense of urgency and deliver on time. I'm happy to sign a fixed-price contract. If you wanna add something for $10 million, give me $10 million. More importantly, this thing is now getting delivered in January of 2029, not November of 2028. That's the wake-up call, right? You know, we can get paid and made financial. If you really want this thing, stop making changes, you know?
That's got the mindset that both sides need to focus on. I think we're getting there. It takes years to get that figured out.
Yeah. And the changes have been the bane of the existence on these fixed-price programs, right? I mean, it's, so presumably now, to your earlier points on fixed-price contracting, you're gonna be looking at these quite differently than you did back when these were first negotiated.
Yeah. I'll just say, you know, to beat the HBTSS horse, like, there's no non-recurring. We've launched it. It works. You know, if and when we get this contract or an RFP, RFI, whatever they give us, you know, we are aligned to say, "Just human nature, I guarantee there'll be a change." We'll say, "No. It already works. You love it. It's providing data to, very, on a daily basis, to government agencies that need it. Why would you change it?" Get these 40 launched. Let's protect the U.S. ASAP. In the next one, if you want, but it's just gonna be that natural desire to stop asking, you know, for more and more stuff. You know, you want to change the resolution. Our guys will just naturally say, "We can do that." Ken and I and the team will say, "No. No.
Yeah.
You know? It is like, "Well, that will not take too long. It is just a month and $4 million." I guarantee it will be 6 months and $10 million, you know, and then you will have to test it. You just cannot, you know, allow that. At least you have the debate with the customer saying, "Are you sure you want this?" We have been submitting proposals, you know, over the last year with multiple, multiple bids. I will just tell you that. They will ask for something. We will give them something. Then we will throw in one or two alternatives and say, "Or we can do this for this price, or we can do this for that price." You know, it kind of shocks the system a little bit. Like, well, which one should we read? All three? Like, well, you normally do not submit three.
We can do what we want. There is no rule that says I cannot put in three. I can give you a bid for 18 satellites, 36 satellites, and 54 as an example. You know, multiple choice. What do you want? I want you to pick 54. You are probably gonna pick 18. We will split the difference.
Okay. So let's go over to IMS.
All right.
IMS, back at the time of that investor conference, there were a lot of issues. There were substantial negative EACs. You made leadership changes there. Since then, we've seen much better performance, particularly in the ISR universe. Can you talk about what's gone on there, what's allowed you to have this stronger performance and where you're headed?
Yeah. You know, a lot of this is burning off legacy stuff, as I said. I know it gets old, and we're in 2025, so it's pretty much over. When you have all these fixed-price contracts and you have, at that time, we probably had almost $30 billion of backlog, probably $10 billion in IMS, you know, these prices are fixed. The supply chain was fragile. All the stuff you hear, nobody likes to talk about it. I don't like to hear it anymore, but we had to absorb that. New leadership. We brought in more leaders. I'm telling you, it's all about leadership. We are getting so much talent from the industry that wanna come and join L3Harris. We're taking best practices.
Like I mentioned, my leadership team, we have hired someone from probably every single prime at some point or another as a direct report to me. They bring people in throughout the system. I think it is the leadership. It is the process. It is better bidding discipline. You know, I think the workforce down in the ISR, mainly in Texas, is very patriotic. You know, some of the prior investments we have made in Armed Overwatch, you know, we are the leader in business jets. Again, we are business jet- agnostic. We use Gulfstream. We use Bombardier. We use Air Tractor. We use King Air. It is all about the mission. What do you want as a customer? We pick the best platform based on endurance and altitude and other items, right? We do not have our own airplane that we are trying to sell.
You know, you've heard me talk about Armed Overwatch. It's a crop duster. I mean, we actually have a crop duster that can carry more weapons and sensors than probably multi-hundred million dollar airplanes because, you know, I think it carries 10,000 lbs of stuff. Now, again, it's a single prop coming at you, but there are countries that need it. You know, Africa is a big market, some parts of the Mid East. You're probably not gonna fly a crop duster to China. You know, we go all the way from Rivet joints to business jets to crop dusters and everything in between.
One thing you've talked about with IMS has been more international opportunities there. Can you describe what you see as how that international share is likely to evolve over the next few years?
Yeah. I think we're about 30% international. These are big lumpy orders. I think historically, you know, it's always hard to get those booked in the time that you want. When we see the interoperability between what we do with Compass Call, what we do in Australia, what we do with some European countries, there's some Mideast countries, you know, once you get this technology out here, in this case, the U.S. Air Force uses it, you know, it allows our allies to leverage those prior investments and technologies. You know, business jets for a lot of these small to mid-sized countries can provide the coverage for the ISR they need.
Yeah. I think there's also some AUKUS volume and opportunity if you look at the maritime business around, you know, U.K. and Australia submarines as well that provide some international opportunity certainly in the ISR business. If you look at WESCAM and the electro-optic infrared sensors, certainly significant international opportunity there. A lot of international opportunity at IMS. It is a growth area. There's, you know, that's where we booked the international award in April, just after the first quarter. Chris is right. It takes some time to get some of these things, in particular some of the big opportunities. There are some multi-billion dollar ISR opportunities out there. It takes some time, but it's a worthwhile investment. I think once we get one of those dominoes to fall, more and more will start to fall.
You know, we're pursuing that international market pretty aggressively at IMS. It's not just in ISR. There's some other, I'll say kind component opportunities in maritime with some of our allies as well.
I want to jump over to your other job, Ken, which is Aerojet Rocketdyne. No question, you talked about it before, no question, it's very high demand. But, you know, this has been a turnaround since you took it over. I mean, there were customers complaining. It sounds like people are much throughput, the output's getting much better now from at least what we understand. Can you talk about how that turnaround is going? Can you get sort of 12%- plus sustainable margins there? How are you looking at Aerojet Rocketdyne right now?
Sure. Yeah. I mean, first of all, I'm thrilled to be, you know, leading this team. It really is a great team, you know, top to bottom. I think we've got just a fantastic team at Aerojet Rocketdyne. And, you know, the business probably just wasn't invested in as much as it needed to be over the last few years. And, you know, it was working through, you know, trying to sell itself. It was working through, you know, a proxy battle. I think there were just a number of distractions. Once we brought it into the L3Harris portfolio, it was really just a focus on we needed to deliver for our customers, and then we need to deliver on the business plan that we set out at the time of acquisition. That's what we're often doing.
The customer, I think, recognized that there was some under-investment in the supply base within Solid Rocket Motors. We received some money from the Defense Procurement Act to invest in facilities, invest in production lines. We've allocated a fair amount of capital from our CapEx budgets into Aerojet Rocketdyne as well. We've been deploying that quickly. I think ultimately, Doug, when some of these facilities come online, end of 2025, early 2026, we'll really start to see that capacity kick in. It's a great business. I think we're making it even better. Yes, absolutely has opportunity for sustained greater than 12% margins as we look forward while we're driving significant growth. Again, not just in missiles, but an important space propulsion business. You know, we're working through some of the NASA budget challenges that Chris mentioned, but there are other opportunities.
We've, you know, been solidifying backlog for RL10, which is, you know, probably the workhorse of second stage space propulsion engines. And we're excited about the long production run we see in front of us for that as well.
I know we're pretty much out of time here, but perhaps, Chris, you could just finish up by telling us what are you gonna focus on the next 12 months?
All right. That's a good question. I'll start, you know, I'm chairman of the board of directors. So, you know, I'll say all of our LHX NeXt, it's actually applied to our board. We've cut our committee structures by 40%. We added a couple directors, but we've also had a couple retire. So we streamlined that process. Probably in the next 12 months, try to find another sitting or recently retired CEO to add to our board. I spent a lot of time on LHX NeXt, not only the cost, but more importantly, the transformation. I truly believe, you know, as we work more closely with partners like Palantir and such, the AI capability, the digitization is gonna be huge. Spent a lot of time with customers, both Congress and in the Pentagon and out in the field.
I think it's, you know, critical to show them, to listen, to understand. And I, again, I looked at our portfolio on where we are. I mean, a lot of that comes from listening to the customer, understanding the National Defense Strategy. Spent a lot of time on talent. I talked about my team, you know, continuing to upgrade throughout the company, continuing to develop talent. And then, of course, you know, being a public company, I'd like to hang out here in New York and meet with shareholders and analysts and try to communicate our story and our focus on long-term growth and such. You know, that's kinda what I do. I have a great team and a supportive board. You know, I think I just leave you with the message, you know, nobody's perfect.
We have a strategy. We're executing. We're not just sitting here on our laurels. We look back on the last five years, last three years. We're buying companies. We're selling companies. We have partnerships with over 70 different companies. We own parts of 40 of those companies. We've announced our partnership with Palantir, you know, to bring them into the AI, both internally and externally. We're talking with Anduril and seeing what we can do with them. You know, we are agnostic to platforms. We love partnerships. Ken and I've said several times, I'll prime, I'll sub, I'll merchant supply. We're focused on the margins. We're focused on cash, and we're focused on deploying it and returning it to shareholders.
You know, it's been a lumpy couple of years, but I think the last 18 months, maybe two years, you can see everything falling into place, a lot of momentum. We're excited about the future. Thank you.
Great. Chris and Ken, thank you very much for joining us.