All right. Good morning, everybody. Next up, we've got L3Harris. We have Michelle Turner, CFO, and Ed Zoiss, who runs SAS segment. Thank you both for joining us. I think to kick it off, Michelle, you got some opening remarks?
Yep, absolutely. Good morning, everybody. Thanks for joining today. I'm an energy person, so I appreciate if you are looking at me and giving me energy back, particularly the people in the back row that are trying to hide. I appreciate that your eyes are up and now focused on me now, so thank you for that. Thank you for joining us today. I'm excited to be here with my teammate, as Matt mentioned, Ed Zoiss, the President of our Space and Airborne Systems business.
We're excited to be here to represent all the great work that's happening across L3Harris. Before we dive into the presentation, though, I will remind you that this presentation is being webcast and recorded.
Just a reminder, in terms of visiting our safe harbor provision, in terms of uncertainties and risks, our IR material has some disclosures related to that, along with our SEC filings. For those that are a little unfamiliar with L3Harris, in the room, raise your hand. How many are familiar with the company? Okay, I'm gonna share a little bit in terms of our strategy, the journey that we're on, along with why we're excited to be here today and where we're at in terms of our evolution.
We truly are a four-year-old company, so a bit in our infancies. L3 and Harris came about in terms of a merger in 2019, and so we are very much in the evolution to who we are gonna become. Our strategy is a simple one on paper, but very powerful in terms of execution.
It's to be the trusted disruptor in the defense industry. Seems pretty simple, right? What does that mean? Trusted. Trusted in terms of having long legacies within the defense industry. Both L3 and Harris have decades of history behind them in terms of our heritage and our lineage, successfully supporting the critical missions of our DoD customers. We have 46,000 employees who are incredibly patriotic.
Many of them are veterans themselves, they come to work every day, super excited to support that mission in terms of ensuring that our war fighters are protected. That's the trusted part. That's consistent with what you see in the rest of the industry, and it's consistent with a lot of our peers. What's different about us, what differentiates us, is the disruptor part. The disruptor means that we are what we call innovation agnostic.
That means we are open to innovation regardless of where it comes from, regardless of where it's sourced. That could be through R&D investment, investing in our own technologies, like many other companies do. It could also be in terms of partnerships with venture capitals. We announced last year partnership with Shield Capital, where this gives us access to incubator technology ideas that we can take and partner with our own technologies internally to create a one plus one equals three type of value equation.
It could be through partnerships with commercial entrants within the defense space. These are commercial companies that are on the cutting edge in terms of bringing disruptive technologies to the table but aren't as familiar with the defense industry and how we operate.
That partnership becomes incredibly powerful in terms of creating a platform where we can deliver cost-effective, game-changing technologies in support of national security. We're excited about where we're at. We're excited because our strategy is working, and it's working in terms of the products and solutions that we are bringing to our customers, but it's also working in terms of our financial results.
We're incredibly proud of the Q1 demand results that we were able to deliver. We delivered a record orders quarter in Q1, $5.8 billion. This is the largest quarter we've had since the merger. We also ended the quarter with a book-to-bill of 1.3, which speaks to the revenue that's to come as a result of those strong orders. We also drove our top line by a reported 9% growth.
We're excited about where we're sitting today. I've talked to you about differentiating ourselves in terms of our strategy. We're differentiating ourselves in terms of our product and solutions. We're also differentiating ourselves in terms of our capital allocation strategy. In the medium term, we do plan to continue to have a balanced approach. We have a nice pie chart on this in our IR letter, if you've had a chance to look at it.
In terms of the capital allocation levers, we expect that to be balanced or cross-share repurchases, dividends, and strategic acquisitions. In the short term, we were presented with a unique opportunity to acquire not one, but two strategic assets. The first is the Viasat Tactical Data Links acquisition that we announced at the end of 2022.
We've actually already closed on that acquisition in the first week of January. We're excited about having the Tactical Data Links as part of our portfolio. It's gonna help in our heightened focus from a JADC2 perspective, along with resilient comms, which are so incredibly important, especially as a result of the Ukrainian conflict. The second acquisition is the Aerojet Rocketdyne acquisition.
We announced this acquisition also at the end of last year, this allows a diversification within our portfolio, allowing us to play in markets that we currently don't do business in. This business is currently going through the regulatory process, and we expect and remain optimistic that it's gonna close by the end of 2023. We're excited. We're differentiating ourselves in terms of our strategy, in terms of our products, along with our capital allocation deployment.
The final point I'll make in terms of our overview is around differentiating ourselves in terms of our lineage on our financial performance. We've been a strong cash generation, and we also continue to have industry-leading margins. Where we sit here in Q2, we're optimistic about what we're gonna deliver at the end of the quarter. We expect sequential improvement in terms of revenue, margins, along with earnings, which will deliver positive free cash flow and value for our shareholders. Thank you all for being here today and looking forward to the questions.
Great. Thanks. It was a great overview to kick us off, Michelle. Maybe just to start, could you talk, we just got, finally got a debt ceiling agreement.
Yeah.
It was a long, painful process, but it's finally done. You know, what do you see there? What does that mean for sort of growth for L3Harris and I don't know, Ed, if you wanna weigh in on as well.
Yeah.
I'll take it from a macro perspective, and weigh, Ed can weigh in from a overall SAS portfolio. Let me start with, we are pleased that there was a debt resolution. We're pleased in terms of this mattered for the country, it mattered for the defense industry, and it mattered for L3Harris as a result of that. We are optimistic in that there was growth from a DoD perspective.
If you look at the president's budgets, the DoD budgets are up 3%, over $800 billion, $824 billion. If you look specifically at the accounts that L3Harris plays within, which is predominantly what we call the investment accounts, those accounts are up 4%. These are all very encouraging indicators.
I will say, going back to my comments around the Aerojet Rocketdyne, those budgets are up over 20%. It really speaks to the need from an acquisition perspective and the demand that's coming as a result. Now, I will balance this optimism with a couple of comments. One is around, we do expect there'll be some level of a continuing resolution.
A fun fact around continuing resolutions for those that don't track it as closely as we do, in the last 23 years, 18 of those years have had some level of a CR or a continuing resolution. On average, it's about 100 days, 101, to be exact.
Although we're optimistic with the debt ceiling, and the work that's happening right now, that we will kick off FY 2024 in September, with contracting starting, the expectation is that could linger into the end of December or early January. We don't anticipate, however, that that's gonna have an impact in terms of our guidance. As I said, this is kind of the norm as to how we operate. We could see some noise, however, if it lingers more into Q1.
I would say, as Michelle talked to the top line, at $842 billion, that is a very encouraging number to see that the administration is continuing to invest in our national defense. What's more important is as you start to peel that number down into the services, where they're investing the money. Air Force is up 5%, Navy is up 5%, while the Army is flatlined with the rest of the agencies.
Why is it focused on the Air Force and the Navy? Because of the Indo-Pacific threat. All you need to do is turn on the news and see that the aggression continuing to turn up, with China cutting off our warships, with aggression against our fighters.
It's incredibly important for our nation to continue to drive new capabilities, not only in the air domain, but in the space domain. One layer down inside the Air Force, of course, is the Space Force, which is a department of the Air Force. The Space Force b udget is up 10%. The Space Force, I will tell you, is in a panic mode to acquire new capabilities.
I've never seen a customer so demanding to drive capabilities to a certain date, which is around 2025, 2027, which we think a threat is pending. The amount of funding flowing into the Space Force and to the Air Force is very impressive. The Air Force is L3Harris' number one customer.
Got it. Can you touch on Aerojet Rocketdyne? I think you'll get some questions on that one today.
You think?
I think you said last quarter, June, you're hoping to complete the resubmission-
Yeah.
- to the regulators. Are you still on track with that and just everything going on?
Yes. Yes, we are on track with that. That timeline remains what we're marching to. We're in the midst of the second request right now. You may have seen an announcement that came out last week, where Aerojet has actually already certified. Both Aerojet and L3Harris will submit as part of this process. We are on track to submit by the end of this month. That will initiate the next 30-day clock for the FTC to review that, with our expectation that there's closure within early Q3.
Got it. Okay. Okay, I guess one of the questions I get on Rocketdyne is investment required in that, and, you know, your competitor there sort of talked of big investment that they've made. Is there more investment required once the deal is closed, and can you fit that within the sort of 1.5% CapEx to sales that you guys have spoken about in the past?
Yeah, no, I appreciate this. The short answer is yes. To your point, we're a 4-year-old company. Historically, we spend between 1.5%-2% of our overall revenue on CapEx. Just in comparison, within the industry, the average is about 3%. The high end, however, is like 4.5%. We are incredibly prudent in terms of our capital deployment operationally. We use a lot of commercial models, so we have a commercial mindset within the organization, and we drive very robust business cases in terms of our capital investment.
Specific to your question around Aerojet and maybe the need for incremental investment, what I would say there is, there was an announcement that came out a few weeks ago in terms of increased, what was called Defense Production Act funding, that Aerojet received over $200 million, $215 million of investment by the DoD to invest in their facilities. The way you think about this is, it's synonymous with CapEx.
This would have been money they would have been spending within their own facilities to facilitize, operationalize, increase capacity, and also modernize. There's also an element within this around digital engineering, that next level of technological advancement within their facilities. That $200 million-ish, just to put into context, Aerojet spends about $50 million a year on CapEx.
That equates to about four years of investment for them. We anticipate that that will be the bulk of the investment in terms of their facilities.
Got it. Okay, that's helpful. You know, Ed Zoiss, I think this maybe ties in a little bit with your segment, but, you know, the Agile Development Group partnership with Shield Capital, you know, can you talk about what you're seeing there? Are some of those investments starting to sort of bear fruit, and can you give us maybe some examples?
Yeah, sure. Let me just describe what the Agile Development Group is. Inside of the Space and Airborne Systems segment, we have a technology accelerator. Think of it as a Skunk Works. We call it the Agile Development Group, and the Agile Development Group is focused on revolutionary technology. Much as the Skunk Works is focused on revolutionary air platforms, our Agile Development Group is focused on revolutionary mission platforms for airborne applications. Very exciting.
W e are investing, as well as our customers, in breakthrough technologies around radar. Radar's been around, of course, since World War II, traditionally, radar has been a game of analog components. We are right now investing in a Direct Digital Sampling technology. Our customers are very excited about it. They're funding us to really bring this capability to market.
It requires new integrated circuits, it requires new ASICs. When this capability comes online, it will allow direct sampling of RF right at the antenna, which will be a game changer for future airborne applications. As you think of some of the investments that the Air Force is making around next-generation airborne systems, whether they're exquisite programs like Secretary Kendall's talked about with NGAD or the Collaborative Combat Aircraft, a smaller aircraft that will ride alongside an NGAD or alongside a B-21.
These are some of the key technologies that will be required. When you partner that with Shield Capital, as Michelle mentioned, Shield gives us access to well over 100 companies that we look at from a technology standpoint, either around artificial intelligence, cyber, ISR.
We get an early look at where the companies are driving this new technology and a chance to invest, or if we don't want to invest and partner, and we're doing both. One of the investments we've made is in a company called Mynaric. Mynaric makes optical intersatellite links that we'll be bidding on future procurements for our, for our satellite constellations. Very exciting, and I want you to think of the Agile Development Group as our way in L3Harris to bring revolutionary airborne capabilities to market.
Got it. Could I ask about international demand? I guess.
Yeah.
Whoever wants to answer, you know, we saw a big outpouring of support right after the Russia invasion of Ukraine. Has that started to translate? What are you seeing there by the different markets?
Yes, I'll start, and then Ed can jump in from an SAS perspective. For the audience's benefit, our trusted disruptor strategy that I talked about has three strategic imperatives. One is perform, one is innovate, and one is grow. Underneath that growth tenet is really two components. One is around growing more of our prime content. This is where the bulk of the DoD budgets reside, is in terms of big prime platforms. The other is around growing internationally. Specific to the question around what are we doing from an international perspective, we have a strategy in that we are focused on 11 countries.
As a result of L3 and Harris coming together, as you might imagine, there was presence in many countries, there were customer connections in many countries, and then there was technology and products kind of all over the place. As a result of the two companies coming together, we've become very focused in terms of here are the 11 countries where we have opportunities to play, have an impact in terms of where their budgets are at.
We heard about the 2% GDP. That continues to rise. Across those 11 countries, we have an in-country manager who is responsible for all interactions with the customers within that country, and they are also responsible for being the liaison back into the company.
This has really streamlined our processes and our investment to ensure that we are focusing on the needle movers that are gonna allow us to evolve our international portfolio. We landed at the end of 2022, at 23% of our portfolio is international. That was up 1 point from where we were the year before. Going back to what I talked about in terms of the Q1 results, the $5.8 billion of bookings, 30% of that was international, which is speaking to the fact that we are growing our overall international demand.
Yeah, let me add on to that. We recently, in Space and Airborne Systems segment, announced 2 very important international wins. The first one is a constellation of imaging satellites for a European customer. Can't disclose the customer, but very exciting. We're well into that contract, and that presents a $400 million opportunity for us to continue to grow with this European partner.
The second contract was a contract with the Japan Meteorological Agency for an imager and a sounder for weather. In fact, many of you probably don't know, but L3Harris provides the weather that you see each and every day. The weather that you see on your iPhones, that you see on your computer, comes from our imaging satellite payloads. It's called the Advanced Baseline Imager and the Cross-track Infrared Sounder.
The 10-day forecast you see, I guess you could blame us for that, but that's a lot of the data that comes from L3Harris. We also ingest all of the data and process it in our ground systems to create all of those products that you see. We have been an incumbent in weather for 50 years, and this new contract with Japan continues to build on our weather franchise with an imager and a sounder for Japan called Himawari-10.
What was also announced, as long as we're going to stay in the weather vein, is we've recently been awarded a $765 million contract from NOAA for NOAA's next generation sounder. In fact, around the world, all the European, and Asian and American weather agencies are recapitalizing all of their weather instruments.
This represents well over a $3 billion opportunity for L3Harris, and we've already captured almost half of it, as we are the largest player in satellite weather imagery. Very exciting times, on an international basis, as well as space in general. Got it.
I'll just add, 'cause specific to your question around Ukraine, we are seeing an increase from a in support of the Ukraine conflict. In fact, we just booked last week a $200 million award within our communication systems business in support of an additional 8,000 radios to put in theater. We already have 15,000 radios in theater as part of the conflict today.
I think that's important to note, because when I talked about the budget increases, the 3% and 4%, the Ukrainian supplemental funds that are being used to fund the conflict is outside of the DoD budget. That's a separate line item that is being tracked and funded as a result.
Got it. That's helpful. Michelle, could you touch on just supply chain, and particularly, that you guys have talked a little about some of these radios that have, like, you know, $0.50 part-
Yeah
that's delaying shipment. Where do we stand on those and sort of what, you know, what trends are you seeing there?
Yeah. I'd say overall, the worst of the supply chain challenges are behind us, and it's always difficult to try to characterize, you know, where we're at within supply chain. What we've been doing internally is talking about what's the same and what's different. I'll give you some instances in terms of what's the same as where we were in 2022 versus what's different now, where we sit in 2023. What's the same is that we continue to see supply chain disruptions.
I have no doubt you're gonna hear this is gonna be the theme throughout the day. Disruptions continue to happen. However, we've taken proactive actions to ensure we have some level of resiliency within our ecosystem that allows us to work through those disruptions. Unlike last year, when a disruption happened, we were reacting.
To your point, we didn't have the $0.50 part, we couldn't deliver on our commitments. The second thing that's the same is we continue to be gated by electronic components. This has been a consistent part of our talk track for at least 18 months. It continues to be our number one gating item. However, it's much improved from where it was a year ago.
The final point I will make that's the same for those that aren't as close to L3Harris, is 23% of our portfolio, we take revenue based on product deliveries. This is different than others within the industry who recognize revenue based on cost incurred. As a result, when we are gated by that $0.50 part, we are not recognizing the revenue associated with that product until it actually ships.
Let's flip to what's different and where we sit currently within 2023. One is we've got some strategic supplier relationships in place that the team has done a phenomenal job of working over the last 6 months to not only give us greater visibility in terms of the supply on the electronic component front, but also we are partnering with these suppliers to create roadmaps that allow each company to influence where we're heading from a technology perspective.
Getting in on the front end of that technology development on these microchips matters, if you think about where we sit today and how we want to evolve our resiliency in terms of the electronic component supply. The other is we've increased significantly the number of alternate parts that we have at our disposal.
When we started back 18 months ago, we had a few hundred parts that we could technically call alternate parts. We now have over 1,300 parts in that alternate part bank. Decreasing our resiliency on these single-source parts matters, and this is part of building that resiliency with the recognition that this is the new norm. We don't expect that we're gonna get back to 2019 levels in terms of a seamless supply chain, so you've got to have some kind of resiliency built into your ecosystem to be successful.
Finally, just from a macro environment perspective, we are seeing less critical parts. We are seeing more continuity of supply. However, as I noted, there is still some level of disruption. Specific to the question around inventory, we did build our inventories.
This was a purposeful build last year, at the end of 2022, with the recognition that our product backlog had grown 20% last year with the orders that we were seeing. We knew as supply chain started to loosen up and some of the challenges started to dissipate, we needed to have those inventories built up for us to start to deliver. That's exactly what's playing out this year. We had a strong Q1, and we expect our product deliveries to continue to sequentially improve throughout the year.
Got it. Helpful. Could you talk about enterprise transformation? You mentioned you're a four-year-old company, been a big effort over all that period. I think Chris kind of teased last quarter that phase two is about to start. Can you give us any kind of hints of what we could see there in the future?
You're asking for a Chris Kubasik secret decoder ring-
Exactly, yeah.
Is that what it is? Okay. I'll try. I'll let Ed jump in. I'm not sure that really exists, but it's really, in its simplest form, it's the evolution of the integration of L3 and Harris coming together. You know, as Chris talked about in the earnings call, you know, we took a lot of the low-hanging fruit, if you will, post-integration. The duplicative infrastructure, right? You had 2 headquarters. You close one headquarters, you get the savings associated with that.
We had six segments. We went from six segments to four segments. You get the efficiencies from an organizational construct perspective in bringing those two together. We standardized benefits. All the things you would expect to do when you're integrating two companies, we did those things. What are we doing now?
This is the evolution of how we're continuing on this journey as to who do we wanna be in the future. The way I like to characterize it is, I'm gonna try to make this really tangible because we've had this discussion internally as well, how do we get to something that's readily absorbable for people? I'll use a good example in terms of spans and layers.
You might immediately start writing down your notes, spans and layers, that's cost efficiency. Let's take that and run with it. It absolutely is cost efficiencies. You're correct in that regard. What's equally as important about spans and layers, and if you think about if you have nine levels within your organization, your ability to truncate and compress that allows speed of decision-making.
That's the evolution that we're excited about because it aligns with who we are culturally, in terms of being fast and forward and driving agility in the system. The quicker decision-making, what does that mean? That means we can respond to our customers quicker. It means when we have issues on our programs, we can get the right resources on those programs and respond to get it right sized.
It also means that we're making the right investment choices at the right time to capitalize on opportunities in the marketplace. I think about this evolution of this enterprise transformation and where we're heading, not only in terms of how do we make ourselves more cost competitive, but equally about how do we show up in the market in a way that's differentiating ourselves, allowing us to win in comparative to our peers within the industry.
Got it. Could I ask about margins?
Mm-hmm.
Looking back historically and, you know, specifically EACs, I think we're like 2% of sales. Going back a couple of years, they've gone, you know, kind of zero or negative. Do we get back to that point where we were sort of at the peak, and what's sort of the trajectory to get there? What needs to happen?
I appreciate this question because I think it's a good opportunity to put our margins in context, not only in terms of our historical performance, but also in terms of our peers. We do have industry-leading margins. I'm not gonna deny that we have some challenges right now, similar to others in the industry. I would characterize that into two buckets. You know, we take the macro environment. We know about the inflationary challenges.
We've talked about supply chain. Across the board, within the industry, you can see margin pressures as a result of just a higher cost input environment. That is a result of just naturally the environment we operate within. Conversely, on the other hand, we also have purposeful investments that we made.
Great example of this is we've invested in our workforce with the recognition that labor attrition last year was not in a place that we wanted it to be. With the recognition that we were challenging ourselves from a programmatic perspective in the turnover we were seeing within our workforce, we increased our merit budgets early in the cycle last year.
We also made investments in terms of holding our healthcare costs flat for our employees, with the recognition that a stable workforce matters in terms of the products we're delivering, in terms of our ability to win new business. You wrap all of that together, you're absolutely right, we are sitting in a place where we are having some margin challenges.
The good news is that we have repriced where we can within our commercial contracts, so about 25% of our portfolio is commercial, and so we do have the ability to reprice. Where we can, we have it taken incremental price. We are also driving E3 productivity savings to help offset some of this temporal, you know, transitional type of cost inflationary pressures.
The other thing that I think is important to note that's unique about L3Harris, or a little different than within L3Harris, is our portfolio base tends to be a shorter cycle portfolio. I know at times we get knocked for it being shorter cycle because you don't get as much line of sight to what the go-forward demand is.
However, in a heightened inflationary environment, that means we're gonna work through our portfolio and our backlog a lot quicker in terms of getting through those programs that were priced prior to the inflationary environment. Programs that are coming on board now, as Ed talked about, he mentioned some of his awards, they have been priced in a higher inflationary environment. Some of our peers, however, you know, our average period of performance is 12-18 months. Many of our peers is three years plus. It's gonna take them longer to work through that cycle.
Yep, got it. Could you maybe touch on how margins trend through the year, maybe by segment? I know there's some noise with the aircraft receipts in Q1. How would you sort of think of the rest of the year, margin-wise?
Yeah. I'll start with Q1. Q1 came in as expected in terms of overall op income dollars. Revenues trended higher, margins were down a bit, overall, it was aligned with our expectations. The guidance that we put out this year did assume, and continues to assume, where we sit here in Q2, sequential improvement quarter-over-quarter. This was driven by the assumption around supply chain challenges dissipating.
When you look at our product deliveries, and you're gonna see this, we expect that those product deliveries are gonna continue to improve throughout the year, which tend to be our higher margin business. Specific to the by segment piece of it, where we see the anomalies within IMS, within Q1, we did have a couple of headwind challenges. One, this tends to be our lumpier business.
This is our aircraft missionization business. To the extent that we have domestic versus international program mix. We had domestic, predominantly domestic programs within first quarter. You couple that with when we do induct aircraft, that tends to come at a lower margin as we build the margins through the missionization stage. As we start to service and do the work on those aircraft, we tend to see the margins start to improve.
Q1 was acutely impacted as a result of that, but I will not shy away from we also had negative EACs within that business. This is an area where we've seen our most significant impact due to labor attrition and labor inefficiencies. As we're rebuilding that talent and that workforce, we expect those margins to continue to improve.
Great. Maybe I'll just check real quick. If anybody in the audience has anything, just put your hand up and we'll get your microphone back there.
Do you think that's gonna continue to increase as you go through the year?
I'm a CFO, inventories are never in a good place, right? That's the standard answer. What I'd say is, we built inventories at the end of last year. We expect, let's say it's about $200 million related to product inventories. We expect about $100 of that's gonna burn off in 2023, the other $100 is gonna burn off in 2024.
I think us, along with everybody else within the industry, is challenging ourselves around what is the new norm. I don't think we ever get back to a just-in-time system. We should all be really clear with that, right? We have to have some level of resiliency, one of the levers is inventories. The question is how much should those inventories be?
I still think we have opportunities, based on just where we're at from a parts perspective, but I don't think it's gonna be a fundamental step change.
Maybe, you know, for Ed, I want to ask a little bit about base margin. You guys have been pressured a little bit. There's some new programs starting up, you know, developing a little bit lower margin. How should we think about that, maybe over the longer term trending? Is there opportunity as we moved in, you know, you mentioned some of these high volume space, you know, satellite productions.
Right.
Is there a way to, you know, could margins potentially move higher as you?
Yeah.
the volumes there?
Yeah, really good question. Let me just kind of maybe set the stage of what's happening in space inside the segment. Inside of SAS, our space business is about 40% of the segment. As you saw, as we ended quarter one, we grew space double digits. It really is a differentiated story for L3Harris. Maybe to Michelle's point earlier, it's our trusted disruptor strategy really in action. A few things happening in space.
I'll promise I will answer your question, but I do want to put this in some context. A few things happening in space that I really think plays to our sweet spot and why we're driving differentiated growth in the space market, really disrupting some of the entrenched primes.
The first one is our space customers are moving from these large, exquisite systems, think of them as aircraft carriers in space, to smaller, disaggregated systems. That allows a company like L3Harris to take our mission-leading payloads, and we have payloads across every phenomenology, whether it's electro-optical, infrared, RF, weather, GPS, and take those and move up into prime position. As we sit here today, we have over 40 satellites under contract. I said satellites, not payloads. 40 satellites under contract.
8 of them will deliver this year. A tremendous confidence by our customers in L3Harris to really deliver now full mission solutions. You know, the second thing I would say that's driving space is that many of the capabilities that have been traditionally in air are no longer serviceable by airborne platforms. Think of Ground Moving Target Indication, the JSTARS platform.
It's been canceled, it's moving to space. Air Moving Target Indication, AWACS. You really can't move an AWACS aircraft into China to give you an air picture. It has to move to space. The one that I think is a marquee for L3Harris is Missile Warning, Missile Defense. If you think about traditionally how we've defended against incoming missiles, they've all been ballistic.
We've had an early warning indicator system called SBIRS, which would give us a launch, and then we'd have ground-based and maritime radars to track that ICBM into CONUS. With hypersonic missiles, that changes the whole game because they're maneuverable, they maneuver around all of our maritime and ground radars, that capability has now moved to space. L3Harris has over 20 satellites under contract to now do missile tracking and fire control from space. Key capability.
When we talk about space and all of the wins that we have, yes, we've got a lot of development programs in the portfolio. Those development programs come with lower margins. What I will tell you is, as we wrap those development programs up and we head towards more of, I'll call it a build-to-print or a very slightly modified build-to-print model, margins will be improving in our space business.
Yeah.
Very excited about the story that we have in space, and very encouraged by where our customers are driving.
That's great. I think we're over our time. Michelle, Ed, thank you both. This is great.
Thank you.
Okay, thank you.