Good morning and happy New Year, everyone. Thank you for attending the CJS Winter New Ideas Conference. My name is John Tanwanteng, and I'm the covering analyst for Moog, which we have rated as a market outperformer. Moog is a leader in electromechanical and electrohydraulic control systems and electronics, as well as various adjacencies primarily serving aerospace and defense markets, as well as general industrial and medical. Joining us today are Pat Roche, the CEO, as well as CFO Jennifer Walter, and then we have Aaron, who heads up IR. They're going to lead off with a brief overview of the company, talk about some of the opportunities and challenges that they're facing over the next year and the medium term, and then we're going to move on to the fireside chat portion of the session.
For the audience, if you do have a question, feel free to submit one via the text interface or via email, and then we'll try to ask them as time allows. And then, with that, Pat, welcome. Thanks for being here. You have the floor.
Thanks very much, John. Welcome, everyone. We may make some forward-looking statements during this Q&A session and our opening remarks. And for those, I refer you to our disclosure statement that you will find on the investor relations site of Moog. Let me just profile the company briefly. Many of you in the room or in the virtual room probably know us, but to just frame it, we're about a $4.2 billion company. That's what we're guiding to on sales for fiscal 2026, about 14,000 staff around the world. We focus on motion control, fluid control, and systems, both components and systems. And then I believe we have a very clear value proposition with our customers. We are technically seen; we're seen as a technical expert in solving their difficult problems. We do it really well. They call on us to do that.
We're a reliable long-term partner with them, and they can depend on the quality of both the work products that we produce in development, but also the products that we ship on a day-to-day basis. So our strength of relationship with our customers is really underpinning the performance of our and growth of our business. I would describe us as a technology company. I mentioned that we manufacture components. John also mentioned it in the introduction. We go with hydraulic servo valves, real high-performance devices, but also electric motors, electrohydraulic pumps, electronic control systems that go around it. So we cover a broad range of products used in very diverse applications. So you'll find our electronics in aircraft, such as the Embraer E-Jets E2, but you'll find our electronics also in space vehicles. So we sell to other OEM customers.
Really strong base of high-performance components, which are very good and profitable businesses for us. We also have system engineering, systems of systems. In some markets, we provide very complex, highly integrated engineered systems, such as the full primary flight control systems on an Embraer E-Jets E2. Everything from the moving surfaces on the wing, all the actuation associated with that, through to the flight control computer in the cockpit, which is a triple-redundant computer on which Embraer's flight software also runs. A technology company at heart, I would describe us as a collaborative culture. Our organization has a really unique way of working.
It allows us to attract and retain talent that we need to drive our business, but it also, I believe, is a differentiator with our customers because that engagement we have with the customer to develop these solutions is facilitated by the way we work: open communications, mutual respect, and trust between ourselves and the customers. So that's the second element of our, as I describe us. And then we tackle applications where performance really matters. And so in some of our applications, the product has one opportunity to perform, to be a fuel control valve on a rocket or a lander on the surface of another planet. And so we take on very difficult and challenging applications, and we've proven track record in being able to deliver on those. And that brings us into a wide range of different end markets.
Defense makes up over 50% of our book of business. That has applications that range from warfighting domain of space through to military aircraft, surface vehicles, ground vehicles, marine and submarine applications, so all domains covered with the actuation products that we manufacture, and then we have about 20% plus of our business, which is commercial aerospace. I've mentioned Embraer a couple of times, but the wide-body aircraft are probably our biggest platforms: 787 and A350, but we also provide components and actuation solutions on narrow-body aircraft as well, and then we have our industrial business, which is involved in producing high-value capital equipment that's used in automotive production environments, for instance, or in plastic injection molding, blow molding applications, and then finally, our book of business which is around high-performance medical pumps used for dispensing drugs and nutrition into patients with chronic illnesses.
So across all those applications, we deliver the technology capabilities that we have in a pretty impressive way for our customers where they see real value in what we do. So that's the business itself. We are celebrating this year our 75th anniversary as a company, so we're very proud of the track record of solutions that we've delivered for customers over those years. Back in 2023, we had an investor day at which we described how we wanted to transform the organization in the coming years. So we laid out a plan from 2022 to 2026, talking about a transformation in our business that was really about driving improved financial performance as a company, moving to higher levels of profitability than we had traditionally achieved. And we laid out a really detailed plan of how we were to tackle that.
Over the intervening time, we've reorganized internally to drive further accountability within the organization. We have really clear objectives and expectations that flow down through all of our businesses, and we have driven new approaches to how we do business, and that has been all categorized as pricing and simplification activities across the entire organization. And we've developed tools and ways in which we work that have advanced those concepts over the last few years. And the outcome of it has been improved financial performance for us as a company and improved operational performance for our business as well. So we're very pleased with the level of commitment from our employees and the effort that has been put into these activities over the years and the results that that has been generated for us as a company.
And I think you see in our stock price performance a reflection of others' confidence in what we're doing as a leadership team here at Moog. With that, I want to hand back over to you, John, for our start of our Q&A session.
Great. Thanks for that, Pat. And then just as a reminder to the audience, please send your questions via the web interface or to me via email, and we'll try to weave them in as we get them. If you could start, Pat, I'd like for you to talk about the defense environment, the demand you're seeing there, and how your positioning has evolved as the budgets and spending there have grown and priorities have shifted within the DoD and with international allies. Number one, maybe talk about the programs there that you're seeing the most opportunity on, if there's anything that's maybe moved away or pushed out to the right that's under your umbrella. And then second, as you look to the future, is there any weight to this $1.5 trillion budget that the White House is floating, and what's the opportunity in there for you?
Yeah. Thanks, John. I think defense is a great place to start. As I said, it's a substantial part of our business, over 50% of the business, and we are operating at a time where there is significant activity going on in the marketplace. I believe we are really well positioned to capture opportunities that are important for our company for decades to come. And then the way we've been describing it in the past is we're seeing what we describe as once-in-a-generation type opportunities that allow us to win new business, but that business then itself has substantive impact on us in the future and has production windows that run for multiple years, if not decades. So if I give examples of things like that, we talk about our missiles programs within our organization.
It's $250 million of business for us, but it's growing at a really significant rate. Over 20% per annum growth rates are being seen on the missile side of the business, and we have presence on a whole range of different missile classes or types that are in use by U.S. and NATO forces. So we've mentioned in the past, Voyager to hypersonics, PAC-3 missiles, THAAD, Tomahawk, and various standard missiles as well, and so our scope in many of these is the control actuation system. So we're typically the back end of the missile, and we're steering it. As you know, with four years of war going on between Russia and Ukraine, there has been a significant depleting of arsenals around the world for these missiles, and therefore the demand is very high just to replenish the arsenals.
You see news of Lockheed Martin receiving a seven-year order from the government. We, at the beginning of the year, told you that we had received a large order, over $100 million for CAS systems, PAC-3 missile. That was to support production at the current run rates, the current production rates. We're seeing that there is and we have visibility through discussions about a need for even further higher levels of volume. I think that's been illustrated with the order that was placed on Lockheed Martin recently. We see our missile business continuing to grow strongly over the coming years on all those programs. If I look at other areas of development, taking military aircraft, you know that we are on the FLRAA, pardon me. We're in engineering manufacturing development phase. That development program is going really well for us.
We are, I would say, at full rate in terms of the engineering staffing that is on the program, and that continues from FY2025 into FY26. Signals we get on that program are that the Army would like the program to go faster. And so again, that's maybe one of those programs, John, to your question, it gets pulled into the left. We're certainly supportive and able to work with the customers on driving that program. That should go into low-rate production in the late 2020s and into volume production in the 2030s. So we're very optimistic about that. And as you know, FLRAA will be a really important platform program for us in the future, as important to us as Joint Strike Fighter is today. There's a whole host of disruption going on in the industry, many new entrants bringing in new technologies, new capabilities.
You see that with the collaborative combat aircraft discussions that are going on, and we are establishing our position in that market as well and believe that in the future, both primes and these new entrants will be our customer base. We're already working with more than a handful of the CCA manufacturers on providing motion solutions for them as well. So I think that's also a really positive area for us for growth in the future. And then in general, on advanced aircraft systems, I would say we're a premier provider of primary flight control systems to all military aircraft, and we're establishing our position on those future programs. So I think if I look at it overall, that's just the European or the U.S. dimension of it.
But you also mentioned that there are changes as well in other parts of the world, and the European business is also seeing strong growth. The commitment of European governments to improve or increase their level of defense spending over the coming years, up to 3.5% of GDP on core defense applications, is driving much higher levels of spend in Europe as well. And we've seen specific examples of that flowing through on programs like RCH 155, which is a howitzer system for KNDS, a Franco-German company who has been a customer of ours for decades. But they are modernizing equipment, bringing new capabilities out with that, and we are there to support them as well. So we've seen our business in Germany grow strongly as well because of that increased level of spending in Europe.
And then you may have noticed in the fourth quarter call, we talked about GMLRS as a win for us in Australia. This is working with Lockheed Martin Australia to be able to produce steering systems for those missiles and then to localize the production in our facility in Australia as well. I think that's also a really good proof point that we have a global footprint. We're able to use that footprint to take advantage of some of these new opportunities that are arising both in Europe but also in the Indo-Pacific region. Let me pause there.
No, that was great, Pat, and kind of helps us understand the opportunity. Maybe could you talk about the risks in defense? We've seen a couple of high-profile cancellations, whether you're talking about Constellation or Booker or even the E-7. And then the risk of program cancellations even beyond this administration, not saying that they will or won't be, but industry has pointed to things like the Trump-class warship or even Iron Dome beyond this current presidential administration. How do you think about the risk going forward and what programs to be actively involved in from that perspective?
So I think my approach in answering that is to just reflect on the broad-based demand that we're seeing. So we have exposure on a whole multitude of programs in each of those domain areas. So if I think about hypersonics, there are six different hypersonics programs. We have exposure on probably five of the six. If you think about the CCAs, there are multiple different manufacturing companies becoming involved in that now, both Primes and new entrants. We have exposure on more than a handful of those. So I think we're covering ourselves by engaging with the broad range of applications and options that are there and trying to provide solutions for them. So if one program gets canceled or moved, it's likely that the spend goes to one of the other programs that we're on.
And so we have the ability to move resources between these programs as we need to as well. If I think about it in terms of what's happening and focus more on the underlying demand than what's the budget for next year, but what are we trying to achieve? What's the nation trying to achieve with this? And I think it's got three dimensions to it. There's the replenishment of arsenals that have been severely depleted over the course of the last four years. That need isn't going to go away. And so when I look at pieces of the business like the missiles business, you've got to rebuild those. And that's a multi-year journey. I think there's another phase, which may be medium term, which is modernization. I give the RCH 155 in Germany as an example of that.
You bring automation into the vehicle, and now you can run a howitzer with just two men, a driver and a commander. And so that changes how you staff and use that equipment in the field. That's by putting automation into it. We have about 17 or 18 different axes of motion control within that vehicle that allow it to automatically load the charge and the shell into the breech without any person inside the turret. So that's modernization, but that's not just unique to Europe. That's happening in the U.S. as well on multiple different programs. And then I think there's a strategic dimension, and I mentioned in the opening space as a warfighting domain. That terminology was only first used in the Space Symposium in March of this year. There is a need to create new capabilities.
And so into that, I could add the class of hypersonic missiles, space-launched missiles, things that we don't have today, but that need is there as well for the future. And so no matter which administration is in place, there are certain underlying drivers geopolitically that mean that the defense spending will increase. You look at Europe. Europe is feeling extremely vulnerable at the moment with what's going on in the Russia-Ukraine conflict. And the likes of Poland have significantly already increased defense spending well above the NATO target that was agreed to recently. And so you see a huge amount of activity going on in the European domain as well. So I don't see this changing with a change of administration, John.
I don't know that a budget will get up to $1.5 trillion next year, but I don't think that affects us substantially during the course of next year. We already have a really strong forecast of growth for the year. We've had demand signals about increased capacity being required for missiles probably for the last 18 months. And you've seen that we as a company have invested significantly over the last couple of years with our level of capital spend. Jennifer has been describing it that we're funding the organic growth of the business. We were responding in that to those growth signals. We're providing for the FLRAA program, for instance, with a 150,000 sq ft building. FLRAA goes into volume production in 2030. We have to be ahead of that in providing the facilities and the equipment to be able to do it. And that's just one example.
So we see it across the business. So I don't see it going away. I see it as a really strong, robust tailwind for us as a business for years to come, John.
Understood. That's helpful. Thank you. Switching over to the commercial airline business, could you talk about just how much you factor the production forecast into your own guidance, how much cushion there is there, and specifically maybe drill down at Airbus and talk about your contracts with them, number one, and number two, just their recent production difficulties and what you make of that?
Sure. Yeah. On the commercial aircraft side, our exposure is largely on the widebody programs, and there's been statements from both Boeing and Airbus that they are looking to increase their production ramp rates. For instance, Boeing's looking to deliver 10 by some point in 2026. They're investing in their Charleston facilities as well. Airbus is currently working through some supply chain issues, but longer term, they haven't really changed their targets there, so we're seeing great growth from the production ramps on the commercial OE side of the business. We're also seeing aftermarket strength too. A couple of things driving that. We've got aircraft that are in service being used more heavily, fleet getting older, and both of these things are driving up the aftermarket activities, so strong production levels, robust aftermarket, so we'll see nice sales increase in that business this year.
For Airbus, their contracting is such that they give us an outlook of what they expect to take maybe 18 months or so out. However, they order in a much shorter, in a few months measured type thing from a purchase order standpoint, so when they order from a PO standpoint, we encountered this a couple of times last year. It's much shorter their ordering cycle with us than it takes us to manufacture the product, so when they place a lower level of POs compared to their earlier estimates, it causes us to carry more inventory on our balance sheet, and we did have that a couple of times in the last fiscal year, so we are very mindful of our production rates. We consider the inventory that we've got on hand so we can mitigate that risk.
We also look for restocking opportunities so that we can bring in less from our suppliers than we're shipping out to our customers to help mitigate that balance sheet risk.
Okay. Great. And just to be clear, they've telegraphed safety and production issues with the A320. You're not seeing that in the widebody portion of the business?
We're not.
Okay. Great. I was wondering if you could touch on the space business, actually. We don't get to hear about that as much. Maybe delineate between the defense portion and the commercial portion as well as what might be NASA-related and kind of talk about the opportunities set there because my understanding is it has one of the higher margin profiles in the business, but it's a little less public in what you're able to disclose in terms of programs and awards and wins.
Yeah. So I'll take that, John. We've a pretty broad book of business on space as well. And we have a heritage that goes back 50-60 years in providing product for space applications. You might find it interesting that there's a piece of Moog hardware launched into space every week. So what we provide are things like solar array deployment, propulsion for satellites for attitude control, steering for rockets, small motors that help with the fine-tuning of the steering of rockets during launch. We do actually avionics, so space avionics, particularly differentiated radiation-hardened electronics that allows longer operating time at a given altitude in space. And so there's a broad range of components that we supply to the market for those applications. I would say that they are particularly well-suited to more demanding space applications. So they fit really well with military applications in space.
We not only provide components. We have, as you know, in the last two, three years, been providing full-up satellites as well with everything except for the payload. We're integrating together those components that we offer into the satellite itself and have had success supplying those to at least one customer. That's the space piece of it. To get product into space, you have to launch, and we have a very strong offering on the launch side. This is thrust vector actuation. This is gimballing the main rocket engines on launch rockets to steer them into space. We have a history of doing that really well.
With all of the activity in space, both commercial and defense, the number of launches picks up, and we are providing thrust vector actuation to two of at least the three launch companies outside of SpaceX, which is a more vertically integrated company, so again, as activity in space continues to increase, it pulls through more production in that side, and we've actually expanded our production of those thrust vector actuation systems, and then in the space applications, we continue to see new opportunities arising as space becomes a warfighting domain, and we don't talk about some of the projects that are in that arena.
Got it. Okay. Thank you. We had a question from the audience here, I think going back to the defense business. It was a question on how you see the market size for your short-range air defense projects, number one. And I assume they're talking about M-SHORAD or related. And then number two, a question on the torpedo business for underwater drones. Do you expect that to be meaningful at some point in the future? So two questions there.
On RIwP, we mentioned on the last call that we had received an order for the fifth battalion of what is now called Sergeant Stout, M-SHORAD, as you referred to it, John. That fills out our production through to fiscal 2027. We're still hoping to see further orders on that same program as there are in total eight battalions, and this would have provided solutions for five of the battalions up to this point in time. That's the U.S. applications for it. In the U.K., there is a program called Ground-Based Air Defense, GBAD, that we are really interested in as well. We are actively pursuing that as a program to further extend the sales of the RIwP platform. In addition to that, we've developed a new solution called RIwP Light.
And RIwP Light, as the name suggests, is a lighter-weight solution that can extend the range of armored vehicles onto which this turret is mounted. And so that's the next generation of development, a new product offering in that space, which we hope attracts attention as well based on the success of the RIwP turret. That was the first part of the question. So we see more potential in RIwP grow and develop through foreign programs and also expanding the scope of supply to other types of vehicle class. And then on the torpedo side, I would say that's a smaller piece of our business. I wouldn't say it's as material as any of the other platforms that we have, but as we work on a broad range of applications, we can steer torpedoes like we could steer missiles.
It's an opportunity space, but not big for us at this point.
Got it. Thank you. Wanted to talk a little bit more high level about the long-term targets you gave in 2023 and your progress against those. Maybe share what has or hasn't worked so far. And I know you're getting pretty close to the end of the timeline, but what are the remaining risks to achieving them going forward, obviously adjusted for tariffs as they flow through?
Yeah. Let me try and characterize that. So in the fourth quarter call, I was taking a look back at the time period from 2022 to 2025 to characterize how much progress we've made against those original targets, and if I think about it from a finance perspective, we've grown sales from 2022 to 2025 at 8% CAGR. In the investor day, we said we would expect growth between 5% and 7%. So you could say we had more success in building our business over that time period than we had projected at the investor day, so that was really positive for us. In terms of operating margin, we averaged 110 basis points per annum of gain in operating margin if I take the tariff impact out. I think that shows that the underlying improvement in business performance, operational performance was in line with what we had projected.
In terms of earnings per share, that increased by 16% CAGR, again, in line with what we had originally projected. On those measures, we did really well, I believe, in terms of delivering on projections that we provided to the investor community. On cash flow, that maybe is the area where we had some more challenges over the period of time. Part of that was due to the significant growth in the business, more than we had anticipated. Part of it was due to investing more in the business and capital. I've explained why, because we had early signals business has gone to expand. Some of that growth and revenue comes outside the period of the investor day, but it's the right thing for us to do as a company to invest in it today.
And so we came in at the end of fiscal 2025 with 46% free cash flow. We had said we'd be in the 75%-100% range. So we acknowledged that that isn't where we said back in investor day, but there are some real business reasons why that is the case. And so as we look forward, we are driving to improve that. We'll have the same aspiration. It might take us a little bit longer to get there. We have plans in place that will drive improvement specifically within our commercial aircraft business that will really help us advance that. So that's on financial level where we got to and what was going on. But think about it operationally as well.
You can see the growth in the business of over 27% over that period, 2022 to 2025, while limiting headcount growth to just 4% during that time. So we got more efficient, more productive at doing what we were doing as the business was growing. We reduced the amount of footprint. We talked about rationalizing plants and focus factories in our original investor day. We ended up reducing the square footage that we needed to deliver on our business by 8%. So I think on both financial and operational measures, we have made great progress against those investor day goals that were laid out.
Great. And then as we look to 2026 and beyond, I assume you'll have a new investor day or long-term targets out eventually. How much more upside is there in the growth trajectory and the margin profile? And kind of what are the levers to pull to get there as you go forward through the end of the decade?
Yeah. I mean, you can see, John, from the guidance for next year that the journey continues. I mean, where year-over-year growth into fiscal 2026 is 9%, so it's even above the 8% average CAGR that I was talking about over the prior period. There's continued margin enhancement in there. Yeah. Tariffs have an effect overall, but if we take the tariff impact out of it, we're right on the number that we said we would be for adjusted operating margin by 2026. I see this as a continuous improvement journey, and it doesn't come to an end in 2026. We haven't at this point shared any numbers beyond that point, but it's our goal to continue to drive improvement in our business, both on the margin side, John, but also on the cash flow side.
Okay. Great. I think we have time for maybe one more, and then I'll let you close with any remarks that you have. But we recently heard from the Trump administration that he would be limiting buybacks and dividends for defense companies. And I was wondering if that changes how you think about capital allocation, return of cash to shareholders as you go forward, especially as your cash flow improves. What are your capital priorities within that context?
I think our approach, John, to date has been a balanced approach towards managing our capital. We have decided to support the organic growth of the business, so we've made commitments on that side in the past. I don't think it changes our approach overall. In fact, if I look at what we have done as a business, we have the interest of that executive order was to ensure that there's investment going into businesses to increase their capacity. That's exactly what we've done over the last two, three years. At our elevated level of capital expenditure, we have been investing in the business already. So I think we're fulfilling the interests that were outlined in that. I don't think we need to change our capital allocation policy as a consequence.
Perfect. Maybe if I could squeeze just one more associated with that, Jen, maybe this one's for you. What do you expect the capital intensity to be like going forward, especially as you try to fund all these growth opportunities and demand signals that are coming your way?
Yeah. Our capital expenditures are going to continue to remain elevated. We've experienced a significant amount of growth in the whole A&D parts of our business, and we've invested for growth there. I would anticipate that continuing at higher than historical levels for some time because we don't see that growth slowing down anytime soon. So those markets are performing nicely. There's great demand in those businesses. And we'll continue to fund our facilities and our operations so that we can continue to grow with that.
Okay. Great. I think that is all we have time for. Pat, if you have any closing remarks, we'd love to hear them.
I think what we outlined is that we set out clear goals for ourselves as an organization. We delivered against them. There's a real clear focus within the organization to continue that transformation journey as a company. I think that benefits everyone, both our employees, our customers, and our investors.
Great. Thank you, everyone, for attending, and we'll talk to you all soon.
All right.