Good morning. My name is Howard, and I'll be your Conference Operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to Park Aerospace Corp. Fourth Quarter Fiscal Year 2022 Earnings Release Conference Call and Investor Presentation. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press star then the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, press the pound key. Thank you. At this time, I will turn today's call over to Mr. Brian Shore, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer. Mr. Shore, you may begin your conference.
Thank you, Operator. Hello, this is Brian. Good morning to everybody. Welcome to our Q4 Investor Conference Call. Nice to have you aboard. This morning, as you know, we announced our earnings. There was an earnings release, and you probably wanna pick that up. In the earnings release, there are instructions on it as to how to access the presentation we're about to go through the webcast, also on our website. We always give you this little caveat. We can't cover everything. We cover a lot, but we try to focus on. We don't go through a real dry number analysis.
We can do that for you later if you like, but we try to, you know, highlight some areas that we think might be interesting to you and might give you some interesting perspective. We'll skim over certain portions of the presentation. It's very long. Some of it is just included for context. We're not gonna cover every, you know, item in the presentation. We don't have time for that. It could still take 45 minutes to go through this, and I just wanna warn you about that. Matt and I will, of course, answer any questions you have at the when we're done going through the presentation. Okay, let's do it, as they say. Why don't we go to slide two, forward-looking disclaimer. If you have any questions about our forward-looking disclaimer, just give us a call.
Slide three is table of contents. Slide one is the presentation we're about to go through. Appendix one, we have our normal supplemental financial information as appendix one. I wanna go on to slide four. Probably take a little more time on slide four than the first three slides. So in slide four, we have our Q4 results, which, you know, you probably are already aware of because of the and also came in a news release. I won't spend a lot of time on the numbers. The numbers are there. You see the top line is off from the prior quarters. One thing we're happy about is that the gross margin's back over 30%. We don't like it, like last quarter, when Q3, when it was under 30%.
That doesn't make us too happy. The adjusted EBITDA margin is also in the area we like to see. We'd like to see better than that, but at least it's not like below 20%, which was a Q3 percentage as well. EBITDA, adjusted EBITDA of $3 million. We're pleased about that. Okay, what did we say about Q4 during our Q3 conference call? We said sales estimates were $12.75 million-$13.25 million, so we didn't make that number. We're under that number at $12.5 million. Adjusted EBITDA, $3 million-$3.5 million, so we came in within that range. I would always remind you, I forgot to do that when we give you forecasts, we don't call it guidance or estimates.
We're telling you what we think is gonna happen. We're not playing what we consider to be a little game that probably 90% of other corporations do, where they give you a low number, so they can beat it and be heroes. We think that's kinda silly and insulting. We tell you what we think is gonna happen. We're sometimes wrong, but we say that we're telling you what we really believe is gonna happen. Anyway, even though we came in under the top line, the bottom line was where we wanted to be, and I would say that was an outstanding job by Park's people to make the EBITDA number, considering that the top line we did not make and considering all the other things we're about to talk about in terms of the day-to-day life of Park.
Let's go on to slide 5. Oh, here we go. Living the life of the Park life in Q4, Q1, and beyond. These things are not gonna surprise you if you listen to other conference calls or watch the business news these days. Supply chain, supply chain, supply chain. Wow. This is really something. Just want to note that we were told by, you know, people supposed to know that this is gonna end, you know, that this problem is gonna end, last year. There's a ha there for that. Of course, it didn't end. As far as we're concerned, we never saw it this bad. Freight, freight. Yep, daily battle. Severe staffing shortages. We'll get back to that later. Total misshipments in Q4, close to $1 million.
Mostly because of supply chain issues, close to $1 million of stuff we would've shipped, could've shipped if we had the raw materials that we needed. Let's go on to slide 6. Okay, we're continuing on the what Park is living with stuff. Inflation. Raw material costs, you bet. Freight costs, utilities, supplies, pretty much everything. Again, you don't need us to tell you this. Everybody knows about this. You go to the grocery store or gas station, you're hearing it, you're seeing it, you're feeling it. Inflation was supposed to be transitory. We'll get a double ha on that. Remember transitory? Are the people still saying that? I wonder. This is not a loose list of excuses. Excuses, that's a dirty word at Park.
We don't get into excuses, but you know, as investors, we think you would like to know what we're living with every day at Park, so that's why we're telling you these things. Slide 7. More of the supply chain. Yep, we never saw it like this before. It's become a free-for-all. Order in the supply chain just broken down. It's chaos pervades. In some cases, even confirmed POs are not being honored. You know, this is what I mean by things breaking down. In normal business, you know, there's just kinda trust, good faith that is required for business to operate. You know, we get a pricing quote from a supplier, we have a PO, confirmed PO.
We turn around and we give pricing to our customer, and it goes down, and it is based upon our cost, of course. Based upon the raw material cost, based upon the quote we have from our supplier. It goes up and down supply chain like that. This is always done. It's just done in good faith. We don't get a law firm out every time. We don't contact a law firm every time there's a PO or PO confirmation. This is how business operates. Right now, none of this really works anymore. Not only are suppliers not able to meet their delivery commitments, that we understand, because maybe they're not getting their raw materials in time, so that we understand. Or maybe they have staffing shortages.
The other thing that's happening, which is disappointing to us, but not shocking, is that in some cases, people, companies aren't even honoring the pricing that's in a PO, a confirmed PO. They say, No, we're not gonna honor that pricing. What position it puts us in is that, okay, we've assumed that pricing when we give pricing to our customer. Kind of interesting dynamic, but that's why I say the supply chain is kind of chaos. Everything you wanna count on for normal business, these are assumptions that we just kind of used to take for granted, can't take them for granted anymore. At Park, we don't panic, even though the panic reigns, we're saying, and we live with the chaos if chaos comes our way. We'll deal with whatever comes our way.
It's very unfortunate that this is the world we're living in because there's a lot of time and effort to deal with this stuff. It'd be better to be dealing with other things, but we'll deal with whatever we have to deal with. That's how we do it at Park. At Park, honor, integrity are what matter most. At Park, principles do not come cheap. More on this later, but you probably get where we're going with this. We honor our commitments. We honor our commitments in terms of any kind of pricing we have in a confirmed PO. We don't go back and say, Sorry, our costs went up. Now, let's say we have a confirmed PO, delivery is supposed to be in three months.
We don't go back to the customer and say, Sorry, our costs went up, so we're not gonna honor the pricing. We don't do that. That's not the Park way anyway. Okay, let's keep going. We'll get back to that later. Slide eight. Slide eight's interesting because that's the, you know, the annual look at the annual fiscal year look at the the the the Park history. We highlighted, as you can see, fiscal year 2020 and fiscal year 2022. We thought maybe we could focus on those two years for a second because we think the comparison is kind of interesting. Note, of course, that in fiscal year 2022, the top line was off from fiscal year 2020, you know, partly because some of the reasons we're talking about. Nevertheless, it was off.
There's a very nice but here. Look at the gross margins. The gross margins were better in 2022 than in 2020, even though in 2020, the top line was much higher. 2020 was a good year. Let's think about that. Our fiscal year ends end of February. So 2020 was a pre-COVID year, right before COVID started. Obviously, 2022 was not a pre-COVID year, not at all. Not a pre-COVID, pre-economic crisis year. So even in the second COVID year, our fiscal 2022, the second economic crisis year, our gross margins were actually better. Look at the adjusted EBITDA, not just the percentage, the actual number is better. $13 million in fiscal 2020 to approximately $13.1 million. A little bit better, but we'll take it in 2022. In 2022, we had what?
COVID disruptions, supply chain chaos, inflation, staffing shortages. These are the things we lived with in 2022, but nevertheless, look at what our people were able to achieve, and the adjusted EBITDA margin also very nice. I would say excellent, outstanding job by Park's people under extremely difficult circumstances to deliver that kind of performance. If you ever wanna send a thank you note, kind of send a thank you note to the Park's people. Not me. I didn't do any of it. It's our people that do all of it. Let's go on to slide 9. We'll just skim through this. This is something we do every quarter now. One of our really good investors, good idea, said we should cover this every quarter, sure we do it.
The only thing that I'll cover is the bottom on slide nine, the bottom arrow point. With interest rates rising fast and the era of cheap and easy money coming to an end, we hope, maybe Park's hard-earned money will finally be worth something. It's been so frustrating having money and everybody else gets free money, and we're trying to compete, let's say, on M&A, and, you know, the prices go way through the roof because somebody else does that. They're using other people's money. We use our money. And the other people's money is, you know, cheap. Hopefully there'll be a little bit of a change there. Slide ten. The only thing we'll cover is the last item, just an update.
We've paid $554 million or $27.05 per share in cash dividends since fiscal year 2005. By comparison, I think you know what it is. That's a lot of damn money for a small company like Park. Slide 11. Okay. A little bit more of our kind of fun stuff here. Top five customers in Q4. There's a picture of a Boeing 787. That relates to GEnx. That relates to the GEnx-1B engine, for which we provide materials. Boeing Poseidon sub chaser, that's a NORDAM. That relates to NORDAM, the NORDAM group. Actually, because this sub chaser uses the WeatherMASTER radome. We produce the materials for that radome that NORDAM produces. The Patriot Advanced Capability PAC-3 missile system.
This is a big one. We'll talk about this a few times during the presentation. That relates to a company called Aerojet Rocketdyne. We supply the materials for the rocket nozzles for the PAC-3. Gremlins, you probably guessed it already. That's Kratos designed and built the Gremlins drone. We don't have a picture for Middle River, but we'll cover them later on. Okay, let's keep going. Slide 12. Yeah, interesting comparison to fiscal 2020 to 2022. You see that the pie's kind of coming back more or less to a fiscal of 2022, coming back to more or less what it looked like in 2020, except military's a little down as compared to 2021. Now I'm going to 2021.
Our feeling with that is our military is really something we really feel good about, especially for the future, and we'll get to that in a minute. In 2020, fiscal 2022, we think military was kind of held back because there were really big delays in approving the budget. The budget's now approved, so we'll see what happens with that. Let's go on to slide 13. Park loves niche military aerospace programs, so we always do this for fun. This is a project that Donna and Elena work on every quarter, coming up with some kind of fun stuff that Park's involved with. Sometimes it's a little niche-y stuff. Sometimes it's not big volume, sometimes it is. Boeing RC-135 materials for structures.
The Mk 125 warhead for the SM-6 missile, that's materials for structures. That's on ablative, actually, in that case, 'cause that's structures. Collins-class submarine, that's for the Royal Australian Navy materials, and materials for the Harrier. Let's keep going. Wanna keep track of the time here. Got a lot to cover. Slide 14. Okay, so we're gonna do something a little different here. We're gonna cover, talk about trends in the military markets and talk about trends in the commercial markets. We haven't done that in prior quarters, so we're trying to provide a little bit of a different perspective for you, which we think is timely. Military markets, trends, and considerations. The new world order. What's the new world order? A sea change in attitudes about the defense industry and defense spending based on the war in Europe.
Almost overnight, and what a difference a war makes. Well, you know, the war is a horrible thing, of course, but it certainly has an impact upon the global defense industry. It seems that way, anyway. I just talked about this. The U.S. 2022 defense appropriations bill was signed into law, so defense industry is no longer in limbo. The 2023 defense budget includes additional spending increases, including for missile defense systems. That's something we'll talk about a lot here. Missile defense systems such as a PAC-3, we talked about that, and a hypersonic missile system such as the SM-3 missile. We're in that program as well. Let's go on to slide 15. Continuing with military market trends. Europe may be the real big defense spending story.
You know, we talked about the U.S. and everything. What about Europe? Because these products may be made in the U.S., but where are they being used and purchased? Certain countries like Germany have already significantly increased their defense budgets, and many others are considering or are in the process of considering increasing their budgets. Not surprisingly at all, the circumstances, what's the emphasis? Missile defense systems. Well, I guess we know why that is, because nobody likes missiles getting shot at them. So that's a big thing. I think that's kind of a maybe a part of that, what do we call, a sea change. We don't use that term paradigm shift at Park. We don't like that. Don't forget about Asia.
That's not a happy place these days either with everything going on with China and Taiwan. Taiwan recently contracted for upgrades to its PAC-3 missile system. Japan utilizes that PAC-3 missile system defense system as an essential part of its missile defense strategy. South Korea, not surprisingly, utilizes the PAC-3 missile defense system to counter North Korea's ballistic missile capabilities. Let's go on to slide 16. Still military markets, some trends about the new world order. Lockheed recently commented. Sorry, I'm rushing a little bit. Commented that Russia's attack in Ukraine has boosted demand for their missile defense systems.
Lockheed's CEO stated, We've got demand signals for THAAD and PAC-3 from around the world. He continued, When you see missiles hitting hospitals and train stations in Ukraine, governments are now thinking that it might be worthwhile to have an effective missile defense system. Yeah, you think so? Next item, Aerojet Rocketdyne, which is also a big contractor for the PAC-3, announced significant increases in PAC-3 missile system activity just recently. Park's, as we've already commented, supports the PAC-3 Missile Defense system with specialty ablative composite materials. Here we go. What's the conclusion here? The strong trend toward increased defense spending in North America, Europe, and Asia, undeniable as far as I'm concerned anyway. There's a but, supply chain issues could at least temporarily limit the speed of the ramp-up of defense spending.
That's a significant item because the supply chain, you know, may not be able to respond as quickly as some of these countries want to upgrade their defense systems. It may take a little while for the supply chain to catch up. That seems to be always the case. Why don't we go on to slide 17. We covered defense trends. Now commercial aerospace markets and trends and considerations. They're a little more complicated, so it'll take a little bit more to go through it. Let's start with commercial aviation continues to recover, largely driven by continuing improvement in U.S. domestic and transatlantic. Single aisle, we talk about that a lot, continues to lead the recovery over wide body.
Single-aisle aircraft designed to service those domestic routes as well as the short-range international routes like transatlantic. U.S. domestic commercial air travel now running about 90% of pre-COVID levels, we've heard. That's been reported anyway. Even business travel which lagged a personal air travel recovery appears to be beginning to recover nicely. We're not talking about business jets. We're talking about business people traveling on commercial airlines. Analysts believe 2019 global air traffic levels will be matched in 2023, surpassed in 2024. Let's see about that. Several U.S. air carriers recently reported strong passenger demand and increased their revenue guidance.
Carriers have recently commented that they plan to pass along jet fuel costs. Let's talk about that a little bit later to their customers, and they expect their customers to pay the increased ticket prices. I just saw a report this morning on one of the financial news programs that just last month, ticket prices went up 18%. Don't hold me to that because I just. It's like on a, you know, news program, sometimes they get this stuff wrong, but not surprising. Slide 18, continuing with commercial aircraft, sorry, aerospace trends. All the signals seem to be quite positive. Happy days are here again. We're gonna celebrate.
Generally, higher jet fuel prices provide airlines with extra motivation to more quickly replace less fuel-efficient legacy aircraft and more fuel-efficient modern aircraft such as the A320neo. As a general rule, higher jet fuel prices are greater motivation. Generally speaking, airlines don't want to replace the legacy airplanes early because the economics are against that. Once the jet fuel prices get so high, then those economics shift, and there's motivation to replace the legacy airplanes with the more modern airplanes more quickly. The neo is much more efficient, fuel efficient, I should say, than the legacy A320 as a comparison. You come to the but. Okay, big but here, though. Is there a limit to how much additional cost the market will be willing to absorb?
Nobody seems to be talking about this too much, but, you know, it's our job to think and not just listen to what people say. Jet fuel is considered to be the largest piece of the operating cost pie for an airline, and that was the case even before the sharp increases in jet fuel prices. Jet fuel costs approximately twice what it cost a year ago, resulting in very significant increases in airline operating costs. That may even more than twice now because it seems like every week it goes up more and more. In order to maintain their margins, airlines have significantly increased ticket prices, will likely need to increase them even more to keep up with those escalating jet fuel prices. Let's go to slide 19. It is true that there.
People point this out, a lot of pent-up demand for air travel as the world recovers from the pandemic. Also a lot of people have loose money in their pockets, so people wanna, you know, get out and stop being locked down and wanna travel. That's. There's no doubt about that. Here we go back to the but again, are the individual and business travelers going to continue to be willing to pay the greatly escalated ticket prices forever and ever with no end in sight? Does that make sense, really? Does that defy logic? I don't know. Does it defy history? Oh, yeah, it defies history. That's not how it's worked in the past. Does it defy gravity? Well, you know, I don't know. Maybe it does. What about that dirty R word? What happens if there's a recession?
Will people keep flying and paying the greatly escalated, escalating ticket prices if the economy stalls out and goes in reverse? Something to think about. Let's go on to slide 20, still on commercial aerospace trends. Something to think about while we're celebrating with exuberance, you know, how great things are in commercial aviation, and of course, we have to ask if that's irrational exuberance. If people start flying less, will airlines be less willing to order new airplanes? Well, maybe. Something to consider anyway. If that happens, will commercial aircraft manufacturers scale back their production rates? Here's an interesting thing. Some may and some may not. Something to consider. Now, this is what may be where we get to this diverging duopoly thing.
You know, Boeing is, from what we're told from their reports, they're focused on cash flow. Airbus, from their reports, no, they're focused on dominating the single-aisle world. The reaction may be different, where Boeing may say, Yeah, they gotta pull things in. Understandably, I'm not criticizing Boeing. Airbus may go the opposite direction. We'll get back to that later, but it's a real interesting thing to watch, especially if the economy slows down and goes into reverse. Let's go on to slide 21. Slide 21, this is a slide that's in every presentation, so this is just kind of review. We have that firm LTA requirements contract through 2029 with Middle River Aerostructure Systems, MRAS, which is a sub of ST Engineering.
I always have to remind you that MRAS used to be a sub of GE Aviation. That explains why we're on all these GE Aviation programs. We got these programs when MRAS was still a sub of GE Aviation. We built a redundant factory for them, a sole source for composite materials for nacelles and thrust reversers for the first 5 checked items we'll call the A320neo family of aircraft with LEAP-1A engines, 747, the two COMAC airplanes, and the Global 7500 aircraft. Let's keep moving. I always like to point out this picture. Those are Boeing 747 nacelles, and look at the size of them compared to that guy in the background. Love that picture. Okay, slide 22. Some new developments at GE Aviation. This is kind of nice.
Park's new film adhesive product, developed under a joint development MOU, which, you know, agreement, we called it an MOU, between MRAS and Park. Development of this film adhesive product taking a long time. It's complete. Now our new film adhesive product is undergoing qualification with Emirates. It's very good news. We're happy about that. It's been a long process. Parks lightning strike protection, LSP material, Parks LSP material was also developed jointly with Emirates. It's currently in use by Emirates on the A320neo aircraft family and the COMAC C919 program. We're sole source in those two programs. That's good. That's not news, though. Here's the news. Top, slide 23 at top.
On top, Park's LSP material is now in the process of being approved for use on the Global 7500 program that has GE Passport 20 engines. That's very good news for Park also. Not sure of the timing on these things. If I had some confidence about them, I would tell you, but I don't know. Next one, fan case containment wrap for the GE9X engines for the 777X aircraft. Well, this is really good news until about a week ago. After being dormant for almost two years, the fan case containment wrap program has become active again. There is still design risk. Remember we told you about this, that there could be a redesign of the fan case so that the containment wrap is no longer necessary.
Even if that happens, there are still a number of containment wraps that need to be produced. We're very pleased to be back on that program, at least for the time being. We actually were expecting POs like any day, you know, for this program, you know, restarting at any day. Boeing pulled the rug out from under us. They surprised, I think, a lot of people by announcing they're pushing out the 777X entry into service until 2025. That's a 2-year delay. That's obviously disappointing. At this point, it's very unclear how that'll impact the containment wrap program, but it obviously could lead to program delays. That's a little bit of a, you know, not good news, but maybe some putting, throwing some cold water on it as well. Let's go on to slide 24.
All right, we spent a lot of time talking about the A320neo family with the LEAP-1A engines because it's so important to Park. This slide we've had in, I think, two or three presentations already. This is where Airbus was kind of putting down their marker saying, This is what we're gonna do. This is a year ago, May of last year. This is what we're gonna do. Okay? As soon as they did that, the supply chain gets kind of freaked out, and a lot of pushback, a lot of, Oh, it's too much. How can the supply chain support that? It got to be tension right away between Airbus and the supply chain. Let's go on to slide 25. Just some background here.
Airbus delivered an average of 40 A320neo family aircraft per month in 2021. They said they wouldn't go below 40. They didn't. Even, you know, at the beginning of the pandemic, they said they can hold the 40. So many doubters, but they held to their word. Next item. Currently delivering A320neo family aircraft at a rate of 49 per month, which I think is pretty much what they were planning, so ramping up already. Airbus recently stated their plan, and this is a big one, reach a rate of 65 A320neo family aircraft deliveries per month by the middle of next year, which is just 14 months from now. Obviously, for Airbus to get to that rate, the supply chain needs to ramp up really before that date and maybe even now.
In a recent speech at the Aviation Week raw material supply manufacturer supply conference, this is a conference where the Airbus people are talking to their suppliers. What did they say? He says it's kind of interesting. We need you, meaning the suppliers in the audience, to follow Airbus's rate increase indications and have faith in the rate increases indicated by Airbus. He also told the audience, We can't have you not to second-guess. You see, Airbus is getting a little bit impatient, a little bit annoyed with their supply chain. That's my take on this anyway. Like, stop questioning what we're doing, just get on board, you know. It's. There's that tension there. Slide 26.
GE Aviation, this is I think important, recently stated publicly, We're experiencing unprecedented ramp in LEAP production, and further stated, We're aligned with the airframers, that means Airbus, what we need to produce through 2023. This is potentially significant because GE Aviation was one of those companies in the supply chain that was publicly questioning the aggressiveness of Airbus's indicated rate increases. Okay, let's go on. Next one. It's been reported, this is a theme we, you know, keep going back to. Current very high oil and jet fuel prices are motivating many legacy A320 operators to consider upgrading their A320neo aircraft more quickly. Again, neo much more fuel efficient than the legacy A320s. Then the last one, this is important kind of news. This is, you know, very recent news, just on May 4.
This was one year after the original indication. Remember May of last year? This, I think, was part of their Airbus's Q1 earnings announcement. Looking beyond 2022, we see continuing strong growth in commercial aircraft demand driven by the A320 family. As a result, we're now working with our industry partners to increase A320 family production rates of 75 aircraft a month in 2025. You see, they're not backing down. They're actually doubling down. In the news release, they further state commercial aircraft production of A320 family is progressing toward a monthly rate of 65 aircraft by summer 2023. That's the other thing they've been saying, 65 by middle of next year, 75 by 2025.
Following analysis, this is important, of global customer demand, as well as assessment of industrial ecosystem readiness, that means really to the supply chain, the company is now working with its suppliers and partners to enable monthly production rates of 75 in 2025. During the conference call, Airbus also said they assessed a large number of suppliers, and they're coming back and saying, Okay, you know, we've heard all the questions about it. We've worked with our suppliers. We're doing this. That's at least my take on it. Slide 27. Let's keep going. At the end of March 2022, the LEAP-1A, CFM had a 57.4% share of A320 family aircraft orders. This is the Bib L. E. Aero-E ngines news. The A320neo has two approved engines.
One is a LEAP-1A, that's the one we're on through CFM, and the other one is a Pratt & Whitney engine, which we're not on. That percentage is really important because we're only on the LEAP portion, 57.4. Assuming that 57.4% is, you know, which obviously goes up and down every month, but just let's use that number, that's the current number. The 75 A320neo aircraft family per month represents approximately $28.75 million per year of revenue for Park starting in 2025. Last item, the XLR. We talk about this every quarter, kind of a big thing. How we doing on time? Not so good. First flight expected this year. Certification entry into service early 2024. Very unique airplane for single aisle in terms of its seating capacity and range.
515 firm orders as of February 2022. This is a big one. Still no response from Boeing. Boeing does not have a response for this airplane, and we're not hearing anything. Don't know what to make of that, but it seems like Airbus is planning to own the space unless Boeing moves pretty quickly. Let's go on to slide 28. Continuing on the GE Aviation jet engine program update. COMAC C919. That's supposed to be entering into service at the end of this year, we'll see. Then the Global 7500 produced 39 last year, and they also delivered their, the hundredth aircraft recently. Let's go on to slide 29. 747, we cover this every quarter.
Boeing is terminating the production of the 747. I guess the last one is supposed to be delivered in October. This is a real sad thing for us because we just love this airplane. Real important airplane. This is the first airplane, first GE Aviation engine program there that we got on back in 2014. It's sentimental for us as well. Slide 30. We won't go through the history. You can read that for yourself. At the bottom of the page, our forecast. This is a GE Aviation program sales history. The forecast for Q1, $6 million-$6.5 million. Now Q1 is over in two and a half weeks, but there's still a lot of risk in Q1. You see that's down. Q4 was $6.7 million.
That's the reason it's down 100% because of supply chain limitations, we believe. Let's go on to the next item, which is the forecast for Park. Park's financial performance history and forecast estimates. Again, the top part is history. What's our forecast for sales for Q1? $12.75 million-$13.25 million. The EBITDA $2.75 million-$3.25 million. You know, we're talking about not great numbers, but you know, remember at the beginning of the presentation, we were talking about Q4. We said we missed about $1 million of sales because of supply chain issues mostly. Well, these numbers take into account we're probably gonna miss another $1 million of sales in Q1.
In other words, if we had everything was great or the supply chain was there, we had everything we needed, the sales would be a lot higher. Let's keep going. Let's talk about some comments to our forecast and our outlook. First of all, forecasting is highly problematic and probably not even very meaningful in the current environment of supply chain chaos and disorder. Predicting the future in such an environment is somewhat of a guessing game, probably more than somewhat. Forecasting for Park and GE Aviation programs is problematical even for Q1. Q1 ends in two and a half weeks. The thing is, it's back-end loaded a lot for production for us because we've been having difficulty getting raw materials. The thing is, there's a lot of risk, even in the forecast we gave you.
The forecast we gave you takes into account, you know, a lot of stuff that we're not gonna be able to ship in Q1 because of supply chain issues. There's further risk because in order to get to the numbers we forecasted, things have to go well. If there's a hiccup, there'll be more disappointments with supply chain, even that, even those numbers are at risk. I know it seems strange. You have two and a half weeks to go. How could there be so much risk? Well, we're living in very unusual times. Again, supply chain chaos, disorder. It's very hard to predict things in that environment. You know, it's really hard to predict one week out. When we talk about long-term forecast, well, that's kind of silly.
If we give you a forecast, we'd have a very long-term forecast and just be, you know, have very little value. We don't want to waste your time with something that has very little value. However, and there's a big however, we believe we can provide, meaningful, just checking the time, insights into our company outlook. Let's break it down between military and commercial. Military first. Based upon the New World Order caused by the war, we believe the outlook is quite promising for Park, particularly in the missile defense system area, for reasons we discussed. We believe this New Order dynamic is also not a temporary thing. We believe it is an emerging longer-term and sustainable phenomena. It's like the world kind of got a wake-up call here, and it's not gonna go back to sleep.
I mean, you know, war is. You can talk about wars. When you have a war, you see it on TV every day. You know what happens. It gets people's attention. Obviously, if you're Europe, it even gets more of your attention because it's in your backyard. People remember, well, I don't know, probably not to people so alive, but that were during World War II, but they probably heard about it. About what could, you know, could happen to Europe, in other words, in a case of a, you know, of a war. Slide 33, how would a recession impact the outlook for our military business? We believe not much because there's too much at stake for the country seeking to increase their defense budgets. You know, there's, again, that little drag, which is the supply chain.
You know, if you're concerned about missiles coming your way, you probably prioritize your missile defense system over other stuff, maybe fixing your roads or whatever, what our country spend their money on. Commercial aircraft business outlook. This is a little more complicated, but let's go into it. Why don't we break it down by program? Because I think when you look at the key programs, it helps us understand. A320neo, obviously we're starting with that one. Airbus is aggressively attempting to aggressively push up the rates for this critical program. How would a recession impact this program? We believe Airbus is attempting to aggressively exploit what they believe is Boeing's perceived weakness in order to take as much single-aisle share as possible and to establish an irreversibly dominant position in single aisle.
As a result, we believe Airbus would at least could attempt to press their advantage even more aggressively if a recession were to occur. This is kind of an important moment in time for commercial aircraft. I mean, if you're American, you may not like it that much, but I think they believe there's a window of opportunity, Airbus, for them to break the duopoly permanently and take dominant share of single aisle. Single aisle is where it's at. They're very different kind of mindset between Boeing and Airbus from what I could tell. Airbus just seem to be really aggressive. If there's a recession, my guess is they'll even go even more aggressively. That's my guess. I don't know if I'm right. I'm just kind of thinking aloud with you folks.
I'm not, nobody at Airbus is telling me stuff. I'm just reading what you can read, you know, in the public information. Slide 34, let's talk about those COMAC programs. The RJ is small program and not worth spending a lot of time, and the C919 has significant upside potential for Park once the aircraft is certified. How would a recession impact those programs? Difficult to say, but a key consideration is the aircraft are intended to be sold in the China market, a market controlled by centralized Chinese government. Since the 919 is an important prestige program for the Chinese government, they may press the program forward even in a recession. Something to think about. Slide 35. Let's talk about that Global 7500 program.
Technically a business jet, but we're including it in commercial just, I guess, for simplicity of the presentation. Clearly a very key program for Bombardier, and it's actually, we believe it's a mandatory success program for Bombardier. Good news is they have been successful so far, clearly placing a great emphasis on the program. How would a recession impact that program? Interesting to think about. Not completely clear, but it's possible that the success drivers for the program would stay in place even during a recession. In a recession, a typical buyer of a $40,000 Chevy may hesitate, but would a recession slow down the typical buyer of a $73 million airplane? I don't know, but it's a different kind of buyer with a different kind of mindset.
You know, clearer than the guy who wants to, you know, buy that Chevy, nice Chevy off the lot. Although, actually, there are no Chevys on the lot right now because of the, I guess, the chip shortages and other supply chain issues. In theory, if there was a Chevy on the lot and the guy could buy one for $40,000, he might hesitate. Based upon the above considerations, this is the punch line here. Although there are serious concerns about the economy, inflation, workforce shortages, and supply chain chaos, we believe the outlook for Park is actually quite positive based on what we just talked about. Okay, we're gonna try to hustle a little bit here. Changing gears quickly.
Major expansion, we're not gonna go through the numbers except the second to last item, film and tape line qualifications and progress, but they have been delayed because of supply chain issues, staffing limitations. Just so you know, those lines are being run, operated for the qualification by R&D and engineering people. We do what we gotta do, you know? Not what we prefer to do, but we do what we need to do. Everybody does what they need to do at Park. Just quickly, I don't wanna spend a lot of time on this, but if you look at the top picture, that's the front of our new building. Well, it's actually the front of our existing building. We've expanded the offices.
The second floor in the middle, that's the most beautiful part of our expansion. That's a conference room. What we decided to do is dedicate it to Linda Burge. Linda died about a year and a half ago. She was a very special employee of ours. A lot of hearts were broken when she died. We decided to call this room the Linda Burge Observation Deck. It oversees the airport, you know, property and the runways. Very beautiful room. We had a little dedication. Her family came over. Very nice little event. I just wanted you to know about that. Let's go on to slide 37. Another little bit departure here of James Webb Space Telescope, now about 1 million miles from Earth.
It's really, when you think about it, you know, this space telescope has a lot of our Sigma struts incorporated in the structure of what's called a bus, I think. You know, those not little struts were made in our little factory. I'm putting little in quotes compared to 1 million miles in Kansas, and now they're 1 million away, floating in space, orbiting 1 million miles from the Earth. The moon is only a quarter million miles from the Earth for perspective. The MIRI instrument, I guess it has to be extremely cold in order for it to operate properly, so they have it, you know, in a real cold temperature.
I just thought it's kind of a fun little fact there. Let's keep going since we're, you know, short on time, of course. Okay, we are short on time. Park's people. Always talk about Park's people. So yeah, this is our staffing crisis here or challenge. Maybe I shouldn't say crisis, but, you know, severe challenge. We currently have 105 people, but we just added 7 people last week. So we were bumping along at 98, 99, 100 for a while there. Ideal people count for us would be 125, 128. Minimum means a properly operating function is 115. So many other companies are throwing money at people. You hear about everywhere, everybody, you know, offering money to people to hire them. Lots of money. Of course, it's a problem for us.
It makes it more difficult to recruit people. They bid up people when they are needed and short them. For you investor people out there, you know what that means. Throw them on a garbage heap when they're not. Like commodities to be traded, like pork bellies. At Park, it's kind of heartbreaking to see that. We believe throwing money at people and paying them what they have not earned can be cruel and hurtful to them. It can destroy their sense of dignity, self-respect, humanity, and self-worth. It's clearly more difficult and challenging for Park to recruit people in a world where others are throwing money at people to recruit them, and where Park's not willing to do that. Park, we stick to our principles no matter how difficult or inconvenient. Throwing money at people as if they were commodities, that's not for us.
Our people, they're not commodities. Our people are precious. Our people are family. Slide 39. At Park, our people earn everything they get. We don't do giveaways. We think our people are compensated properly, but they earn what they get, so they have some dignity. No giveaways, no free lunches. We respect and admire our people too much to marginalize them, demoralize them, dehumanize them by giving them stuff they haven't earned. That's so demeaning to a person to do that. Condescending, demeaning. What will happen if there's an economic downturn or recession? Will those companies throwing money at people, they're gonna hold on to them? All the people they hired? What do you think? Park. When we hire someone at Park, our attitude is we hire them for life. It doesn't always last. It doesn't always work out.
They may quit, or maybe if they're not right for us, they won't stay. That's our attitude anyway. Throughout the depths of the pandemic and economic crisis, we kept all of our precious people, every last one of them. Remember that pandemic and economic crisis, where our sales fell out of bed, you know, roughly the, you know, I don't know, just went off a cliff, I guess you say. FY 20. Remember the pandemic? Uncertainty about whether the world would even survive. Remember that two years ago? We really didn't know what was gonna happen. There was so much uncertainty, so much fear. What did we do? We did not let go of any of our people then. Would we let go of any of our people if there's a recession? What do you think? Let's keep going.
Here's an interesting little one. Culture eats strategy for breakfast. That's from Peter Drucker. Maybe some of you know who Peter Drucker is. I can think of some of you folks out there listening who I'm sure know who he is. How were we able to make our Q4 EBITDA number with such a severely reduced workforce? Was it magic? I don't think so. Our people working very long hours, some cases 70-hour weeks, week in and week out. A dozen of our salaried people, including our VP and GM, worked the line during Q4, including the 3-day President's Day weekend. That was key because that was right before the end of Q4, and we had a lot of production we had to get out to make our numbers. Nobody really asked our people to do it. They just did it.
Understand how very fortunate and lucky we are to have the wonderful people we have. Understand why we love our people. That's a question. Sorry, slide 41. Gonna hustle here. People talk lots about strategies sometimes developed by fancy Ivy League consulting firms. We've got nothing against fancy Ivy League consulting firms, but that's often where these strategies come from. This is the key thing that so many people miss, so many Ivy Leaguers miss. With a dedicated, motivated, and inspired workforce, a company can move mountains. Without such a workforce, a company can move nothing, no matter how elegant their strategy might be. Don't get us wrong, we have a strategy too, but it's our wonderful people who make us powerful and whole. Update on our Customer Flex Program.
We talk about this every quarter, so I won't read the numbers for you, except to say critical program for Park. It'd be very difficult for us to really get done what we have to get done without that program. We love that program. Let's go on to slide 42. Closing thoughts. We're getting there. Will there be a recession? The excess in the economy and our society seems so extreme to us. Are they sustainable? Will people be willing to continue to pay highly elevated prices for almost everything when money supply is being tightened and the days of cheap and easy money are coming to an end? Can things continue that way forever? Does that make sense? Something to think about. We're not economists, of course, but we believe recession is likely under these circumstances. How do we feel about it?
Well, we know it sounds harsh, but in a way, we hope there will be a recession because to us, that may be the only way some sense of balance, propriety, logic, order, and sanity can be restored to the economy and our society. What will we do differently in a recession? Probably not much. Slide 43. Closing thoughts continued. Principles are not cheap. We're circling back on principles are not cheap. They only count when it's inconvenient to hold true to them. You know when somebody has principles when they're holding true to them when it's not convenient. When it's convenient, it doesn't matter. It is inconvenient and costly for Park to honor our POs and our PO confirmations in a world where many others are not doing so. At Park, we do what we say we're gonna do.
At Park, our word is our bond. Doesn't matter how inconvenient it is, how costly it is. Our word is our bond. We don't go against our word. I'm talking about pricing in a PO. I'm not talking about, you know, suppliers that are late. That's not their fault. You know, maybe their supply chain is not supporting them. I'm talking about pricing in a confirmed PO. It is inconvenient for Park not to throw money at people in order to recruit them in a world where many others are doing just that. At Park, our people are precious. Our people are not commodities to be bid up or sold short, depending on which way the wind is blowing. Others need to make their own choices about what matters to them and what does not, and they have to live with those choices. That's their business.
At Park, honor and integrity are what matter most. At Park, principles are not cheap. Slide 44. What's next for Park? Really nothing new. Continue to press forward, continue to attack. We're not shy. We go after things aggressively. We continue to make money for our owners. That's something that we, all our people understand is important. We make money for our owners. We always do. That's our objective anyway. We keep swinging for the fences. We don't play small ball at Park. We're always swinging for the fences. At Park, we're not like the others. We're not fooling around here. We're looking to make an impact. We look to go for greatness. At Park, we play for keeps. Last thing we always talk about is our picture, and this is a little different because the people picture. This is not everybody.
We tried to get everybody, but it was a storm and people couldn't make it. They had storms in Kansas. You know, you've heard about that. Wizard of Oz. It's only about half our workforce. We do a company picture because really we wanted to recognize everybody in Q4. Everybody did such a great job. Interestingly, that little thing above, it's not so little, above the folks, that's an actual transcowl structure, the A320neo. It was given to us as a gift from MRAS. That copper stuff, looking stuff, that's the actual lightning strike material. You can kinda get a perspective on the size of the transcowl and engine it sells. I think that covers it. How we doing with time? Not so good. 50 minutes.
Operator, if there are any questions, Matt and I, we'd be happy to answer them.
Ladies and gentlemen, if you have a question or comment at this time, please press star then one on your telephone keypad. If your question has been answered or you wish to remove yourself from the queue, simply press the pound key. Again, if you have a question or comment at this time, please press star then one on your telephone keypad. We have a question or comment from the line of Brian Glenn from Olcott Square Investment Partners. Your line is open.
Hey, Brian and Matt.
How you doing, Brian?
Good. Thanks for all the efforts and the walkthrough. I know this goes back to the quarter-ended May 2020. There was a small buyback. It was like 137,000 shares. The stock price is about the same. The outlook from me as an outsider looks tremendously better and more certain, even if there is a ton of uncertainty. Back in May of 2020, we had no vaccine, no timing, air travel was shut down globally. Now it looks like you're getting larger exposure on some existing programs like the film adhesive for the 7500, the A320s ramping up. Those statements are out. You had your comments around China's COMAC and then the military spend. The stock price is about the same.
If it was cheap enough to buy back then, what's changed in terms of any sort of repurchase, whether small or large now?
Okay. Thanks, Brian. Yeah. That's a very good point. Right now, we're pretty much in a blackout, but it's something we need to consider. You know, we haven't been real aggressive with buybacks, as I think you know our history is to, you know, use the return of capital cash for special dividends rather than buybacks. Thanks for the input, something to consider. I just wanna comment. Yeah, I agree with you. The short-term forecast, we can't even give you one because it's such difficulty in the market right now. I agree with you that the outlook, and it's hard to time the outlook because of all those short-term factors, let's call them temporary factors. I believe you're right, the outlook is positive.
Thanks for the input. I'm not, you know, gonna be an answer, of course, but we'll discuss the next board meeting. That's all I can tell you at this point.
Okay. Yeah, thanks for that. I appreciate it. Can you remind me if the A321, the XLR that you mentioned, is that within that long-term agreement for MRAS or that's outside of it? I think you did mention it prior, and I just don't recall.
It's within the LTA. Yeah, that's a LEAP-1A engine, so that's all within the LTA.
Yeah. Understood. Then I guess last one, if I can sneak it in. Any comments around the timing of actual workflow being done in the new facility or, and it might have even happened.
The timing of work starting the operating the facilities?
Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah.
We're still going through the qualification.
Yeah.
Go ahead. Sorry.
Yeah, yeah. No, you're right.
We're still going through the qualification. As I said, that's been delayed. You know, we had to actually choose between the qualification and production, and we chose production. We didn't want to disappoint our customers, so the qualification was delayed just because raw material shortages and staffing. I mean, as I said, the people that are actually running the equipment are people from R&D and engineering, which is not what we want. We want, you know, operators to be over there. At this point, we're not being pressed real hard to get the qualification complete, which is good. This could take a little while longer, but once we get the qualification complete, then we'll start producing in that factory for MRAS and other customers as well. I don't have a hard timing for you on that.
It's kind of one of those things that's in flux based upon all the other supply chain issues that we're dealing with.
Okay. Thanks. I appreciate that. Thanks for the effort. Good luck with the 747 coming to an end. I know that's gonna hit you, personally, so, yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. Thank you very much.
All right. Yeah. Thank you.
We'll have to try to get over that. Thank you.
Yeah. Thanks for all the hard work.
Thank you.
Thank you. Again, ladies and gentlemen, if you have a question or comment at this time, please press star then 1 on your telephone keypad. I'm showing no additional questions in the queue at this time, sir.
Thank you very much, Operator. Thanks, everybody, for listening, hanging in there. I apologize these calls keep getting longer and longer. We do our best to rush through them. Anyway, have a good day. You know, if you always can reach Matt and me if you wanna have any follow-up questions. We're happy to always take your questions. Have a great day. Thanks. Goodbye.
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for participating in today's conference. This concludes the program. You may now disconnect. Everyone, have a wonderful day.