Thanks, everyone, for joining us for day 2, one of the first afternoon sessions. I'm gonna be joined with the management from RTX. Have a series of questions that I'm gonna try to loop both of you in on all of these and give you the, you know, ample time to kind of address. Let's start off kind of think about medium-term strategic priorities, and then I'll start with Chris. You discussed several near-term focus areas on the 4Q earnings call that are going to allow the company to be successful over the next few years, including capacity expansions, investing in skilled workforce, investing on the supply chain and combating inflation.
I guess from there, I'll give you the opportunity to expand on those thoughts and any more details and targets you'd like to point out there.
Great. Well, thank you for having us, John. By the way, for those of you who haven't met Chris Calio. Maybe we'll start because we're gonna be talking a little bit longer term here today with our, with our disclaimer. We will be making or likely making forward-looking statements, and with that comes some uncertainties and caveats. Please consult our SEC filings, for all the details on that. We got that out of the way. Joining me on stage, by the way, Neil Mitchill, our CFO. Maybe I'll just start with a little bit on 2022, even though that feels like a long time ago.
Uh-huh.
It'd be good just to kind of recap there, just to calibrate everybody. Solid year for RTX Corporation, despite some headwinds that, you know, many of you know about, many people have been talking about today. 6% organic sales growth, 12% year-over-year EPS growth, and free cash flow of almost $5 billion ahead of plan. Again, solid year. Those headwinds we were talking about, inflation being perhaps the most persistent and the most strong. $2 billion in inflation headwind we were able to overcome last year to get to those results. Again, a mix of pricing and continued, you know, cost reduction. The real headline for us in 22, I think, was demand strength.
Ended the year with a $175 billion backlog, almost $70 billion of which on our defense side, RMD in particular, our missile and defense business, ended the year with a 1.37 book-to-bill. Very, very strong demand. In addition, on the commercial side, we've seen continued strong demand for our, you know, commercial end markets. Aftermarket, very strong. Continued ramp up with airframer, Raytheon contributing there, you know, as well. At the end of the day, I think we've probably had 25% year-over-year growth in the aftermarket on the commercial side, combined Pratt and Collins. Again, very, very strong demand in our end markets, and we're seeing that continuing into 2023. Maybe also just a minute on some of our 2025 targets we put out there as well, John.
You know, as many of you know, in May of 21, we put out some 2025 financial targets. Again, since that time, there have been a few things that have shifted in the world. Some, some tailwinds, some headwinds. On the tailwind side, clearly we've taken some sales out of Russia. We've had supply chain become a more acute issue, inflation and labor. Clearly on the, on the tailwind side, we've seen commercial aftermarket come back very strong. We think we're gonna, you know, exit this year, 2023, on or about 2019 traffic levels. That's fantastic news. Obviously, we've all seen the reopening in China, which has been incredibly robust here in the first couple months of the year.
We'll continue to see, you know, that hopefully trending in the right direction. Net, net, even though there's been some kind of puts and takes, tailwinds, headwinds, still feel confident in our 2025 outlook, and we'll provide further updates when we see everybody at the investor day we're gonna have in June. Anything else you wanna hit, Neil, when we think about 22?
Yeah. Maybe just a couple comments on 22, and then I'll let you get to answering that question. you know, no change to our 2023, not on 22, actually.
23. Excuse me. I thought that's a long time ago. I forgot.
2023. 2023 guidance, no change at the RTX level or segment level today. We see 7%-9% organic sales growth as we go through this year. you know, we also have $4.90-$5.05 earnings per share range out there for the year, and $4.8 billion of free cash flow. We've taken everyone through the walks there. We have a little bit of pension headwind this year, about a half a billion dollars, a little bit higher CapEx, but really solid operating segment profit growth expected for the year on the back of, you know, the strength of the commercial aero-
Right.
reopening of China and, of course, you know, return to productivity-
Yep.
in our defense businesses. Maybe back to you.
Yeah.
Cover some of those other priorities.
Yeah. I think, you know, I'll restate kind of the original question.
Yeah.
I think will just help dive in a little further to what you were just discussing there. You know, it really comes down to the investment you're talking about into the business and the various elements that you're gonna put money towards. In there, is there anything you would wanna you to kind of dig in on?
Yeah.
kind of on top of it, you know, what are the, you know, what are the benchmarks you're gonna set yourself out for to be checking-?
Yeah.
along the way?
You made a reference. On the earnings call, we did lay out a couple key near-term priorities. As we said, the demand is there. That's, that's the headline for us. That's, that's the good news. We've gotta go and execute on it. Like a lot of folks we've seen, as I said up front, supply chain, labor, inflation. The reason, frankly, we laid out those priorities is we wanted, you know, people to understand that our organizational mantra is really control what you can control.
Do the things necessary to beat back some of those headwinds to the extent that we can. Let's just take supply chain, you know, for a minute. Again, the takeaway is we are actively managing, you know, these issues. I think we've said on earnings call, we've got about 400 or so professionals out in our supply chain working with our suppliers. These are manufacturing engineers, quality engineers, who are helping not only give us visibility into what's happening in the supply chains, so we can react faster, but also helping us clear quality notices, perhaps make, you know, engineering changes and deviations to improve, you know, yields. Again, very actively managing in the supply chain. We also signed a number of LTAs, about 400 LTAs we signed last year.
Locking in, you know, supply, giving our suppliers visibility into what our demand is, our demand signal, so they can, you know, hire and plan accordingly. On the supply chain side, I would say that we are continuing to work all number of angles to look kind of introspectively at what can we do better to enable the supply chain. We've done a little bit of self-reflection. Maybe some of you have seen kind of the headline, our CEO, Greg Hayes, talk today about things that we need to do to improve supply chain performance.
Some of that is making sure that we have a stable configuration before heading from a development program into a low rate or a higher rate of production, making sure that there are some engineering changes that we can make and execute to help with yields. A whole number of things that we can do to try to enable the supply chain to perform better. One thing that we looked at using our core tools, our process improvement tools, is how do we place POs faster? How do we reduce the cycle time between a purchase requisition and when we issue a PO to suppliers? One thing we learned in 2022 is that we perhaps were a little bit slow in putting in POs, and at that same time, you had lead times sort of extend, sort of exacerbating the situation.
Again, made some significant improvements in kind of our internal, you know, processes. We talked inflation, labor. We continue to hire at a very brisk pace. I think last year we hired almost 32,000 people into Raytheon Technologies. Attrition rates are high. Again, we are hiring at a very, you know, high clip. Then inflation. I mentioned upfront, $2 billion of inflation headwind, about $1.2 billion of that from product, another $800 million or so from what I'd call labor cost, you know, in inflation. We're doing the kinds of things that, you would want us to do, things that are, you know, blocking and tackling. No silver bullet necessarily on inflation, but pricing for sure where we can, especially on the commercial side.
I would say value engineering events, where again, we can make changes to some of our specs and our products to take, you know, cost out. I would also tell you, just sort of day-to-day process rigor using our core tools, just to give you some color. We've got about 50 million labor hours on the OE side of our business. About half of that is attributable to assembly and test. When we do these lean events and take, you know, minutes out of processes, it has a tremendous compounding effect and can lead to increased productivity. Those are the things that we use to sort of combat the inflation, you know, headwind that we're seeing out there. Anything else on the near term, Neil?
No, the only thing I would add to that is this environment has, you know, caused us to move up on the priority list some of our investments in restructuring activities. As costs have gone up and we see these headwinds, projects that, you know, we've been carrying around with us for, you know, a couple of years, all of a sudden hit the waterline. That's a good way for us to kind of hit some of those singles and doubles to, you know, take the edge off that growing inflation. That's what we're focused on right now.
Yeah. The other thing maybe that I would highlight, John, is just capacity. On the commercial side, I think we, you know, we entered into 2019 having the capacity we needed for the ramp. On the commercial side, we feel like as we're reramping back up, we've got the capacity. On the defense side, you know, we've seen that demand, and so we are continuing to sign up, you know, suppliers to add capacity in our factories. Again, we do believe that the demand is there, and those contracts will come. We wanna make sure that we're ready when they do. Again, those are the things I would say are midterm, if you will, sort of priorities here that we laid out in the earnings call and why we did it. The demand is there.
We've got to execute on it.
Okay. Another two-parter, and we'll start with you, Chris. You know, again, being in such a long cycle space, you know, we gotta think about, you know, 2025 and beyond. We've laid the 2025 targets out, but what are you investing in now that you think is gonna be the driver for growth from 2025 to 2030? When you think about it, you know, where's the investment going? Then the follow-up to Neil will be is how does that get funded?
Exactly. First of all, I don't wanna just skip right past the targets in 2025. I mean, as we said before, we put out some aggressive targets in 2021. We think they're achievable, again, we're doing everything that we can to execute on those and focus on those, making sure that the organization is completely aligned around what we need to do to hit those targets. You know, when we issued those, it was really a rallying cry to the organization. We were maybe a year in as a new organization after the merger, we wanted to make sure everybody knew what we needed to do as an organization and how we needed to validate sort of the thesis of the merger.
That's again, why we continue to focus so heavily on those 2025 targets. You are right. We are in an incredibly long cycle business. We need to walk and chew gum. We've gotta continue to invest. In fact, this year we'll invest about $5 billion in R&D in CapEx. If you don't continue to invest in our businesses, you will miss a cycle, and you will fall behind, and it is very difficult to claw your way back in. Continual investment to fuel Sustainable long-term growth is something that's obviously of paramount importance to us. When I think about, the kinds of macro areas where we're investing, these are the areas where I can see it cutting across multiple, you know, of our business units. I would say Sustainable Aviation is a significant one.
You know, supporting our customers in the industry and their drive to net zero. I would see connected battlespace, JADC2. How do we connect all of our systems, and how do we allow the war fighter to connect in highly contested areas throughout a number of domains, sea, underwater, land, in the air? Again, cutting across both our RIS business and Collins. Some of the other areas that we see cross domain capabilities. There are a number of areas where we think our products can come together to create mission solutions for our customers. Another macro area that we're looking at. Lastly, just to go back to one on the commercial side, I'd say connected aviation.
If you think about Pratt and Collins, how much data is coming off our equipment and what is a very, very large installed base, how do we harness that data? How do we create solutions for our customers using that data? How do we do better predictive maintenance and get out ahead of issues? There's a whole suite of solutions given all the data. There's a harnessing that I would say would be another kind of macro investment area. Just as an organization, we spend a lot of time on our technology roadmap. We've got a technology roadmap that consists of sort of 13 or so disciplines where we are gonna be developing the enabling technologies to feed into the sort of macro opportunities, you know, that I just talked about. Some of those include advanced materials, for instance.
I mean, if you look at how hard we're pushing performance across our products, a real differentiating factor is advanced materials. CMCs, ceramic matrix composites in our engines because we're running them hotter to make them more efficient. carbon technology using what we've got in our wheel and brake business, in Collins and to help with some of our military applications, given some of the heat that they need, you know, to withstand. gallium nitride for our radars, increasing power density and range. Another area would be electrification. If you think about our story on sustainability, electrification is critical, how we help or replace sort of mechanical operations in our products today. Power and thermal management, how we manage heat, again, our products are being pushed to the limit.
How do we manage some of that heat waste that's coming off of those products? High assurance networks, another one. I talked about connected battlespace. How is it that we're able to make sure that we've got resilient communication in some very contested environments? A lot of technology in that area as well. I would say multifunction apertures is another one, which is how do we take a radar and give it more capability, comms, sensing, electronic warfare out of the same aperture. These are some of those enabling technologies that we're investing in. Now, some are at various levels of TRL, technology readiness. Some are in the early stages, some are in the middle stages, some are probably on the cusp of going into, you know, a platform.
We're pretty thoughtful and careful about making sure that we've got investments in technologies in each of those tranches, if you will, again, because of our long, long cycle business. The last investment priority, then, Neal, you can check me if I've missed anything, is how we're designing and manufacturing our products. Again, we're investing a significant amount of money in Model Based Digital Engineering. On the defense side, we see significant penetration in many of our platforms. How do we iterate with our customers, with a digital model in terms of designs and so forth to get faster to market and get out ahead of problems and issues, you know, more quickly?
Have some more work to do on the commercial side, but again, that full digital lifecycle, you know, the make, the deliver, and then the aftermarket, how we continue to link all of those things. Factory 4.0, another huge initiative for us. How do we connect our factories? I think we've got about 15,000 connected machines across our enterprise today, trying to get to 20,000 by the end of the year and then going beyond that. Just other, I would say, Factory 4.0 connectivity initiatives, especially as we look to some of the new capacity that we're building. We've talked before about our Asheville facility coming out of Pratt & Whitney, the turbine airfoil value stream there.
When we open that up, it'll be 70%, you know, automated, 100% connected on day one, a huge driver of cost reduction for us, better quality, better customer outcomes. I think that would be kind of the, the high notes on the investment. Neal, anything I missed?
We can't afford any more than that. You can imagine there's no shortage of demand on dollars, people, resources. What I can say is our plans afford all that. You know, we've been investing even through the pandemic. Chris talked about $5 billion in 2023. That'll grow to $6 billion by 2025. On top of that, we do $4 billion-$5 billion of customer-funded R&D. There's almost $10 billion-$11 billion of investment being poured into all the technologies that Chris just talked about. We'll pay for that through the businesses generating returns. That $9 billion that we talk about of free cash flow in 2025 is after all of that.
You know, assuming we have the market demand continue, the commercial aero recover, as we all expect it to, the business is well-funded and self-funded to support that level of long-term investment. We have a really disciplined process inside the company to go through the prioritization of all that.
to make sure that we're putting the right dollars, the right amount of energy in each one of those buckets. I would also add to it, last year we started RTX Ventures.
Mm.
Our own small fund, if you will, making investments in even further out types of tangential technology. For example, hybrid electric, you know, battery technology is one, hypersonic aircraft is another. We got a bunch of irons in the fire. We're trying to do it through a number of different ways. Lastly, you know, we're always looking at, you know, bolt-on type M&A that could help augment or accelerate our path towards a higher technology readiness level in a number of those areas that Chris talked about. I feel very good about that. We're not starving this business. We don't plan to starve this business because we live in a long cycle business with differentiated products, and we need to stay one step ahead of the competition. All set.
Yeah. I mean, just given the topic you just touched on, maybe it's worth just flushing out your thoughts on the balance sheet, ideal leverage, the likes. You mentioned M&A, so maybe, you know, priority stacks in there and how you kind of see that going.
Sure, yeah. You know, it's our intention to maintain and grow the strength of our balance sheet. The dividend is really important to us. After all those investments we just talked about, we'll remain committed to the dividend. We expect that dividend to grow with earnings over the next several years. We'll also be committed to the share buyback commitments that we made. We'll be nearly complete with our $20 billion commitment to return cash to shareholders following the merger by the end of this year. We're almost up against that. We'll certainly get there in the first quarter of next year. Those are two really important priorities.
You know, I guess a little bit more detailed, you know, we look to leverage the balance sheet whenever we can to make the right smart investments, for example, in the supply chain. We talked a lot about constraints there, so we're making sure that we're supporting our suppliers in the right places, not just carte blanche bringing material in, but targeted investments, we can leverage the balance sheet there. Same thing with new product introduction. You know, where we think we need to enter into a marketplace, we certainly have the position to leverage the balance sheet to support entry of service into new products. All those investments that Chris talked about, there's a, there's a number of them that, you know, we're leveraging the balance sheet in some way, shape, or form.
In some cases, we're partnering with others to do that. I'm very confident that we'll be committed to this strong balance sheet that will give us plenty of liquidity and availability to continue to make those kinds of investments going forward, including bolt-on M&A as we see fit opportunistically.
Perfect. I guess moving on, let's drill into the resegmentation or the reorganization of the business. I know you guys have laid out some details. I thought this would be a good forum to maybe dig in a little further on the logic and what you've seen in decisions that have made so far without giving away too much.
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, just by way of background for those of you who didn't, you know, see the news, we came out on our earnings call and said that we were gonna take the 4 business units we've got today and realign into 3 business units. Really that was a product of some self-reflection that we've done as a company, having been together now for 3 years, kind of living in this house together, what's working, what could be improved. Also taking customer feedback, what did they like about what we've done, where do they think we've got room, you know, for improvement? The way we're thinking about structuring this is not just taking the 2 legacy Raytheon businesses and putting them together.
We're thinking of taking pieces of the legacy Raytheon businesses and moving them to Collins, where we think, it can have some significant synergistic, you know, benefit if you think connected battlespace, you think airspace management. Again, the key tenant in all of this is the customer alignment, creating solutions for the customer that they're asking for, and doing it in a more streamlined and collaborative way. When this is all said and done, we'd like to think that the majority of our revenue synergy opportunities will actually be housed in one business unit, and that we will eliminate a significant amount of intercompany activity, sales activity. Again, that goes to how do we collaborate more efficiently? How do we reduce friction in the organization? How do we share resources in a more efficient way?
Really, that's the backbone of this entire move. The second thing I will say is, as we kind of go through this, we're thinking of a, you know, kind of a next phase. How do we better leverage our scale as a pure play, $70 billion, you know, A&D company? We've got 14,000 product suppliers. We buy hundreds of millions of dollars worth of raw material. How do we better leverage our scale to get to better outcomes and candidly, better performance? Think about combining operations organizations, combining supply chain procurement, better management of some of those pain points, better leverage in those key areas. That's really the thrust behind this.
We've made some really good progress on what I would call sort of the blueprinting about what goes where, as I kind of just outlined. Then the next step will be kind of the implementation phase, the rewiring, if you will, to make it all work. We'll provide an update, I'm assuming, on our Q1 earnings call in April, and of course, lay this out, our plan is to lay this out at the investor day in Paris in June.
I guess, Neil, I'll give you the opportunity. Like, how is this going to, you know, impact you? Ultimately, I'm assuming a lot of this responsibility is gonna fall in your lap, but, you know, from your seat, how is this gonna impact you?
There's certainly a fair amount of implementation here, but we've got that covered. In terms of the benefits of it, I'm really excited and totally aligned with what Chris said here. I think there are a couple others. I expect to see some operational performance improvements as a result of this. I think as you get, you know, these organizations better aligned with the end product and the customer. We should see some improvements there. We'll see some synergies, some cost synergies. Some of that, most of that, frankly, will trip back to the customer over time, but that too will make us, I think, more competitive.
I think it enables that second part that Chris talked about a lot better, that we will be able to find ways to further leverage the scale of RTX, you know, from a functional perspective, think finance, HR, supply chain, et cetera. You know, our ability to support a simplified structure of three businesses versus four, likely further enables us down the path of, you know, what we call Enterprise Services or, you know, ways that we can take more cost and leverage the scale of, you know, a $72 billion-$73 billion company. There's a lot to be excited about. We're able to move our resources around more efficiently. I think we'll be able to focus those investments that we were all talking about better.
You know, I think this is gonna pay dividends, not just to customers, but also from an employee experience perspective as well as, you know, returns to investors.
Okay. Let's circle back to, you know, at least a perceived growth driver, and I'm gonna break this question up into maybe a couple small subsegments, and let's start with space. You know, it's definitely been a topic and a growing topic and focus for investors across the A&D landscape. It's definitely perceived as a growth driver. I guess, you know, what's your read on that? How much, you know, are you seeing in agreement, disagreement?
Yeah.
You know, what's your thoughts there?
I agree with your basic premise. It is a growth area. It is a key part of the national defense, national security landscape. You know, maybe I'll start with just kind of where we are positioned in the space segment with our space business. We have very strong positions and what I would say exquisite payloads, also very strong positions in space ground systems. We continue to believe, given our customer relationships, our history there, knowing the mission, those will continue to be areas where we will, you know, see growth and continued penetration. To your point, the biggest part of the growth in space is in proliferated LEO.
There's a pivot going on, you know, right now that's a little bit different than the way, candidly, you know, we've been operating in this business. You're seeing much shorter spacecraft lives, you know, 5 years versus, let's say, 15. You're seeing a speed to mission and speed to market that is a market, you know, change. You're seeing less exquisite, you know, technical solutions. Again, how can you get capability to the customer faster? Not necessarily the most exquisite system, but, you know, capable enough to do the job. We're also seeing a lot of, I would say, non-traditional players in this segment. It's absolutely in a disruptive moment, I guess I would say right now, John, and we're seeing that in the procurement process.
When we think about what we need to do to sort of pivot sort of into that, our response has been with a couple of acquisitions that we've done over the last couple years. BCT, Blue Canyon Technologies, which provides some smaller buses that we think can kind of help us, you know, break into that proliferated LEO space in a more meaningful way. We also acquired SEAKR, which does specialized space electronics, and had a remarkable book-to-bill in 2022. Again, we see both of those as giving us great components and systems capability. Then the question becomes, where's this market going? Do you have to be a prime in order to continue to grow? And that's still something kind of we're looking at.
I think we are being selective where we can act, you know, as a prime. There are places where we think we can do it, and there are others where it may be better that we stick to our core strengths, which is as a component and as a system supplier. It's a dynamic space right now, no pun intended. Again, we're keeping our options open, but certainly, you know, a growth market, and we think we've made some nice inroads with those two acquisitions that I've talked about.
I guess if we circle back on Blue Canyon a little further, you know, you talked about the acquisition of the company here, and yet ultimately, you went out and worked with Lockheed on, for their buses and the missile tracker system. Can you just explain the logic there, and I guess maybe, what investments may need or not need to happen to build that out further?
Well, that's kind of a simple one, John. It was we felt that, the customer specifications and needs, couldn't be met by kind of what we had in-house. We went outside, and that's okay. I mean, you know, at the end of the day, we've got to do what's right for the program and what's right for the customer. There are times, I think we've all seen this, where we've gotten out of our comfort zone in what we do really well in terms of a core competency, and that leads to overruns and other issues. It was really kind of just sticking to our core, and we'll continue to go outside, you know, and seek help to the extent that we need it, you know, again, on contract.
I don't see that as in any way an indictment, if you will, of Blue Canyon. It was just the right thing to do for the platform and for the customer. In terms of investments, again, I think Blue Canyon's continuing to work off some of its backlog that came with the acquisition, but it is investing in capabilities and in cost reduction. Again, as I said, this is a real mindset shift for us as well, and a cultural shift. We're used to exquisite, highly expensive, highly engineered payloads. We've got to get down to a different capability level and a different cost point. Again, we think that BCT and SEAKR can help us with that, and we've got to continue to invest in those capabilities.
Let's circle back to Pratt. Lots of eyes on the GTF ramp that we've all been seeing, and then we've talked about supply chains and semis and castings and all this kind of stuff. You know, let's think about, you know, the longer-term trajectory, like what's next for that business. I mean, we were discussing earlier about the decision from 30 years ago or 20 years ago-
Yeah
on the V2500 and how it still has implications. When we think about what's next for Pratt.
Yeah. You could argue it's probably the longest of our long cycle businesses. The decisions, investment decisions, platforms that you pursue today have repercussions for decades. If you step back and just kind of, you know, we talk a lot about the GTF, and rightfully so. It's a core part of the Pratt, you know, growth story. If you just step back and look at that portfolio for a minute, very, very well-balanced. You've got a military engine business that is on the top DoD priority platforms, you know, mobility, tanker, fighter, and so forth. Anchored, of course, by the F135. You've got the premier small engine business in Pratt & Whitney Canada. They have sole source position on over 200 platforms. They are number one or number two in virtually every one of its segments.
Again, has a sole source position on the largest-selling platforms in each of its segments. Just an incredible business, 65,000 engines, a remarkable installed base and customer intimacy and a tremendous aftermarket, you know, as a result. Then there's the large commercial engine business, which we were talking about earlier. We've got about 10,000 engines between the V2500 and the GTF. Narrow-body-focused fleet, a relatively young fleet. The V2500 we think has perhaps even a little bit longer life than we had anticipated. Then the GTF has a we've got about 3,000 engines out there today with a incredibly strong backlog. As you mentioned, we are on the journey of making sure that we can continue to make time on wing improvements to meet our customers' expectations.
The backlog is there, and the quality of the backlog is there as well. Where do we go from here? If you think about our military engine business, it's preserving our position on the F-35. We all know what's going on on the F-35. We believe that we've got an Engine Core Upgrade that should preserve our position on the F-35. It'll bring additional range. Fuel burn is the lowest risk solution, we believe, to the power and thermal management needs on the platform. We think that is the right approach on the F-35. We're continuing, of course, to invest in sixth-gen capability and the enabling technology, survivability, stealth, and the like, to put us in position for sixth-gen. Pratt & Canada, it's continuing its derivative spiral upgrade strategy.
It's been able to continue to provide technology insertions on its key platforms to retain its positions. It's got to continue to do that, and we expect that it will. Then on the large commercial engine side, the GTF, as many of you know, we're introducing the GTF Advantage, which is another 1%, you know, fuel burn, 4% thrust. We are in testing today. It goes into service in the latter part of 2024. Executing on that to continue to preserve our, you know, position in the narrow body. We believe it the GTF is the absolutely architecture of the future. We're continuing to invest in hot section technologies, so we can continue to expand our capability there. All in all, we really like the portfolio.
The last piece of it is the structural cost reduction. You know, we've got to get to a position at Pratt where we are able to achieve sustainable mid-teens margins and be able to continue to invest. I think there are times in our history where we've stopped investing and we've harvested the business, and it's very hard to get back in. We've got to continue to take structural costs out. I mentioned our Asheville facility, our Model-Based Systems Engineering, our Factory 4.0, all of those things to continue to make us competitive from a cost perspective because we can't afford to not invest in that business. We've also got to get the margins up to where we all expect, which is in that mid-teens range.
Is there anything else I missed on Pratt, Neil?
No, I think you covered that quite well. Certainly the business model is a bit challenging on the large commercial engine side of the house. You know, the good news, at least from my perspective, is on the GTF, we've made those investments.
Yep.
We're capacitized. We're turning the corner on the aftermarket from, you know, I'll call it break even and now profitable and even growing profit, getting towards what our targeted and legacy margins were and will be. I think as we think longer term, a couple things. I think the GTF business case is a little longer than we thought.
Yep.
We will probably see more engines, you know, in that program over the next 15 years than we had thought even a few years ago. That's good news. You know, probably a little early to get into what comes next, but you know, certainly probably need to revisit that business model a little bit. As you all know, we lose a fair amount of money on each of the engines out the door. There's a long cycle of investment. You know, we'll cross that bridge when we get to it. What I will say is even through the investment years at Pratt, it was generating cash. You know, certainly being part of the RTX family helped.
I think, you know, our goal is to make sure that each of our businesses, and for different reasons, we have, you know, high ROIC on some of our businesses, and we have high growth potential in other parts of our business. We'll want to make sure that we keep thinking about how we generate, you know, additional cash in the, in the large commercial engine business as we move forward over the next two decades.
Yeah. Good add.
I guess, you know, taking a step back away from the engines and there's the broader Aero platform, I mean, you're involved in just about everything under the plane there. Let's start with Chris, with you. You know, what's working in the business? What needs tweaking?
Any, I guess, new entrants that you're watching in terms of competitive nature.
Yeah. You're talking about our Collins Aerospace business, which to your point, tip to tail, we would say probably has the largest installed base, arguably, you know, in the industry. Significant positions, avionics, aerostructures, wheels and brakes, interiors, and I know I'm missing something.
Electrical power.
... electrical power and controls.
Air management.
Air management. Positions on 100,000 aircraft. It's got about 2x the content on the newer platforms than it did on older generation platforms, so continuing to increase content in that installed base. It's got about $80 billion of its installed base, if not more, that is off of warranty. All that translates into just an aftermarket that is strong, you know, and resilient. In terms of what's sort of next for Collins, Neil mentioned there may be not a new big platform. There are some platforms that are out there, but not a next generation single aisle, like in kind of the near term. It's really its transformation story. Again, it's acquired.
It is a collection of businesses that have been integrated to a fair amount over the years, but there are still some streamlining opportunities and transformation opportunities, I think Stephen Timm and the team would tell you, in that, in that portfolio. They've got about 150 OE sites today that with some continued streamlining and some establishment of centers of excellence, which they've started, some in India, some in Poland, some in Mexico, they can continue to rationalize that footprint. They've got about 27 ERP systems, I think, within Collins today. That's a simplification. You know, that's ongoing. Again, they're on the Factory 4.0, like Pratt is, that journey as well. They're gonna double their automation hours between this year and 2027.
For Collins, it's really kind of the streamlining, the footprint to continue to be more cost competitive. In terms of what's, you know, next for them, the one thing that's interesting about Collins is it is the linchpin of the RTX, you know, revenue synergy story. They are involved in a majority of those revenue synergy opportunities. That gives them a lot of access into what's happening in the market into other domains. I also mentioned connected aviation, you know, upfront as a huge opportunity. In fact, they've stood up a Connected Aviation Services standalone business unit to continue to capture those opportunities. They did the acquisition of FlightAware for flight optimization. I'm sure many of you know. They have a ton of data coming off its equipment, so developing tailored solutions for its customers.
Lastly, they continue to invest in technology insertions to preserve positions on priority platforms. While, you know, their R&D is very healthy, even though there's not a new, necessarily a new big platform on the horizon, the reason is because they continue to invest in these technology insertions to grow their installed base and grow their backlog. A phenomenal business and one that I continue to believe, we continue to believe strongly is on that trajectory to get back to its sort of 20%-ish margins that it enjoyed pre-2019.
With that, it looks like we are at time. Thanks again for joining us this evening, or well, afternoon.
Yeah. Thank you. Well, thank you.