Good morning, everyone. I'll just start off since we're a minute late and it's our fault because the elevators are slow, and I know that. We have the StandardAero team here, Dan Satterfield, who's the CFO, and Rama Bondada, who's investor relations. Maybe we'll just kick it off with a few questions, Dan, if that's okay to start. How do you think about StandardAero today? You've gone through the IPO now, I think it's been two, three years. You're in a growth phase, both the commercial business that represents 60% of sales and military and biz av. How do you think about the growth of your business from 2026 to 2030?
Oh, yeah. We're in a great phase. Number one, coming out of the IPO, we significantly delevered, right? And now we're enjoying the fruits of that deleverage and the enormous cash flows coming in. The most satisfying part of being a part of our business in the aerospace industry is the cash flow that we're generating, and you're going to see our liquidity position continue to improve, billions of dollars of cash flow available to us that we will deploy. We've talked a lot, Sheila, about our five capital deployment areas, organic growth. Just this month, we opened the expanded CF34 facility in Winnipeg, increased our capacity by a third, and that's already full. So a great example of capital deployment in organic area.
In terms of license expansions we did in Q2, the $180 million investment for expanded licenses, that's returning $25 million a year at a minimum in a couple of years, and it'll peak up to about $30 million. So a fantastic return on capital there, where we're getting access to new licenses and new repairs that we haven't had access to before. Of course, M&A, we acquired Unified Turbines, a great bolt-on to the CRS business, new repairs that we didn't have before that we were able to acquire, and that fits right into the CRS platforms that they already serve, but now new repairs on existing platforms. And remember, the great part about that is that we are reducing turnaround times for our customers by repairing parts instead of having to wait for new ones.
And then, of course, stock repurchases through the first half, $100 million of share repurchases. We will continue that and are very proud to do it. So I think during the next second half of the decade, you're going to see additional capital deployment from StandardAero. That's-
Sheila, I will just add on there. When you think about StandardAero, we used to operate at 7x leverage in the private equity world. We IPO'd at 4x, and now two years later, we are down to about 2.5x. That ties to what Dan was talking about, the amount of deleveraging that has occurred. We are a 115-year-old company. You do not last that long if you do not generate cash. Through cycle, we are 100% free cash flow converter of GAAP net income. We have just gone through a heavy growth investment phase with LEAP over the last three years with CFM56 Dallas doubling our footprint there. HTF7000, we are the exclusive heavy overhaul provider on that engine, which is the new engine for super mid-cabin, which is, think of the fractionals. These are huge fleets. We have also done CF34, the expansion that we just completed.
All of these growth platforms that are setting us up for double-digit earnings growth and free cash flow growth over not just a few years, but for decades, that is starting to unwind. We are coming down the learning curve on LEAP. That is a three to five year learning curve that started really in 2025. As that comes down, the learning curve is not just about turning the engines faster and getting better margins, it is also about getting more efficient on the working capital. These are all things that are going to generate tremendous amount of free cash flow as we go forward in the next few years. The last two years was deleveraging.
The next few years is going to be a lot of fun because there is going to be a lot of opportunities for us to put things to work, and we have the natural growth drivers already built in.
I guess, how do we think about where oil prices are today and how we think about your backlog, which is baseball for the next six to 12 months, and how you think about the high level of oil and when that actually impacts demands?
Yeah, we talked about this before, and it's a great question. We're not a components business. We're a long cycle business. The MRO events that we are servicing today were built on flight hours over the last five years, beginning in 2022. That demand profile isn't day-to-day. It's built up over many periods, and we've not seen a single shop visit impacted this year as a result of disruption in the market. Again, long cycle business. Matter of fact, 2027, Sheila, is baked. On the commercial side of the business, it's booked out. Of course, we were always going to maintain some flexibility for transactional business in our capacity. But for the long-term agreements and the demands into 2027 and into 2028, that is very clear. As you recall, almost 80% of our business is already under long-term agreement.
The transactional side of the house we maintain for flexibility, but 2027 is solid, high visibility into demand all the way into 2028 on the commercial platforms.
I think that's a misunderstanding that people don't understand about engine MRO, is that it's not long cycle 15 and 20 years like OEM. It's not short cycle like aerospace components. It's driven by five years of previous flight cycles. You'd have to be like a terminator and travel back in time and destroy demand in 2022 or 2023 to affect us this year or next year, or even into early 2025 at this point.
That's a new one, terminator.
I saved that for you.
How do you, I guess, think about your commercial aerospace business that represents 60% of your sales, or maybe your top five platforms? Can you go through the top five platforms, how you think about growth? LEAP is about $400 million of revenues, going $1 billion by 2030. How CFM56 changes and RB211 in that top five mix.
Yep. First of all, RB211's not in the top five. But the-
I'm wrong again on my demand model. There we go.
LEAP is, of course, an entitlement that we earned being a very trusted partner to the OEs and to the end markets. There are only eight CBSA license holders in the world. We are one of them, and we have an earlier ramp-up in our industrialization on LEAP than anyone else, with very few exceptions. Also already building the repair portfolio for LEAP in conjunction with GE and Safran. As we have said, we are very confident in $1 billion of LEAP revenue by the end of the decade, and LEAP achieving incremental margins, incremental to ES, our Engine Services segment, by that same time period, and that has to do with a very predictable learning curve improvement as you ramp up the program. Very satisfied with the LEAP pipeline, very satisfied with the type of customers that are coming in.
It is quite international, from Asian to European, even Middle Eastern growth on the LEAP engine, so it is broad-based and fundamental, represented by long-term agreements and capacity for transactional work. Also on LEAP, we have got the ability to grow capacity. Of course, LEAP is being serviced out of our San Antonio facility, the largest of all of our facilities. There are two ways that you can grow capacity on a program like that without expanding footprint. Number one is the learning curve. The learning curve is the number of hours that a technician takes to push an engine through a shop. For a brand-new engine like LEAP, of course, at the beginning, it is much slower. We are already seeing the improvement both in revenue and turnaround times as the technicians get more proficient on the engine. That is a way to increase capacity without changing footprint.
Also, the test cell capacity. Test cell, of course, the key, very highly expensive barrier to growth. For LEAP, we have a full test cell, fully dedicated to LEAP 100%, and we have a test cell in waiting. San Antonio has a very large test cell array, and all we have to do to the second test cell is correlation. Correlation is making the test cell specific to the parameters of the engine that it is servicing. We can do that as well, and then we have specifically put LEAP next to RB211 in San Antonio. RB211, nice program. Really at this point, it is not significant in its demand profile to the company as a whole in relation to the other programs. As LEAP changes its demand profile, those technicians simply absorb the work for LEAP and the capacity goes up.
Other platforms that are growth, of course, are CFM56, and a lot of you have had the opportunity to visit us in Dallas. Beautiful facility, and where we have doubled our capacity on CFM56, and we have seven test cells, not all dedicated to CFM56, but a test cell array that can grow with time as well. There, it is a similar dynamic on the learning curve. Even though we have done 1,000 CFM56s up in our Winnipeg facility, in the Dallas facility, it is a new platform for them. So they are going through a similar learning curve as the LEAP technicians. It is somewhat shorter because this is a program that we do know and our colleagues up north have experience with. As that learning curve goes up and the turnaround times come down, we have additional capacity, and CFM56 demand looks great.
Other platforms where we are seeing growth, of course, are the turboprop engines. One of my favorite set of platforms because they are highly fuel efficient and really immune to the extent of jet fuel prices, and we are seeing that on the turboprop programs. Also, the customer base is extremely varied, not just commercial operators, but fire and rescue, municipal operators there as well. That is where we invested most recently in expanded licenses on turbofans on the biz av side, but then turboprops on the commercial side. We have additional licenses on that already robust and very profitable suite of engine programs, the turboprops. HTF7000 on the biz av side, it is really the number one engine from my former employer, Honeywell. It is the engine of choice for the super midsize aircraft platforms, and it continues to grow at a very impressive rate.
Remember, on the HTF7000, we are the exclusive heavy shop visit provider globally.
Sure.
You talked about the top five, right? CFM56 wasn't even a top 10 for us last year. It's just entering into the top 10, right? We've never really focused on that till we doubled our footprint here, and it's purposeful, right? You have the second, third mover advantage when you're an OEM. You can wait till you get to a much more mature platform where USM starts increasing, and you can start taking share because we have a CRS business that creates USM. You do need retirements to pick up to get USM. So we're preparing for that as retirements pick up to be able to take share, make faster turnaround times through stub builds or module swaps or whatever the market is looking for at that time. So that's still growing pretty tremendously. It'll eventually get to top five, but it just entered the top 10.
AE2100, which is the ubiquitous engine on the C-130, that is a top program for us, as is the AE1107 on V-22 Osprey. There is a pretty good blend of military, commercial, biz av, where we have exclusive positions on, that are all going to be growing as we look into.
Yeah, and those two fixed-wing military platforms that Rama just mentioned, we have 80% of the work there on those programs, and high visibility into the future. As I mentioned earlier, 77% of our business is under long-term agreements, so our ability to see out into the future 18, 24, 36 months, and even beyond, is quite unique.
Sheila, on those two platforms, future variants, we also get 80% rights to.
Can we talk back about the LEAP, if that is okay? As you think about the revenues going from $400 million today to about $1 billion in 2030, how do we think about the number of shop visits that includes how you think about the market share, and then from a profitability perspective, how we think about the learning curve?
Sure. So really two types of shop visits on LEAP right now. It is dominated by the CTEM, Continued Time Engine Maintenance programs shop visits. Those are really shop visits that are intended to bridge an operator to his next PRSV, or performance restoration shop visit, the heavier shop visit. Right now, early on the ramp of LEAP, we are seeing more of the CTEM, and that is now shifting to the PRSVs. Those are where we are being swamped with RFPs every day on PRSV slot availability out into the future. We are booking those up. You will see the revenue increase steeply towards that $1 billion mark, and then continuing on into about a $3 billion mark into the 2030s, driven by that increased heavier revenue shop visit, PRSVs.
Can I ask a quick question? Does the revenue profile change as you go from CTEMs to PRSVs?
Yeah, the PRSVs are more valuable shop visits. So per shop visit, you are going to see the revenue increase. That is fueling the climb from where we are today to that billion-dollar mark.
We don't stop at a billion, right? It goes from a billion to several billion by the middle of next decade. That's just simple math based upon what the delivery schedules have been and what they will be, and based upon the way the engines are flying, and the amount of work that comes out of there. We don't really need to do much to capture that several billion. It would be adding the second test cell in terms of correlating it, which takes about 12 to 18 months. At least it's already there. Then adding a second shift. So it's not like we need to do an expansion or anything for that.
In terms of the margin profile, great success story there, right? LEAP achieving profitability here in Q2, and right on schedule. From double-digit million industrialization costs at the beginning of the program, to black numbers here in Q2. It's right on schedule, and we're very, very happy. Two of the reasons that we've got there, and these are the same reasons that'll drive profitability up, remember that we've said at the $1 billion mark of revenue, we expect the LEAP margins to be accretive to Engine Services segment margins. Very confident in that because of the following. First of all, revenue growth, right? We did put in the right amount of indirect costs early in the program to make sure that it's successful. So as we increase revenue, we're absorbing those indirect costs. Then the learning curve.
Again, that's the amount of time, money, amount of hours a technician needs to push an engine through the shop, up to what we call specified margins, or sorry, hours or spec hours. For the LEAP engine, we anticipate that to take about five years, and we're already seeing it happen because of the low turnaround times are decreasing on LEAP. Revenue's going up because we're pushing the engines through faster. Of course, all of that has a positive effect on margins. So very confident in achieving that level. Remember also being in the exclusive club of the CBSA license holders, we have commercial advantages that non-CBSA license holders do not have, and we're taking advantage of those as well. That not only makes us competitive in the marketplace, but also greater margins.
Is that just parts agreements with the OEMs, the CBSA?
It primarily has to do with parts agreements.
Okay.
There's also technical engineering access, so when you're doing an MRO repair, we're sharing notes with GE sharing their notes with us. If you're not part of that network, you don't get that sort of access.
Well, good point. That's driving the repair side of the house. Because we have that full access to the engineering teams at GE, together, we're developing component repairs. We're well ahead of anybody else in the CBSA license network, outside of the OE, in building that repair portfolio. Remember, our CRS business has already 20,000 license-approved repairs at very accretive margins. The LEAP entitlement will grow as the shop visits grow. Actually, the repair guys should be running at a little bit faster pace in providing that accretive growth. Not only there, but also on CFM56, we continue to develop new repairs. Customers love our component repair business because not only is a repair less expensive than a new part, it's decreasing your turnaround time.
Can I ask any metrics you could provide around that five year mark of how you expect LEAP to improve profitability to be accretive, whether it's the amount of time a shop visit takes?
It's primarily that. It's primarily the amount of time that the engine technicians take, and they are able to increase capacity simply by being faster. Less time in the shop means higher profitability. Like I said, we've tracked this on a line to the point now where we've hit black numbers. There's really nothing in the way to continue to improve profitability. The additional kicker there are the LEAP repairs that we'll be performing as well. That repair portfolio has already grown to 500 repairs, continues to grow every single day, and that'll provide additional juice in the LEAP margins.
Can we talk about CFM56? GE previously raised its shop visit guidance to 2,300-2,400 annual shop visits. How do we think about StandardAero's share in that, and where your current capacity is, and where you look it to plateau out?
Yeah. We don't really discuss market share too much.
I know.
Yeah.
I'm just asking anyway in case.
I'll be honest with you, like I said, CFM56, this year is the first year it's going to be a top 10 platform for us, right? We have never been a big market share leader there. The way I think about CFM56 and the way you guys should think about it is the parallel to the CF34. 10 years ago, we were a mid-single-digit market share. At the CF34, there was close to 10 providers in that engine. We took our time. It's a fleet that has not grown much in the last 10 years. It's been about a flat fleet. Flat fleet, that's an interesting dynamic. As our share has grown in that through using CRS and using parts repairs to reduce the turnaround time, that increases our ability to price better, and therefore, we started shoving out the other competitors.
Now we are the dominant market share there. GE's number two. There's only two other players or three other players left. One is exiting at the end of the year, the second in 2028, third will be shortly after that. We have grown over 10 years on that at the end of the life on a fleet that has not grown. That's basically how we approach the CFM56. As it's maturing, there is going to be. In the CFM56 market, people think of it as a monolith. It is something that you can slice and dice in so many different ways, whether it's geography, whether it's fleet size, small fleet operators, medium-size operators, large, and then also on the variants, right? There's the classics, the tech insertion, the EVO/PEP. Our customer base is mostly the EVO/PEP. These are pretty young engines.
A third of them have not gone through their first heavy workshop visit yet. 70% haven't gone through their first or second. So these are young engines that are still flying, and the operators still want to fly them a lot. That's where we're focused at. These tend to be more of your medium to large fleet sizes. So we're actually just getting started in the CFM56 because that's what we do best, is come in at the late stages, and we're able to grow through market share gains. It's big enough that you can go from the 40 providers that are out there today to a mid-single digit, high single-digit number, and everybody's going to do really well because there's so many different ways to slice this portfolio.
How many CFM56 repairs do you have? I am just curious of the 20,000.
We have not disclosed that number. It is competitive.
Oh, okay.
Yeah.
All right. You said LEAP was 500, so I was like maybe they are giving out more information today.
On a mature platform, usually it is about 2,500 to 3,000.
Okay, makes sense. Can we talk about the Winnipeg facility you recently opened up? What does that mean? I meant to call you, Rama, but it was mid-August, and I forgot.
Yeah, yeah.
What does Winnipeg mean?
Winnipeg, where the company was founded 115 years ago, is really the core of the company. A very important site. A whole, actually, campus of facilities there. The biggest facility in Winnipeg is Plant 6, where we do the CF34 and the CFM56. Recall I said earlier, we have done 1,000 CFM56 overhauls in that shop. However, the CF34 platform for the dynamics that Rama mentioned before continues to grow. We are the consolidator of choice. Matter of fact, on all of our 41 engine platforms, we typically end up being the consolidator of choice. CF34 is by no means in its end of life phase, but it is becoming more mature, and the demand continues to grow. Owning our land up there, we decided, with the help of the Manitoba government, big government sort of unveiling as well, we increased the facility size by a third.
Couple things will happen there. That shop was absolutely packed with people and material. They now have room to grow and to spread out. You will see efficiency, or we will see efficiency rates climb like crazy, just for the ability for the technicians to access their parts and material. It is also providing additional floor space for more engine throughput. The CF34 platform is one of my favorites. A strong profitability, great turnaround times, actually really low working capital demands because of our strong repair portfolio for the CF34, our USM capacity on CF34, one of our greater programs. That is going to provide extra profitability and growth for many years to come.
What are the knock-on effects of that? Because the demand had come in so quickly and so strong, and that 40% expansion, the backlog is already there for that, so it is not like we need to go out and find it. It is already booked up. What happened was, we were spilling work into other facilities in Winnipeg where we do helicopter and military that we are using to store CF34 material. By having this expansion, not only did it expand the CF34 facility, it frees up capacity for military where we are winning a lot of new NATO contracts. We do not need to expand capacity there, just this capacity has a knock-on effect of giving us more military capacity.
That is great color. One of the good growth drivers you mentioned was additional licensing agreements. You recently signed $180 million with a turboprop OEM. I think it is set to contribute $25 million of EBITDA per year starting in 2029. Can we talk about what these licensing agreements mean in the first place and what the 180-
It is turboprop and turbofan.
Okay.
Yeah. Business aviation turbofans, our commercial turbofans and also commercial turboprops. Fantastic investment. We talked about our capital deployment. This is one of our favorite ones, it is like an acquisition with a 7x multiple. Getting access to, they are really variants of existing engines, is providing additional revenue and profitability on already profitable programs. The turboprop suite of engines is quite profitable. It is simply that, getting access to new engine variants and the associated component repairs, with an entitlement of $25 million a year by 2029. By the way, I will be disappointed if it does not grow to $30 million. I will tell you now, it is going to expand to $30 million shortly thereafter. These are programs that are long lived, and we expect to see an entitlement of margins on this for many, many years.
Can we talk about the military business? You have alluded to it several times. How do we think about the military business growth rate relative to commercial going forward?
Going forward, okay, good question. in Q2 it went slightly backwards, for funding outlay delays. Going forward, we are on the platforms that are never cut, right? The fixed wing transport aircraft, primarily represented by the C-130, the AE2100 engine that flies on that, and the 2100 1107 engine that flies on the V-22 Osprey, which is the tiltrotor transport aircraft for the Marine Corps. These programs do not have replacements in the near future, and it will continue to fly. On these programs, recall we have 80% market share at a minimum. Those are continuing to grow, as well as now attack platforms like the F-35 where we do important European NATO work. That shop is filled to the gills, as well as demand on the F110 engine, which is on the F-16, where we do the new build.
We have had specific requests to increase capacity there. Thankfully, that is in our big shop in San Antonio where that is not a problem. Also, the J85 trainer program, the U.S. Air Force continues to beg for more capacity there as they need more pilots. The J85 is the first turbofan engine that a new pilot would fly on, and there is a backlog of demand for new pilots. On those programs, we see really long-term growth and again, a very high transparency into growth into the future. The military business will continue to be an important different cycle business versus the commercial business. It runs really fuel cost immune, and as operating tempos of course increase with conflicts, we will see growth there as well.
Sheila, just generally speaking, our revenue and budget comes from the O&M line. The O&M line, right, it has not declined below 3% growth since the Vietnam War. If you slice it even further, you look at the flight cycles, particularly tied to our engine platforms. The FYDP, if you look at the five year defense plan, you will see that that growth puts you in that high single digit kind of range, and that is just the organic side. Then new awards, and then op tempo and what is going on in the Middle East, that will add to that growth rate.
Can we talk about ES margins? It is 80% of your business. Well, I guess the profitability is a little less. How do we think about margins, volume based, volume, pricing, how that all plays into margin expansion going forward?
ES margins continue to grow, right, and we are really satisfied with the growth of earnings in Q2. They are going to continue to be bolstered by the ramp up on those two zero margin platforms, now slightly black, LEAP and CFM56 Dallas. Those will march steadily upwards. We have an extremely strong continuous improvement program where even on mature or mid-cycle programs, we continue to see an entitlement of improved margins on those programs. HTF7000, we continue to see improved margins there year-on-year, and now CF34, I cannot wait to see the efficiency rates go out of the roof on this extremely large program in Winnipeg as a result of the expansion of the facility. Where else can we go and see increased margins? On the biz av Pratt & Whitney programs, there we are also becoming the consolidator of record.
Remember on even some of our older platforms, they simply don't die. When I joined the industry, when I joined StandardAero coming from Honeywell, I was like, "Okay, well, some of these programs are really end of life." But as the smaller providers drop out, the demand comes to us. These really high margin older programs continue to live on. So we'll see. I have high confidence now with achieving profitability on the ramp programs in our margin profile going forward. Plus now the additional adder on the license expansion where we spent that capital allocation in Q2.
We've historically, over the last 10 years, have done about 40 to 50 basis points of margin improvement in Engine Services organically through continuous improvement. Lately, it's been closer to 80 basis points. We expect to see continued growth from the margin, primarily from that.
Maybe we could talk about CRS quickly, as I know we're running out of time here. How do we think about the growth drivers from CRS, and the business has been through a little bit of a transition in the first half of 2026. What are the ongoing transformations there at the moment?
CRS, of course, fantastic business with margins in the 30% range. What's unique about CRS, if you haven't followed them, is their ability to generate revenue on their own through new product introduction or new repair development. New repair development being a great engine of revenue growth. Again, huge demand for that as customers see new repairs lower their turnaround times. So we've expanded our engineering team there, dedicated group of engineers that only are doing NPI not only for third-party repairs, but remember, there is an insourcing effort. Repairs that the Engine Services group has been doing with third parties, we're now bringing that internally back to StandardAero as StandardAero develops additional capacity to bring those repairs in. All of these repairs, I guarantee you, are accretive to CRS, so that's a huge driver of growth.
The other advantage that we've been taking advantage of is pricing, as you mentioned, Sheila. At CRS, there's a unique pricing capability there, as we have intellectual property that no one else has. It's a very fragmented market, and you'll see lots of shops have one or two or a half dozen types of repairs. We have 20,000 repairs, and we can price for that. Again, customers are willing to pay those margins for improved turnaround times. The CRS will grow on the platforms that are growing at ES. So, we will do all of the LEAP repairs at CRS, the CFM56 repairs at CRS, CF34 is going to be done at CRS, so they'll benefit from that as well. Not only that, CRS does engine platforms that we don't service at Engine Services, including wide body platforms.
Maybe as we're out of time, one thing that investors might underappreciate about StandardAero today to close.
I think it's the exciting how I led. There's going to be an exciting period coming up with our extremely strong cash flow generation. We've not shown you what we can do here since the IPO on capital deployment. You're starting to see those now with the LEAP and CFM56 investment cycle coming to an end. You're now seeing StandardAero invest in new areas of growth. The license expansion is just one of them. Over the next several years, there is billions of dollars of liquidity that we will put to use on a very disciplined return set of metrics.
I would add in there one thing that Dan said earlier that I don't think investors understand that 2027 is baked, 2028 is starting to get baked. We are a very long cycle business. We're not components. We're long cycle.
Well, thank you so much, Dan, Rama, for being here.
Yeah. Thanks.
Appreciate it.
Thank you.